EntreLeadership - #228: Donald Miller—How to Double Your Revenue

Episode Date: October 16, 2017

Donald Miller, best-selling author and CEO of StoryBrand, knows your most powerful marketing tool has nothing to do with a big budget. The most effective marketing comes down to one simple thing: the right words. Note: cute or clever ones never work. And the doubled, tripled—and even quadrupled—revenues of the more than 3,000 companies he’s worked with are all the proof we need. Join us to learn how to clarify your brand message so people will actually listen. Donald joined us last week in Nashville for EntreLeadership Master Series—and now you can watch him in action with our attendees on the EntreLeadership YouTube channel. We’ll also share highlights from this power-packed leadership event, including some special conversations with Ramsey Solutions leaders as they weigh in on the ever-important topics of goal setting and recruiting. entreleadership.com/podcast StoryBrand 3 Chapter Giveaway EntreLeadership Master Series Spring 2018 Infusionsoft Custom Growth Plan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. From the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Really excited about this episode because we're doing something that we rarely do. We do events all the time at Andre Leadership, but rarely do. we take you inside an event like we're going to on this episode? Really excited. What are you going to

hear? Donald Miller, who's no stranger to you here on this broadcast, is back with us at a live event. It is our Entree Leadership Master Series, 200 plus men and women that are leading businesses that, by the way, are winning. I want you to understand something. This is an event for leaders who are winning and they want to win more. These aren't duds. These aren't losers. Okay. These are men and women who are already killing it and they want to go to the next level. That's what makes this so much fun. And so Don did a couple of exercises on the stage. I'm actually with him. So we're going to pull out some of those exercises that are super practical. And if you've never heard about story brand, well, his new book, Building a Story Brand is out now. Clarify your message so customers will listen. And so this is going to be really, really fun. Also, going to go back. into that event and we're going to let you hear from some of our top leaders discussing goal setting. How do they do goal setting? What works? What doesn't work? And then you'll get to hear from our lead human resource Puba, Armando Lopez. And he's actually taking our audience's questions

about HR issues. And then you're going to hear from two of our attendees. So, folks, this may be one of the coolest episodes we've ever done because we're taking you behind the curtain. So let's get right to it. And one more tease, wait till the very end. Now, some of you people, you pick us up, you listen to us in different times. I get that. Don't skip out at the end of this broadcast because you're going to hear a success story from Victoria, and she represents our Y. Okay, let's go to the EMS stage. That is our Entree Leadership Master's series. This is Donald Miller, walking our audience in the room and on Facebook Live. through two key exercises that are in the book story brand, grunt test and one-liner test.

We started off with the grunt test. This is actually going to be a lot of fun, and it's going to be very helpful. So if you're in our audience and you volunteered your site, get ready to come on up here. And first we're going to start off with Victoria Clausen. And Don, her website is victoria Clausen.com. You can see it there on the screen. and she is a florist. So everybody give Victoria a hand.

Hi, Victoria. Welcome. Thank you. Okay, so I've never seen any of these websites. They asked me, do you want to study them? And I said, no, because I want you to be able to experience me looking at them from an outside perspective. One of the reasons I do that is because we struggle with the curse of knowledge. The Curse of Knowledge is a phrase created by Leila Fever.

He wrote a wonderful book called The Art of Explanation. And Lila Fiber says, if knowledge worked on a scale of 1 to 10, you understand flowers and whatever you do, which I'm about to find out, at a level 10. I mean, you know what you're doing. You have a PhD in flowery. So, and I don't, right? I just need some flowers. So we intuitively know we've got to simplify this message because people aren't as smart as we are in our field of expertise. What we do is then we take level 10 and we scale it down to about level 6 because we've seen.

simplified our message because we want to reach more people. That's a great effort. The problem is people buy between levels one and two. So from two through six is the curse of knowledge. We're talking over their heads. We're not speaking to their actual needs. And what we're going to see, I haven't looked at any of these websites, I guarantee you we're going to see the curse of knowledge happening. But it's hard for you to see because you're so smart. You have to get a dumb guy to look at your website. And so that's what I'm going to do. Okay. So this is the first time I've seen it. a couple things I noticed right away. One is the top right corner of your website is your dominant real estate. So right here, we need a buy now or order flowers or whatever you do. So we

need that right there. Instead, we have Connect. I don't know what Connect means. Right? And I didn't come here to connect. I came here to buy flowers. So when you say Connect, I say dating service. Now, if it takes me calories, my brain is going to fill in categories lightning fast. You can't stop it. You cannot stop your customers' brains from thinking. They see Connect, they go dating service. Now you have to deconstruct the fact that you're not a dating service, right, in order to construct the fact that you're doing something else. Now, probably most people wouldn't go dating service, but I see Connect, I think dating service. What I really want to see is buy flowers or order flowers or something like that. Okay. Now, I see this. The first thing you probably see is Victoria Clausen,

and no offense, I'm sure you're a wonderful person, but I don't know who Victoria Clausen is. But there she is. and then floral events. So floral events are events that are put on for flowers. So it's where flowers get together and have events together and talk about what sort of petals are you going to wear to that wedding. I was thinking about wearing red. I notice you're wearing red. It's March.

Is it okay? Are we the wrong flowers for this month? Okay. Obviously, I'm being very facetious because I would imagine, though, that you bring flowers to weddings, to bank. Is that what you do? we design events. You design all of the events.

You would do more business if you said we design events. Honestly, you would see an increase in business if you said, we design beautiful events, right? That's it. That's what you sell. You sell a beautiful event. Now, that's physically what you sell. But I'm actually not looking for just a beautiful event. I'm looking for a beautiful event that impresses my friends, right?

We design beautiful events. All of your friends won't believe. it or your friends won't believe the beauty or whatever. So flowers are part of it or not part of it. They are part of the... Big part of it. A big part of it. But it's floral events, but it's not like for the rose parade or anything like that. You can see why I'm confused. So we have a mantra at Storybrandt, if you confuse, you'll lose. So what you want to do is you say, here's what we do. We design beautiful events. What's in it for me? Everybody will be impressed or it'll be the event of the season.

What you're offering me if you say the event for the season, by the way, is an identity. And something that I want that's even more powerful than a beautiful event is I want to be a kind of person who is known for having a beautiful event. In the book, it's called selling an aspirational identity. And it's really important for you. These events are expensive, right? So we worked with a wedding coordinator who starts at $1 million. That's her fee. So she only does like 10 a year.

Poor thing. scale up is difficult and so what she's really selling is an identity that this thing is going to be flawless, beautiful, there's not going to be a problem, but every one of your friends from Senator So-and-So to Kid Rock is going to come to this thing, I'm kidding about Kid Rock, I don't know if he's ever been doing.

But they're going to come to this thing and they're going to think this person does amazing events. So we want to get that in here. So probably when we scroll down after we say something about we help you host a beautiful event. Then here's the other thing that immediately seems you're going to say, if you say, we help you host a beautiful event or we help you do a tour, they're going to say, oh, well, you don't do food service, whatever.

So you actually want to overcome that right away. Everything from food service to this. So that means we need to send out some customer surveys. And we need to find out what is the resistance, right? Do you do everything for the event? No. You don't do the food? Anything visual.

Anything pretty. Okay, so we will help you make a beautiful event. Anything that will make your event beautiful from chairs, tablecloths to napkins to flowers to whatever. You want to list all of that stuff because I'm giving you split seconds to fill in categories of the problem that you help me solve. And within five seconds, I need to know all I've got to do is caller and everything visual is going to be taking it. Literally, I'm going to take a shot. I'm going to call the caterer. I'm going to call the entertainment and I just have to take a shower after that.

Right? Correct. Yep. Okay. So what did I just say? You'd scroll down and you'd say, we will make your event beautiful. We do with everything visual at your event.

All you have to do is call the caterer and maybe some entertainment and take a shower. We'll handle the rest. You see, now you just did the math for me on what my part is in this really easy thing. And you've offered me a beautiful aspirational identity that everybody's going to come and think Don Miller puts on beautiful events. So we want to get that kind of copy in there. Here's the great news. You've done so much right.

One, it's a gorgeous website. Thank you. Nothing visually, I don't think, needs to change. It's fantastic. You've made so few mistakes that people make. There's not a ton of text on here. Nobody reads paragraphs on websites anymore. They scan websites.

They don't read them. This is a scannable website. You have who we are and who we are not. I didn't read that yet, but that's actually confusing. So I would actually say schedule a consultation or give us a call. I would probably get rid of those things. The other thing that I would add to this website, and it may already have it, you can tell me, I would add a lead generator.

So I'm looking around, there are six people that I'm trying to choose between to make my event beautiful. But you've got a lead generator, five things that go wrong in expensive events. Or five ways people waste their money. You're probably more higher end than that. But you see what I'm saying? Something that I'm going to give you my email address. I give you my email address, you give me this four-page magazine article-style document. That's beautiful.

It says the five mistakes people make when they're hosting an event. You've officially, if I read that document, you've become my guide. I've just spent an hour with you, and I spent four seconds with your competitor bouncing off their website. Who's going to get my business? You are. And then you're going to send me over the next two weeks even more help through an email. Then what happens? You're in my phone, and I'm getting an email.

I'm not even reading it. I'm swiping in it, and I'm deleting it. But I'm not unsubscribing because that PDF was so valuable. But what are you doing? You're reminding me that you exist. And now it comes time, because Betsy's saying, Don, make the... choice the event is coming and who am I going to call you because you've branded yourself in my mind offered to resolve my internal problem offered me an aspirational identity and done it with

crystal clear language so I would get a lead generating PDF I would capture email addresses I would send them five or six emails you should see I would think business double just from that the great thing is the website itself is a 15 minute fix it's just text you just need to change some text I would remove Connect. I would say, schedule our service or something like that. I would make it a different color on the top right. I would add a lead generating PDF, and I would think you would do really well. Thank you.

Good? Thank you, Victoria. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Yeah. How about that? All right. Up next, let's hear from Andy Crum.

They are a building and home supplier. The website, Don, is Wombled. company.com. Oh, so this is Andy and Ainsley. Good to see you all. Give them a hand. Where are you from? Yeah. Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City. Beautiful town. That town's an amazing town. That town is really up and coming. I know. Yeah, doing a lot.

Okay. We are the Womble Company. Just one thing, that doesn't solve my problem. So I don't know what the Womble Company does. Right? You know, so at this point, I'm having to fill in gaps in my brain. Now my brain is moving ahead of you. You didn't fill it in, I'm going to fill it in with wrong answers. You've got to fill it in with the right answers. I just want to know what a womble is. Exactly.

And then people are guessing. What's a womble? Nobody's read these paragraphs. I'm not going to read them because we don't have time. This is like war and peace these days. Tulsa, Oklahoma, why should I call you? I want a lamp. Okay, you're a real estate company?

No. We're a window. See, I'm filling it in? You're a window company? Yeah, we're Pella Windows indoors. Oh, my gosh. Best Windows Anywhere. Just get rid of this.

Best Windows Anywhere. Best Windows anywhere. Womwell Company, pictures of some windows. You'll see business go up, right? Because now I know you're a window company. What differentiates your windows from other windows? Well, they're high quality. And we install paint, service.

We do all of the, we're the full turn key. Great. Best Windows anywhere. We install paint service, which saves me from what down the road? From, you know, energy efficiency, you know, rotting windows, we take care of it all for you. Yeah, okay, so you want you to agitate

a pain. There's going to be a little bitty paragraph, not this much, maybe half of one of these things that says, we'll never leave you out in the cold, we won't sell you windows without servicing, backing up, we'll actually physically show up in your house and make sure they're working great. You'll never worry about your windows again.

Okay, something like that. It differentiates because you're actually going to come out, do it from installation to painting the whole deal. I don't, maybe that's other window companies, but I wouldn't know that. So as soon as you said that, I would think you're the only window company that does that, right? So we want to say a lot more. Let's actually, as Oklahoma's only turnkey Pella provider, I don't know what a turnkey

Pella provider is. We've been supplying builders, contractors, architects, and homeowners with the highest quality construction products available. Again, construction products is timber, beams, foam insulation, right? It's windows. So you're not, you're not owning the, window territory because you're not telling me you do the best windows you want to be known as I'm telling you you know if you're at a cocktail party says Andy what you do you say you know most

people have serious problems with their windows they hate opening and closing them they leak cold air is coming through we sell the best windows in the industry we install them we paint them we service them we make sure nobody will ever worry about their windows again we are the window people right now now who are you in their brain yeah the window people yeah the window people yeah When they think, a problem is a cue, a cue that makes them think of something. I have a problem. My problem is Windows. That's a cue.

And you have not put yourself in their brain as the solution to the problem because you are selling to contractors, architects, home billers, the highest quality construction products available. Nobody ever got to the second sentence. And there's nothing about this image that says you sell windows. There's nothing on here at all that tells me you solve my window problems. Now, that sounds negative. Yeah. Enormous opportunity.

Yeah. I mean, you have, if you're doing good business and you can solve that problem, it's literally like having a retail store and turning off the lights and putting a chain around the door and you're still in business. Let's turn on lights, take the chain off the door, and count the money. That's version 2.0, so thank God we changed it, like six weeks. Yeah, let's get the version 3.0. Yeah, let's get the version 3.m.m.

It would have been really bad. Hey. Not a money problem. Right. A word problem. super easy to fix. Okay. Sound great?

Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks so much. That's good. That's really good. Because you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking if they put it in and they paint it, that's one phone call instead of calling a painter after the guy puts the windows in.

Yep. I'm the ADD guy. I want one phone call. Also, if I'm choosing windows, Betsy and I are building a house right now. We're going to have to choose windows pretty soon. If there's a PDF in here that just says three things to look for in a quality window. you know, or five things people love about our windows or five things that people love about our windows

and hate about other windows, probably downloading that PDF. And if you're selling to contractors, you want a sales funnel that's separate to contractors and separate to architects, on-ramp them differently. They're different kinds of customers. All right. Huge opportunity for you guys.

Yeah. All right. Up next is Mark Bond. Mark, come on up. Don, he runs a recycling company. Hey, Mark. And the website. is metrogroup.com. Okay, this is a building that's for sale. You sell in that building?

I know. You lease some space in the building? We own the building. Okay. You lease in any space, though? No. Okay, because that's what you're selling. Yeah. Okay, who's your customer? What would I send to you? If I'm I have a junkyard and I'm pulling out scrap metal, I'm sending it to you and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, we buy from that. Mostly it's industrial customers that generate scrap metal in some aspect of their business. Great. Repeat customers? Repeat customers. Okay, and sales reps going out and talking to them all the time. What differentiates you from your competitor? Mostly that we're local, we're not corporate. You're the local guys. Yeah. Which means they get more time with you. They get more hands-on

service. They get more, you can pivot quickly. You can take care of the needs. Are you competitive in the marketplace? Yes. Okay, so we want to bullet point all that stuff and brand it in their brains and why they need to go with you and nobody else. Can you take business from your competitor in your area? So there's plenty of opportunity to grow. There is. I mean, there's a certain size of the pie. but we can steal from them. Okay. So one thing that you want to do is you want to say, how can we help you recycling services,

transloading containers? We'd have to spend a little bit of time figuring out your business. But I do want, above the header, I want to know what you do. We do industrial recycling. And then I want to know the biggest problem that people have in recycling

that they're tired of. What is the problem that your customers are tired of? They're just sick of it. A lot of them are worried about getting ripped off. Because I would imagine if I'm sending you 2,000 tons of steel or whatever, I don't know the market well enough to know what's a good price and what's not a good price. That's correct. So if you can figure out a solution to that, transparency and prices, you want to do that too. I don't say you want to offer the best prices or something like that because you might not be able to.

But something that takes away that fear. And so we want to say industrial recycling, always transparent about prices, getting you the best money. you want to be the CarMax of industrial recyclers. The big fear at CarMax, here's what CarMax sells. Everybody thinks they sell cars. They don't sell cars. They sell the fact that you don't have to deal with a used car dealer. And that's why they're an $8.75 billion company.

Because they've taken the resistance out of the market. When people walk on a car lot, they don't want to deal with the used car dealer. So when I'm dealing with recycling, one, it's really intimidating. I feel out of control. I don't know what these prices should be. And you're going to take that away. You're going to say, you might even be really transparent about your market. Markovs. We're getting into a little bit of business strategy. But I would say enormous

opportunity here. And then what you really want to do is you want to send your sales rep out probably to talk to them, right? How many sales reps do you have? We have about five. Okay. So you want that sales rep in that office talking to that CEO probably or somebody in the C-suite. And so there's nothing here that tells me I can hire a sales rep. Right? I mean, there's nothing here. So contact us wouldn't be with that. It would be schedule on a point with a sales rep. Have a sales rep meet you today. then this is begging. So we've got the header.

We put what you do, what differentiates you, and what I want you to do is I want you to call one of my sales reps. That's what I want you to do. We're trying to get married here. So let's lock it down. Call one of my sales reps. And then this is begging for a lead generator. Ten ways people get ripped off in the recycling business.

Yeah. PDF, like what you'd recommend it over there? What was the title? Oh, you're going to do that? No, I'm just saying it, just doing a PDF. Just doing a PDF. Yep. And you can have somebody, basically, you can have even a copywriter from our organization.

If you go to Clarify Your Message.com, you can hire one of our certified marketing coaches or copyrighters. We take nothing from them. They're all independent, but we train them all. And they can sit down with you in about three hours, and they can get you one of those PDFs. I mean, they can get the text and then get it back to you. Then you give it away, and you get that email address. Again, you're in their phone.

You're in their phone. You're in their phone. It's branding. It takes the brain eight times to encounter the same information before they finally metabolize it. Once on your website, twice on your PDF, and then you start the email sequence. And when we get to eight, that's where you start seeing the phone ring. This is zero. It doesn't even count as the first touch, because you don't tell them what you do. You don't tell them what differentiates you, and you don't tell them that you want them to call. Again, it's a text

problem. Here's some things you're doing right. Very simple, not a whole lot of text. People don't read text. But again, you've confused me. Every time, I'm burning calories, figuring out that you're trying to sell a building. And then I'm burning calories, deconstructing that you're not selling a building and constructing my brain that you're a recycling company. We think they're looking at this and reading it. They're not. Images speak way louder than words.

So enormous opportunity for you to grow and increase in business. And let's get the phones of those sales reps. Let's get them busy 40 hours a week, always meeting with people. Sounds great. Yep. And then we could actually go into that meeting with the sales rep. We could do the exact same thing. I can say, why are they saying that?

That's not how we open a conversation. Hey, the reason I'm here is because I've heard you have a problem, and it's this. Do you have any other problems in the recycling business? What's your biggest frustration? The first 10 minutes are mining for the problems. Okay, that problem, I don't know if I can solve that for you, but these three, you should not be experiencing that. That's not right. And I think those people are taking you for granted.

We can fix that. Excellent. And we're inviting them into a story. Sound good? Sounds great. All right. Hey, thanks a lot. This is fun, isn't it?

This is fun. I mean, hey, you all got some work to do when you go home and look at your websites. You know it's true. It's good stuff. Now, we're going to switch gears to something else that you detail out in the book. And this is, again, going to be an exercise. And we want you on Facebook to engage as well. Now, Don's going to walk you through this.

And then our audience is going to go through this as well. We're going to give you a little bit of thinking and writing time. And then again, we're going to have some more of our live audience members go through this with Don. So, Don, we're going to take them through this idea of a one-liner. Right. What do you mean by that, and how can we all create a one-liner? Well, a one-liner is one-liner that explains what you do or what you offer in such a way that you capture the most people's attention. And so it comes from the movie industry.

A one-liner is what describes a film. So when you say, Jason Bourne has forgotten who he really is, but he's, you know, it makes me go, ooh, I'd like to see that, right? I'd like to see that movie. Because all the suspense is in that one-line. Now, a one-liner, every screenwriter knows, if you create a good one-liner, for your screenplay, it's worth $50,000 to half a million dollars if you can sell that screenplay. And then it goes into your phone two years later and you're looking for a movie and you read that one sentence. That could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You've got to really nail it.

What we tend to do is when somebody asks what we do, we say, you know, my grandfather started the company, or worse, we say, well, it's kind of complicated. What do you say when you say it's complicated? You're saying you're going to have to do a lot of math in your head and it's probably not going to be worth your time. but here I go. Well, they're not going to stick with you, right? We want to say something that attracts them right away, that makes them interested in what we're offering. So I'm going to take you through an exercise. It's a three-part sentence, or it can be multiple sentences, but it's a one-liner. It's something you can say really quickly, and somebody says, what do you do? I want you to say

this, right? And it works like this. The first thing is we want to ask ourselves, most businesses struggle to talk about what they offer. We have a process that helps them clarify their message so the companies get growing again. we want to do in our one-liner, there's three parts. It's identify your customer's problem. This is the first part of your one-liner. You're going to open with the problem. When I walk on stage and give a speech, I don't say, my name is Donald Miller, and I've been living here in Nashville a long time, and I'm married to a wonderful woman named Betsy, and we have a chocolate lab named Lucy, and we have a dog named Jude Carter. And I'm very glad to be with you today. Why? It doesn't

start a story. I walk to the center of the stage, and I say, we have a serious problem. We're wasting money on marketing. And you have no idea who I am. And I don't care if you don't know who I am, because it's not about me. It's about you. Right? I open up with your problem. That's what starts a story. A story is a character that has a problem. And the sooner you can get to the problem, the sooner you can get to the hook. And now they're interested. You see? You know, if I'm selling a product, then I want to start with that problem because it makes the product valuable. So you want to identify your problem. So what is your customer's problem?

And you want to say, most people struggle with, or do you know how a lot of people feel about this, or a lot of people are afraid to go to the dentist because they're afraid it's going to hurt really bad? So when you say, hey, what do you do for a living? You say, well, you know how a lot of people hate going to the dentist because they're afraid is going to hurt really bad? We actually have all the modern technology. You don't feel a thing.

Most people, because of the laughing gas we use, they actually love going to the dentist. They come even when they don't have a toothache. You're right? So you want to identify your customer's problem. Second, you want to explain your plan to help them. Now this is where you can mention your product, how your product differentiates in the market. But basically, you know, you want to explain, here's what we do that solves the problem. So it's the problem. And then what I do that solves the problem. And then finally, third, the successful ending to their story. Most people struggle with this, but we created this thing so they don't have to struggle anymore. and they actually enjoy life, and it looks like this for them. What is that? It's the summary of a story. But it's a summary of a story that you're inviting them into. So those are the three parts of your one-liner.

Now, here's our one-liner. Most businesses struggle to talk about what they offer. We have a process that helps them clarify their message, so their company starts growing again. That's my one-liner. And I memorized this, and when the Uber driver says, what do you do? I say that.

and inevitably they're handing me their business card or they go to their website they buy one of my products because they I just opened a story loop in their brain that they want to close I walk them down a path that they now want to walk themselves and that's the essence of a one-liner what's your customer's problem a couple things you want to be specific don't be vague you know a lot of people don't enjoy their lives okay well that's I don't know you know that's a little bit too vague also make sure it's a pain point They need to feel this problem. What you're looking for is for them to say, that's me. That's me.

I have that. Right? That's my problem. You're looking for them to identify themselves in the problem. Third, get it down to a sound bite. This is short. Again, you're going to have to work on this a little bit, but it's worth the work, I promise. Make it super, super brief.

Let's look at a pet store. Pet owners are concerned about what their pets are really eating. Well, I wasn't until you said that. So I just agitated a problem. Here's a financial advisor. Most people can't get their heads around their financial future. How many of you feel that way? You're a business.

It's like, yeah, I actually can't get my head around my financial future. I don't know if I'm rich or poor. I think I'm rich, but I don't know. Yeah. Use car sales. Hey, you know how nobody likes to haggle with a used car salesman? Can you imagine if somebody said that to you and they're a used car salesman at a cocktail party? You'd be like, I'm buying my next car from this guy.

He gets it. He understands my pain. All right. Next is the plan, the part two, you want to make it feel like a new idea. I've never heard that before. It's a differentiator. Well, that's interesting. I didn't know you could go to a use car dealer without haggling. So it's a differentiator. Make it understandable. Make sure it's not so elusive they can't understand it and make it brief. Let's look at the pet store. Pet owners are concerned about what their pets are really eating. Here's the second part. So we source our food from trusted local vendors, right? And so now you're going, I've never heard of a, I don't know what my dog is

eating is probably not healthy, but you're making sure it is. Financial advisor. Most people can't get their heads around their financial future. So we created a financial map that puts all your info on a weekly dashboard. That's the differentiator. That's the resolution to my problem. Lastly, use cars, nobody likes to haggle with a used car salesman, so we remove the salesman entirely. You can choose and test drive a car hassle free. By the way, people are making billions of dollars with that exact business plan. They removed the resistance from the actual process.

And third, you describe a happy ending to their story. Make it the controlling idea of your business. That means all your employees are trying to get people to this thing. You would think that StoryBrand was in the business of clarifying your message. That's just our product. That's not what we're in the business of. We're in the business of increasing your revenue. We have a whole Slack channel that's just dedicated to.

I doubled my sales. This person wrote in, they're seeing huge increases, blah, blah, blah. and that's the motivator for our entire company. We've got to get these people money. That's the controlling idea is the resolution, the happy ending to their story is the business you're really in. Not the selling product. It's the happy ending that you're in the business in.

Make it something they actually want, so they don't go, that sounds interesting, but I don't know if I want that. Right? So I wouldn't say, so you can have a ton of flowers at your event. That's not the controlling idea, so that everybody will think that you gave the best event of the year. That's the happy ending, right?

And the flowers are just the product that gets me the happy ending, but I'm actually the person who sells the happy ending. Okay, so let's look at them all together. Pet owners are concerned about what their pets are really eating, so we source our food from trusted local vendors, which ensures your pet stays happy and healthy. There it is. Three statements, one, one liner. Most people can't get their heads around their financial futures, so we created a financial map that puts all your info on a weekly dashboard, giving you peace of mind about your finances.

That's the result. Use car sales. Nobody likes to hagg it with the car salesman, so we remove the salesman entirely. You can choose and test drive a car hassle-free, so you have a peaceful experience getting the car that you want. That's what a one-liner is. Now, what do we do with our one-liners? We have to repeat the one-liner hundreds of times before the masses will actually hear it. That means you use the exact same language over and over.

I want you to do a lot with this one-liner. I want you to memorize it and be able to repeat it over and over. That means you're going to write it and you're going to put it on an index card and you'll put it in your pocket and you'll carry it with you for months. And when you're at the grocery store, you're going to pull out and you're going to read it. It's going to be really unnatural for you to break the habit of rambling when somebody asks what you do. But it's an important habit to break. So you want to memorize it, okay? And then you want to teach it to your entire team.

When you teach the one-liner to your entire team, you convert everybody on your team into a sales force. Everybody. You sit next to somebody at a baseball game and say, what do you do? Who do you work for? They're going to repeat the one-liner. So the way you do that is you go down to the bank and you get a giant wad of $5 bills. You put a rubber band around it. Make sure it's like a mobster role. They're going to walk around the office. First of all, you're going to have a big day. We say, hey, we're all going to repeat the one-liner because people ask us what we do, and nobody knows how to answer.

Are you guys frustrated by that? So we're just going to write it up here. We're going to create a sentence. We're all going to memorize it. And what I'm going to do is over the next six months, I'm going to walk around with this giant wad of five. dollar bills. And if I say, hey, what do we do? And you repeat this sentence, I'm going to give you a $5 bill, right? Now, what you just did is you gamified some discipline of actually memorizing this thing, because your team's not going to want to do it. And you made it positive. And once you're done with that $500, let's say you spent, you know, $250. It's the best $250 you ever spent.

Because now everybody knows, you know, and it took me months, and I started hearing it on the phones around the office. I'm like, they're saying it. They're saying it, right? And you just converted everybody into a sales team. It's free. You just converted everybody into a sales team for free. You didn't even hire a salesperson. Open your keynotes with this statement. If you're giving a keynote, you want to say, hey, most people struggle with this.

We have a product as this. Makes their life look like this. All right. Let's talk about what we really want. And then you open and you close. And you use it on as much marketing collateral as possible. Parts of your one-liner could be in your header, but it's probably too long at the top of your website. But there is a part of a website.

I get into the parts of a website that need to be on your website in my book. There's a whole chapter on it. One of the parts is an explanatory paragraph. It's where you get your search engine optimization. Usually slid down pretty far on the website. The first sentence of your explanatory series of paragraphs will be your one-liner. This is how you're going to brand your company. And you're going to use the exact same language over and over because you're branding into the mind of the subconscious of your customer.

Anybody here ever branded a cow? A few of you? Yeah, I have a buddy. We branded his cows one time. You lay across the back of his calf. You take that brand. You punch the back of that cow. It doesn't actually feel it as bad as you thought.

It just kind of goes, what are you doing? You do that. It smells a little like hamburger. But what if you took a different brand, you put it over the top of that brand. And you took a different rancher's brand, you put it over the top of that brand. You took a different rancher's brand. You put it over top of that brand. Anybody know whose cow that is after a little while?

It's exactly what your salespeople are doing to your company. We're talking about it $25. different ways. Same language, same words, over and over. It's going to be your competitive advantage in the marketplace. All right. Do we want to have some time and create some one-liners? All right. Will you tell me your name? Nicole. Nicole, welcome. Give me your one-liner. Many parents are concerned about their child's ability to communicate. We provide an individualized speech therapy approach to give your child a voice that lasts forever. That's really wonderful. Really wonderful. Okay, here's one thing I'll say, Nicole, part one and part two were fantastic.

Part three was good, but not fantastic. And here's why. You said, a voice that will last forever. That's a beautiful piece of poetry, but it's very hard for me to figure out what the benefit is to me. So you'd say, so they can communicate clearly and move ahead in life with ease. You see what I'm saying? And I love the beauty of the poetry. That's nice.

But if you say what I really want is for my child to be able to communicate clearly and move through life with ease and succeed. right so that I want that more than find their voice or so that's a little bit poetic but other than that I think it's fantastic excellent first first go okay next I'm Robin from Best from the Nest and many product based businesses are really frustrated with selling their products on Amazon we show them how to tame the Amazon marketplace so they can be more profitable and grow faster okay I love I love everything I love part two and I love part three you just did a little repetition on part one many products based businesses. As soon as you said products based businesses, my mind spun out. Okay. Because I was wondering what's a product based business and what's the difference between that and a normal business. But then when you said many people sell stuff on Amazon, but they don't know how to do it really well. They're losing a lot of money. Then I was like, oh, got it. So just take away the part where I got lost in the first. Just take away almost the first few

words and go straight to the many people try to sell their products on Amazon. And that's it. Everything else is fantastic. Thank you. Awesome. Yep. Next. Hey there, I'm Brian. Ours is, most people think heart failure and pets can't be treated. We fight to keep families together with expert care. Most people think what?

Pets with heart failure can't be treated. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. And then we do what? We fight to keep families together with expert care. Okay, I'm not sure how pet heart failure... I'm a veterinary cardiologist. Gotcha.

But the result, I wouldn't think if you're... Most people think pets... heart failure can't be treated. So I'm looking for a result for the pet. So you connecting my pet's heart problem with my family splitting up, I think it's too big of a gap. Too big of a bridge. So let's go, most people don't think a pet's heart failure can be treated. It's actually quite simple with a few process. And a pet can live just, your pet can live just as long as any other pet of their type or breed. Make sense? Yes, definitely. So just be a little bit more specific with it. I think you went to a feeling result, and I would normally recommend that, but the feeling result really was more therapy, family counseling than veterinary and cardiology.

Okay. Got it? Yep. Okay. Great. Hi. Hi. Hi.

Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Okay. Mine is, people are tired of taking pills, so we offer medical massage therapies for the relief of chronic pain.

We help people have less pain, more movement, and a better life. Done. I wish I could critique you, but I can't. That's fantastic. People are unaware or fearful of cyber predators. We offer free cybersecurity training and will come to your house to help you implement cybersecurity so that you can protect your family and use the Internet with confidence and vigilance. I really like it. It's fantastic. There's one thing I want you to hone in on. what kind of cyber predator? Like what, I want you to get to what the, because you said cyber predator,

and there's so much like they can take my credit card number, I'm sorry, my debit card number, they can take, hey, I live by it. I'm not, that's not a joke. My wife and I both. So, so, you know, they can take that information. They can, you know, try to meet my kids at the corner, you know, or something like that.

I want you to get a little bit more specific about, what a cyber predator can do to my house, because I was a little confused between home security and cyber predator. Other than that, I think you dialed it in. So I would just work on that little part, right? And you might not even say cyber predator. You might say, you know, there's all sorts of problems of this. You're stealing identity theft or whatever it is.

Get right to a specific. And then it's got to be fascinating because you're coming to somebody's home and helping them figure it out. Now I'm just curious. I mean, what sort of cyber predator are you talking about? Both. So I'm former law enforcement. I used to work child exploitation crimes,

but I've also worked cybersecurity, cyber incident response, malware. All that kind of stuff. So I do all of it. Yeah, these days people don't break into your house. They break into your computers, which means they can get to your kids, they can get to your cards,

see how I just did it that fast? Yeah, I made it really understandable. It's called the same but different. The same as a home crime, but it's on your computer, and it allows people to fill in categories lightning fast. Great stuff, but let's finalize that first part, and then we're golden. Thank you.

Wonderful. The medical device industry unemployment is under 3%. And my company, Legacy MedCurge, hires rock stars so our clients can help more patients and make more money. Okay. I think I like two and three, but I didn't understand the problem. The medical industry's unemployment rate... Unemployment's under 3% in my session.

Which means it's hard to find good... Absolutely. That's the problem. In the medical industry, it's hard to find really good people. Everybody already has a job. There it is. Keep one and replace number one with what I just said, and then keep two and three. One thing that you guys can do, practice on each other.

And here's a great thing. Practice with strangers at a Starbucks. I'm saying, hey, I'm working on a sentence explaining what I do. Can I just tell it to you and you tell me back what you think I do? And you just have to do that in order to get the real reaction from people who don't know what you do. And you get that one liner down. You get your entire team memorizing it. You put it on your website, put it on the back of your business card,

make it the bio on your Twitter, make it the bio on your Instagram, and make it every single employee's email signature with a link to the website. You also want to add on those methods a call to action. Buy it from us today. Schedule an appointment today. Do all of that, and you should see a good return. Thank you so much, Kim. Yes, absolutely.

And before we let him go, speaking of a call to action, we want you to get the first three chapters of this book, absolutely free. Now we want you to buy the book as well, but the first three chapters, free. For those of you watching right now, all you got to do is text story brand to 3344. That's 33444. Story brand, no spaces, and you get the first three chapters. Great stuff. This book is going to change so many businesses. Big thank you to our amazing live studio audience and, of course, a big thank you to Donald Miller. Appreciate you, buddy. Thank you.

All right, folks, you just got a masterclass in branding. Okay, I hope you understand that. It's that profound. Now, here's the cool thing. We filmed that entire session for Facebook Live. We were broadcasting live. And so if you want to see Don walk through these websites, you can do that. Go to our YouTube page.

YouTube.com slash entreleadership. YouTube.com slash Entree leadership. Because if you listen to that and you're going, okay, I picked up some of that. But he literally, you see the website. You can see how it comes alive. and you can literally put that lens over your website. As I said, you'd be silly, and you people aren't silly. So don't be silly.

Go to YouTube.com slash entre leadership. Okay, rolling right along. Now we're going to take you into a panel that I facilitated. Sarah Sloan, who is our vice president of Entree Leadership, Jason Blake, who leads our real estate endorsed local provider program, and Luke Lefevre, who is our senior creative director, because we don't farm out much design or marketing or anything at all. We do it in-house, and Luke is one of our top leaders.

And so this is on the topic of goal setting. All right, so we're going to open up for questions. So if you've got a question, get those hands up. We'll start right down front. I inherited a team. And the unit that I inherited has a very strong. They function almost like a factory, like a machine. and the needs of our clients have drastically changed over time.

I need to disrupt the machine and reset the priorities. And do you have any advice for implementing that kind of change? I would start with a lot of questions on your end on like, what's caused you to believe that there's been changed? And I would start to build a vision around why you're trying to take the team a different direction. I would walk right back through what David talked about. If you don't start with that vision casting for the team, What I found myself, just two weeks ago, this happened to me, where I was executing on a project.

And I said, we need to get this project done. We need to get this project done. We need to get this project done. And it wasn't moving along. The team had no idea why we were doing the project. And so it took me stepping back to tell them the reason we're doing this project is because we're missing something over here. And it's going to cause us to move in that direction. And so I'd love to get to know more about a little bit about what the problem is and why you feel like it's been disrupted so that we can develop some vision casting on your end. And I would start there. Most of the time to get somebody to change, it's an emotional problem and it's not a tactical problem. It's not a numbers thing. It's an emotional thing. And so being really good with empathy in that situation is going to be key to your success, understanding where they've come from and the system they're rooted in. So trust is a big piece of what you're getting ready to go through is do they trust you to lead them to where you think that they need to go? Chris Hogan, if he hasn't already said this, says everyone, they don't like change, but everyone likes improvement.

And so I think that's exactly what Jason's kind of hitting on is, what is the why driving, why you're wanting to make this disruption? Let's get everyone on board to feel that pain point. And then you have to make the vision exciting. Paint the picture of where you're going. And I think you hit the nail right on the head. So is it high detail people probably a lot of the time? Yeah.

So you come in, I'm like this. So I'm on the creative team and I'm like, we should go here and we should do this. And then I have high detail people that are like, but what about this and what about this and what about this and what about this? And then did you think of this? And I'm like, no, we just got a there is where we're going. So what I would say is if you have a lot of high detail people, I would, so what I do in that situation is I start taking them out to lunch, I just start meeting with them. What do they see that we should be doing better? How do you say, what are we doing wrong? And you just have them voice their opinions and I keep track of it.

And even sometimes I'll get the whole group, all five of them in a room, be like, hey, I know I don't know all the answers, tell me what we can do better. And you let them voice it because then they are allowed to weigh in. And then you're like, all right, I heard what everybody said. So here's what I think we should do. What do you think about this? And even if they totally disagree and you still go in that direction, at least they've had a point to voice their opinions. Because I see a lot of you shaking your heads. And a big part of this disruption question, if you're a leader is you're going to have to cast vision as a part of the disruption. You can't just disrupt, right? Or there's a disconnect. So there's a great book called Visioneering. Okay. It's written.

by Andy Stanley, okay? And I'm just going to tease you because there's three key things that you've got to do. Okay. You have to define the problem. Super clear. Then you have to tell them what the solution is, but that's not enough. This is the power. The third part is tell them the reason for the solution, right?

Define the problem. Define the solution. Express the reason for the solution. It's simple stuff, but that's where leaders disconnect with the team. Because a lot of times when you explain the reason for the solution, now there's the opportunity for buy-in. But if you don't give them the reason for the solution, they're questioning the solution. It's a one, two, three punch. It's a great book.

I'm telling you, go buy that book. You've got to get that part of visionary down. Okay. My name is Eric. I work at a church in Bakershield, California. So my question is with goals, I feel like the hardest. thing in the world is to set goals in a church world because you're dealing with people, not money. And sometimes if you hit your goal, that's not necessarily because you did something right.

And if you lose people, that's not necessarily because you did something wrong. You're all smiling, but no one's saying anything. I just thinking about leadership in the church, it's tough. It's tough. So is there a question there, or is that just a statement? No, that's a question. If you guys have ever come across that or you had good, measurements because it seems like, oh, we want to grow up by 10%, but like that seems very arbitrary. You know, how do you measure that? And then we look at job descriptions. Your small groups pastor

adds 10 small groups, but the goal is 15 to see a failure and gets a write-up. You know what I mean? Like, how do you really, that you, but that comes to the point. If you're going to grow your staff, you need to have goals that are supposed to hit, but how do you know you're being reasonable and, you know, and are you firing people over these things? You know what I mean? Like becomes very, but then it's like, do we do nothing? It's like, oh, I think. Everyone's doing a good job because the question is I want to set goals, but I don't want to feel mechanical. Yeah. Is that the right?

Yeah, and you don't, and not everything's tangible necessarily. I just started going about a year ago to really tiny church. And I think there's like 75 people. And I can tell the pastor feels that same way. He wants perfection in the service, but then he won't go correct when something's wrong because he doesn't want to offend the volunteers. It's kind of that sort of thing. what I've walked through with him just over this last year as we've got to know each other is I'm just trying to even define kind of like what we were talking about over here what the areas are and it's you probably in a bigger church than this one but what those different areas are and let's focus in on the small group pastor so I have a pastor and then he has a small group guy who's over the small groups well the small group guy's like I really want it to be I want everybody to do better this year you know like it's that kind of thing and I'm like

okay, well, what does that mean? And he started talking, and it really came down to, I want the groups to be healthy. Okay, so he, as the leader of that, defined the vision for it, and I just captured it. I just started capturing what he was saying. Well, what does it mean to be healthy? Well, I want there to be a good vulnerability level at the small group. And I want there to always be an open chair at the small group for someone new. And I want, and he basically listed five things. And so we just wrote those down. Then he, wrote it up in a little email and said, hey guys, our goal for this year, and he sent it to the small group leaders who are volunteers. And he said, our goal for this year is to be, have all our groups be really healthy groups.

And these are the five things we're going to look at. And every time we go for coffee, I'm just going to ask you how you're doing in each of these areas. And it just set the expectation early, and it wasn't like you're fired as a small group leader, unless there's, you know, if there's a serious behavioral issue or something, but at least the expectation was set.

And so those five things, he's even texting me. I'm like, I helped you think of those things. And he's like, hey, how's the small group going? And he's asking me these questions. And I'm like, but he's doing it. He's holding us accountable to the goals that we set ourselves. And it doesn't feel mechanical.

It just feels like we all talked it through and we set the expectation early. So hopefully that helps. I don't know. I would add on that, again, I think people like being held to a standard and they like the clarity on what success looks like. Most people want to do what you want them to do. They just lack the clarity on what that means. And so with that ambiguity, they're not necessarily succeeding.

You're frustrated. They're frustrated. You guys have never even talked about what that clarity looks like and what that Y is. And it ends up emotions getting the way of you guys succeeding as a team and helping more people. And so I think just that clarity, like what Luke just walked you through is like, have you guys done that exercise as a leadership group on what success is? Even if it's not tangible, like sell X number more widgets. It's let's be friendlier to each other.

and you've defined what that means to be friendlier. We smile more often. And so do I get you smiling today? Like that's a pretty simple thing to say yes or no. No, your face looked like your dog died last night. Like that's just kind of how it is. One of the things that we need to start focusing on with goal setting is leading indicators. A lot of times we look at the end result and we focus so hard on that that we forget

what are the behaviors that happen back here that really create that end result that we're looking for. and I think that if you take some of the stuff that Jason and Luke just mentioned, and you start thinking about what are the things that really are going to make a difference back here? So we were trying a new church and there were these amazing greeters. And I was like, wow, this is so great. Like I walk in and they point me in where I'm going and they welcome me. And the way they acted, it was like everybody was new because they were so friendly

and wanting to make sure that everyone was getting to where they were going. So that you can absolutely set goals around leading indicators that are intangible, that you know make a difference because you see the increases that you're looking for happening based on dialing those levers. Does that make sense? People want to be measured. Even if they act like they don't want to be measured, there's something else going on behind the person who doesn't want to be measured. And you get them healthy, then they want to be measured. And I'm telling you, scoreboards really work. They really work. They want to know if they're winning, right? I mean, everyone wants to win.

That's why kids hate it when everybody gets a trophy. Or you don't keep score. What's up with that? No, I'm serious. I started coaching five-year-olds in college and they told me at the Y-MC and listen, they told all this college kids, we're not keeping score. I would huddle my little five-year-olds during halftime. I'd go, now listen, guys, we're down three-zero.

I would whisper it to them. I wasn't trying to be a rebel, but for crying out loud, they know what the score is. Yeah. And I would say that if you don't know what winning looks like, spend some time writing it out. Like I had some new leaders coming on and I was like, well, you just got to do the thing like I do it. And then I'd spend two years being annoyed that they weren't doing it like I did it. So I just spent some time and I wrote like three pages of things. You're responsible for this.

This is how I do it. This is how I think you should act. This is how I think you should be. And now when I get a new person on, I just walk them through this expectation thing. So just spending the time writing down what my expectation actually was was helpful. Leaders, listen, if you're not keeping score, you're the only. everyone. Everybody else is keeping score. So you might as well do it. All right. That's why he has the podcast. No, no, it's just a thought. It's true. It's true. Thank you. It's very nice.

Ladies and gentlemen, a big hand for Luke, Jason and Sarah. Appreciate you all. Up next, we're going to give you some real stories from our attendees. You're going to hear from Zan and Bill Sponseller momentarily and a little bit later, Victoria Clausen, an amazing story. I love this. Will the engineer got in the studio with this husband and wife team. Bill and Zan Sponseller, and the story is a real story of some gossip that they had to overcome. Listen to their story. I'm Bill Sponcellar. And I'm Zan Sponseller. And we own the Scon Group, electrical contracting company in Bay City, Michigan. We earlier this year had to make a really, really tough decision. We had to let someone go from a, company who was a big part of the company. It was a really, really difficult thing to do.

But we recognized that through this, there had just been a real issue with gossip to the point that it was hard to go to work every day. It was really challenging. The atmosphere was heavy, and you could tell that people were struggling. We just knew we had to do something about it. Our choice at the time then was to take what we felt was the source and to to release her. As Zan said, we struggled with that decision just because we knew that it was going to leave a hole.

She handled a lot of the finances. It actually felt a little crippling. She was for a lot of part of this beloved member of our team and probably even felt a little betrayal from this because we really brought her in, made her such a part. And so that was, you know, part of it as well is the betrayal that we felt in how she was handling. situations, sharing information that wasn't hers to share, that was very, very difficult. That started to become an issue, a big issue. So it really put us in a bind. We had to make this decision. We weren't sure that we were going to come out on top with either decision. Felt that there was going to be a potential loss, but we felt after some time and a lot of prayer that that was

the right decision to make. Personality-wise, she made people laugh. People enjoyed, you know, at times being around her. And so our fear was, was people going to be frustrated or mad, you know, that we let her go. So, I mean, that was another part of the struggle with, you know, with the rest of the team. What's the rest of the team? How are they going to react to this move? After we let her go, immediately we got some feedback. But from one individual particular, they had known each other for a very long time, had been together and worked together. other. He was fairly protective. And we thought, oh, man, this is the next one. This is where it's going to come down. He called within a few minutes. She had called him. You know, he wasn't at work.

And literally my cell phone was ringing within less than 10 minutes of her walking out the door. And his response was, go ahead. He talked to you. He just said, good move. It is something that needed to happen. Good job. You know. It was a tough decision. It was a decision that need to be made, and you guys, that's going to make a difference for you guys as leaders because you took that step. It was huge. It was huge. We immediately pulled together the rest of our admin team and talked to them about their concerns and told them we kind of had a map.

But we wanted their feedback on what that map looked like. So we all sat down together and we divided up responsibilities. And we talked about what their thoughts were, what their feelings were, what their concerns and what they were. scared about. We assured them that no matter what, we were going to do this together as a team we're going to pull this off. Immediately, we felt that relief of the change, and we started to decide how we were going to handle that position, whether we're going to fill it or not. It became pretty clear, pretty quickly that this had been a position not necessarily being utilized to its fullest time frame. And so we at this point have decided not to fill it, but in that change,

brought about other changes and how we handled the business and how we looked at it. We knew there were some changes that we needed to make. We just weren't exactly sure how to do it. Our son had been introducing us trying really hard. You've got to listen to this. You've got to listen to this obviously wanting to, but we had just been through this huge change and unsure how to do this entree leadership thing. We weren't familiar with it, but he had been listening to the podcast.

And he's like, you have to listen to this. You have to listen to it. And so he called in actually and talked to one of the representatives and set up a time on the phone for us and everything. And it was at that point that we decided we needed to do something more that this is where we could get some answers and direction. We need more structure. We need more understanding of how to create that structure in this beast that was moving and so hungry. And we were trying to feed it, you know, but we couldn't do it by ourselves. We needed our team.

We have a fantastic team. Our team really cares. And we knew that they needed the leadership there to really rally, you know, this group and really bring them together. And that was a driving force that Zan was seeing. And I think one of the first things that she said, you know, needs to end immediately is the gossip. It just drives morale, everything out of the business. And so that was one of the first things that Zan just said, done. It is done in this business.

It will not happen. It was a cloud lifted off the business. And the morale turned around immediately. And that's when people kind of came forward. And, you know, I think like say, recognized the leadership and we're very happy, you know, that we made that. Yeah. So for all of you business leaders who thought you couldn't do it or you're afraid. of what might happen or you're afraid of what you can do to help make up the difference or not

sure that you can make up the difference. Seriously, we thought, how can we find another minute in the day to do somebody else's job? And we really, really stressed over that, but it was worth it and we can do it. The weight and the cloud that has cleared, the team members that stepped up, it's huge. It's just huge. It just, it's worth it. It was worth doing it. It was scary. It was hard. It was painful. And yet...

We never missed a beat. We picked up the ball and we ran with it. And really, team members all joined in. You know, we made the list of things that needed to be done, things that she was, this individual was doing, made the list and everybody picked up the ball and we're running it to the goal line. It's doable. We have never missed a beat from that decision.

Really came down to being transparent. This is where we're at. This is what we've done. Here we're moving forward. This is what we're going to do. And we spelled it out as clear as possible as we understood at the time. And it happened. And you're right.

We never missed a beat. And it was worth doing to get control, to own our business. We now have control. Probably another big part of it is we know we can do it. No matter what, no matter who's on the team. If they're gone, we know we can pick it up. We know we can do it. I'll never make that compromise again.

Never. Hey folks, gossip is real. And whatever you're facing, whether it's gossip or not, it's real. And you've got to get over it. You got to get through it. You got to make it disappear if you're going to win. I love, love, love that story. You know what?

And let me just say this. It takes courage to lead like Bill and Zan. Really a lot of courage. And you need courage. And so we share stories like this because if nothing else, we want you to take courage from their example. All right, folks, next we're going to go to Armando Lopez. I mentioned him at the top of the show, and Armando is our head honcho of HR, been in HR for a long, long time, leading the operation for us. This is one of those popular panels we do.

In fact, it's so popular, it's just Armando and me. I basically sit up there and sip coffee and listen to the questions. And so here is our live Q&A from Entree Leadership Master Series for Armando Lopez. on HR. To start, just give them a quick background. Before you came to us, what were you doing? You've been in HR a long time and then talk about your role now. Good.

So I've been in HR for, gosh, half my life, so about 25 years. And if you do the math, you know, that works out pretty close. And so I've been with Dave Ramsey for about three years. And prior to being here, it was what Dave likes to refer as corporate, but mostly in the hospitality world. But 34,000 team members across 41 states, 60,000 team members with Cracker Barrel when I left across 50 states. We weren't in California yet.

So anyway, I've been here for about three years. Tell people what you're focusing on now. Focusing on processes, focusing on implementing processes for hiring, processes for human resource information systems, so the HRIS portion of it. Rick Perry, my counterpart, the very first HR guy that Dave hired, is still with us, and I'm blessed to have them. And Rick is focusing on culture. So we're both executive directors of HR.

He's got a culture bend. That's really what he helped do and implement with this organization. And I've come in on the process side to help move it forward. Hello, I'm Tammy Castro, and we have a consulting company, so our employees are across the U.S. So one of the things I'm trying to apply through everything I'm learning here is how to do things virtually, how to apply some of this through a virtual environment that we live in. So I have two-prong question. The first one is related to culture when you're hiring somebody who's been in corporate America for over 20 years, let's say. And tips on, you know, really, are they going to be able to adjust to this small, intimate,

boutique type of culture we have when they're coming from Deep Pocket America. And then the second question is, how can we apply or do you have tips on how to really promote culture in a very virtual environment that we have? I hope the answer to that is yes, and I would like to believe that I'm proof of that, right? So I came from large corporate America into a much smaller environment, right? to 34,000 team members was my last organization into a company of, at that time, 385 people. So there are people in corporate America

that don't like corporate America. So it's not the fact that they're coming from there. It's who they are, what their values are. It's pointing out the differences between where they're coming from and where you want them to be. And that's a long interview process. Everybody's interview process here is long,

but it's really trying to get to the values, the heart of what they believe. It's questions like if you could change one thing. If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about your current company, what would that be? And then listening to that reply, because if it lines up with who you are, you're already that much closer to that.

The second piece is much harder. So creating a team environment, a culture, a winning culture, with a group of field-based, is much harder to do because you're not right next to each other. And so weekly conference calls, the ribbing that goes on with those, Google Hangouts is a virtual way of connecting and still being able to see each other live, seeing the faces, sharing success stories across everyone in those kind of conversations and settings so that they can feel that they're a part of that they win together and then sharing the problems as well, right? That's the culture you want, the transparency of what's really going on shared openly with the team, regardless if they're far away or they're sitting right now. to you. But it is a harder thing to do, and it's something that Dave told me, he was very clear

to say this before I ever said yes to the position, that is that we will never have remote workers here because it is that difficult, because it will never be that true shoulder-shoulder relationship that you develop when someone walks down the hall and you get to see that they're having a bad day because they just don't look themselves and you can address that right away. You don't have that in a virtual world. It's just not possible. But you can still have a phenomenal culture by doing some of those other things. I saw on one of your slides where you guys have like a warehouse where you had the people packing the books.

And is that what you guys have here or no? We have a mailroom where we pack books for small orders. We have a distribution center, CNI, that actually does large orders for us. That's within your complex here? That's a third-party company that's not on-premise. The mail room is on-premise for small orders. Okay. And those are like a separate group? No, they're team members. They work for us, yeah.

In fact, I think in Entree leadership, Dave talks about the understanding our mission statement, and he actually asked one of the mail clerks who gave him the best response, and therefore it's in the book, where he's not just packing a book, this is hope, the person on the other end of this book, the way the box is packed, the way the book is presented, that that is hope for the person on the other end. We don't know what situation they're faced with, and this could be their last ditch before they break a marriage,

before they file for bankruptcy, et cetera. So he talked about the care that goes into packing that box and putting it together. So that every level within the organization, no matter whether they're sweeping, yeah, because he mentioned something about somebody was belittling one of the people that were cleaning the offices, right? Exactly, yeah.

Okay. So they're all team members. They all went through the same interview process. They're all just as important as... They're all equally as important. Yeah. Right? That's right.

That's cool. Yeah, okay. Thank you. I don't know many HR guys that are as fun as Armando Lopez is, and he really is an absolute pro. We love him. Give him some big love. Thank you for being with us. Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Really good stuff there. I'm going to make this up. I haven't run this by Eric, the producer, but I'm sure he's going to be fine with it. If you have some HR questions, email us. Podcast at Entreeleadership.com. Podcast at Entreeleadership.com.

Because here's the deal. I'll just find Armando in the hallway, and I'll drag him in the studio. and he'll answer your questions. So we're here for you, and it occurs to me that you have some HR questions, and you don't have Armando in your office.

Great news. You've got me, and I look out for you, people. You understand that? Don't forget that I'm looking out for you. So send your questions. Okay, right now, you've got an HR question. Send it in.

Podcast at ontraeleadership.com. I'll get Armando in here, and we'll answer them for you. How do you like that? All right, I'm getting thumbs up from Eric the producer, so I'm not in trouble, and that's good news. Moving on, folks, I've had the privilege to hear this story.

You heard from Victoria Clausen. Earlier on, she was one of our website, you know, what would you call them, Violentiers to get up there on stage, and she handled it well, and she really just have a great business. And so this is really, really good. We wanted to capture her story, and she shared some of it with us. You're going to love this. My name is Victoria Clausen.

I am coming from Baltimore, Maryland, and I own a floral design and event decor company. I came to America from Ukraine in 1997, in August of 1997, so I just celebrated my 20 anniversary here. Woo-hoo! I started in 1999, but it was very much as a hobby. It was kind of passion, and I started pushing it after I had my first child because I figured out that I just cannot do diapers 24-7.

I needed to do a little bit more. I needed to have a little bit more purpose. But still, for many years, it was very much, I was not allowed to make it further than the hobby. I had a situation, and this is not like putting myself on the pedestals or anything like that, but when I got my first job in a flower shop here in America, I started working and I was working there for like a couple weeks, and I started doing some flower design.

I never designed before, but apparently this was something that I found out about myself. The person that did the flower processing quit. And because it was the latest hire, the owner said, I want you to go and do processing until I find somebody. I said, okay, that's fair. I'm there a week. I'm there two weeks. I don't see any activity. No interviews, nothing. So I came to her and I said, listen, with all you respect, what's the timeline looks like? Because I'd really like to go back to designing. And she said, you know, I just thought about it. And I'm not planning to do that. I'm not planning to hire anybody. It's more comfortable for me to just keep you there. And I said, well, this is not what I want to do. I would say, I need to find another job. If you want, I can stay until the end of the

week until you look at somebody. And she said, no, you don't have to. You can live right now. And I said, okay. She said, I want you to understand something. you are nobody and you're never going to be anybody. You are an immigrant and I gave you a chance and you should be grateful for the opportunity you have and not be too ambitious. And I turn around and I quit and I remember walking home. I had to take a bus and the metro on the bus and I was crying. And I just could tell in myself, just watch me.

just watch me. And I remember like about five, six years after that, I was doing a bridal show, and I ran into her main designer who was doing the smallest room in the castle, and I was doing the largest room in the castle. And I came to him, and I just said, Hey, Ron, I'm Victoria.

Do you remember me? He's like, oh, yeah. He said, good seeing you. And I came home, and I was like, yes. To me, never give up means don't focus on your past. I believe it's the good to grade book that says use your failures as tuition for learning.

And I feel if you have the attitude of looking back at what you've done, how you failed, how you missed the point, you can use it two ways. You can let it get you discouraged or you can let it get you empowered. I feel like if we have that attitude, of looking back and say, okay, well, let's analyze, let's see how we can make lemonade out of lemons.

That's all we need to keep going, because nothing comes with manuals except for a hair dryer. And I think surrounding yourself with people who believe in you, I think that's powerful. Because I feel like being a business owner is an extremely lonely situation. Because you are with people 24-7, but a lot of times you cannot talk to them because they can't relate because they're on a totally different side of the street. They don't understand what keeps you up at night.

They don't understand what kind of dreams and hopes you have. They don't understand what's at stake. I have people accusing me that I care about my bottom line and that's it. And I'm thinking to myself, well, yes, because if my bottom line is not working, guess what? Your bottom line is not happening. I'm trying to think how to close the gap to provide this and this and this for people because I know that if they're going to be successful, they're going to be happy. So being with people who, yeah, being with people who've been there, it's extremely empowering.

I'm here because I want to take it from, look at everything from a different angle, and I want to grow myself as a business leader. It doesn't matter what business I'm in, because I want to make sure that I am having the right team that can help me go further with my crazy ideas. and dreams and that I can do something different where it will work for me, for my family, and for my team. Because I do have a lot of wonderful people on the team,

and I want to give them an opportunity because I feel that my success is 100% related to their success. So the biggest takeaway from here is communication. I am very high D. It's been discussed about it. I tend to be so business-focused that I just drive like a freight train without taking the time to communicate where I'm going and why I'm going. Because of business has such a seasonality to it right now in a really busy time,

and unfortunately, unfortunately, I guess, there's a lot of things happening in my life right now besides the business we're currently in, something that can set a foundation for the future. and I'm realizing that my team doesn't have any idea what I'm doing. They know that there's a lot of things at cooking, but they have no idea what's happening. And I feel like I owe to them to sit down with them. And I was just writing my two-minute takeaways,

and my agenda is to come and on Monday have a thank-you meeting to them. On the weekend, we have four events going on, thanking for being patient with me and communicate what's happening. being a business owner is like doing cliff jumping. Usually people, in order to get to a different level, they take a road up. I feel when you own the business, you have to jump off the cliff. And if you did your homework and you've surrounded yourself with right people, your wings will open up and you'll be able to fly to the new summit.

If you can't, you should be able to at least fall on somebody else's parachute, you know, people who are jumping with you, who are ready to take that next step with you. you need to define your definition of success because it looks very different for many people. Like in my industry, a lot of times people define success by how many events they do. That's how successful they are. For me, personally, the definition of success is, do I make enough to provide a living for me, my boys, while have a life? So finding that life work balance, to me, that's more of a definition of success.

and in terms of business growth and expansion, that's what driving me. It's not the amount of sales. It's about can I own the business versus being the business? And since business has my name, people come to me to do the job, to do their event, to do their flowers, to do their design, it is really, really hard sometimes to feel that pressure. So I love it, but I'm realizing that I need to have something that actually, is operational without me constantly being involved. So that's my next step. Well, big thanks to Victoria for sharing her heart. I mean, that's what it's about. People who care

deeply, not just about their business, not just about their team, but their customers, the work they do. Folks, I don't say this enough to you. But for those of you who need to hear this right now, and you will know who you are, you need to receive what I'm about to say. You do matter. Your company matters. Your product matters. Your service matters. It matters. And in the dog days that we all go through from time to time, we would all do well to listen to the why behind Victoria and remember our own why. Remember your why. And it's okay to share that and share some emotion from time to time because daggummin at some point you cared a lot. And if you have lost that spark, go back, take yourself back, or think about what really fires your soul up

and why you matter, why your service matters, why your product matters, why the people that you employ matter, why their kids matter, why their dreams matter, that'll get you out of a rut. And if that doesn't do it, go see a cardiologist. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that story. And, you know, we've taken you inside one of our events. It is the Entree Leadership Master's series, and I want to tell you, if you want to go deep, I mean deep, deep, deep into the Ramsey Solutions Playbook and walk out with not just a bunch of ideas and philosophies and principles, but actual practical ways to apply what you've learned because that's what this event focuses on.

The entire last day is all about practical application. So our spring 2018 event is coming to you February 18 through 22. February 18 through 22, 2018, here at our worldwide headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. And folks, this event goes fast. This event only available to 180 business owners, and it's already 75% sold out. So we're just letting you know if you want to jump in on this in February, you better move quick. So here's how you get your seat. Text, Master Series.

That's all one word. Just slam master and series together. Master Series, text that to 3-3-4-4. That's 3-3-44-4. Or we have the link for you in the show notes at entreleadership.com. Just click on podcast and go to this episode. Also want to give some love to InfusionSoft. Man, these folks, they just, they help power this broadcast.

They're a big partner in what we do. We use their services. They're huge. We love them. We don't apologize for that. And they're here to help you. Here's what they're doing. They're offering, I had to swallow.

A 30-minute call with Entree Leadership audience members. That's you, people. About your business. How many of you would love to get a straight-up, honest, experienced assessment of your business? You know why paused? Because it's all of you. Every one of you. Who's not going to take Infusion Soft up on this offer?

I mean, come on, folks. This is unbelievable. I love this. A 30-minute call. And so they've got their small business growth experts. They're going to do this with you. It's going to be a lot of fun. You're going to walk out with tremendous clarity.

Here's how you get this special offer. Go to infusionsoft.com slash custom growth plan. That's infusionsoft.com slash custom growth plan. Well, what an episode. Do yourself a favor. Rewind this one a few times, would you? Share it. Tell some people about it.

It's good stuff. So on behalf of Eric the producer, Will the Engineer and the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.