EntreLeadership - #290: Live From EntreLeadership Master Series 2018

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

We are so excited to share a highlight from this month’s EntreLeadership Master Series. Over 300 small-business owners and leaders from around country joined us in Nashville to spend four intense (but fun-filled!) days pouring into themselves and their business. Tune in to hear Dave Ramsey and Ramsey Solutions Senior Vice President Daniel Tardy answer attendees’ questions on everything from dealing with the emotional aftermath of firing a team member to working with millennials. It’s can’t-miss content, for sure. entreleadership.com/podcast EntreLeadership Master Series How to Identify Your Target Market from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It doesn't matter what your thing is, but keep it there. This is who we are. This is how we think. This place exists for those people that are not here. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of Leaders by Leaders for Leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. We are fresh off our full Entree Leadership Master's series. And we're going to bring you some content from EMS with our panel, myself, Dave Ramsey,

and our senior VP of business and leadership, Daniel Tarty. You've got the founder of all things, Entree Leadership, and the gatekeeper, the steward of the brand. So it's going to be great stuff as we take our attendees questions live from the audience. So let's get right to it. Here is our panel at Entree Leadership Master Series. Well, I want to say a big welcome to all of you who are joining us. You just heard a tremendous roar from over 300 of the just top-notch leaders in America. And we're thrilled that you are joining us and them.

And we're going to be taking their questions of the next 45 minutes that they have submitted. And so we're thrilled that you're here with us. And we want you to sit back and learn along with this room. So our first question comes in from Jeff. Jeff, where are you at? Stand up. Stand up and be noticed. How does he know which Jeff?

There he is. That's true. It's like, there's more than one Jeff. We don't have last name, so we're going to roll with it. Jeff's question, we are in the need to bring on a new team member due to demand. Do we spend time training a current team member that could step up to a new position or hire in someone that could take on the position right away? I got a call this summer from an entree leadership customer who's been friends for years.

And he said, hey, I'm looking to move on from our business. It's been great. But I can't imagine doing anything different with this next phase of my career other than join the entree leadership team because it's changed my life. It's changed my business. We've built our business on this playbook. We've been through on the personal side, financial peace university has changed our life. And I've been to spend a lot of time growing this thing and I'm excited about what we do. But it's not really changing anybody's life and I want to be a part of a mission like what you guys are doing.

Can we talk? What do you think I said? Yeah. No, we hate people. talk. And this person was talking, they had achieved an incredible milestone in their business. They'd been leading a team of 80 people. And so this is somebody that if they were going to join our team, they would be expecting to join in a leadership role. And so anytime we're bringing somebody into a leadership role, there's always like, oh, are they going to get us? Are they

going to get our culture? Is this going to be okay? Are they going to be like us? Huge amount of skill, huge amount of passion, huge amount of energy, huge amount of accomplished things in the marketplace that we could instantly quantum leap our skill set forward based on what this person knows. And we start talking, and we start having these discussions about what it could feel like for the existing team to bring in a leader from the outside.

And the interview process was very extensive. We spent a lot more time. We spent a lot more intentionality, really figuring out, is this going to work? It was not an entry-level position, and it was not a casual conversation. Dave was even involved in the interview process. So anytime you're talking about we have a leadership seat,

do we bring somebody up from the inside? My favorite thing to do is bring somebody from the inside who's on the way into that seat. In fact, they already have one foot in that seat, and they're doing half the things that you would expect somebody in that seat to do because they've got the culture fit, they know the why. You don't have all the ramp up for two years

that it takes just to figure out who are we and are we like each other and not kind of the corporate and whatever is going on from whatever they're bringing in within. that just takes a period of time. But I would say if you're not going to do that, figure out,

is it somebody like the guy that joined our team, Sean Devereaux, who's in the room, and go, do they love our mission? Yeah. The reason we were ready to say, he brings his own freaking fan club. Yeah, he brings, apparently has a fan.

The reason I can say confidently yes to Sean Devereaux instantly you can step into this role in a leadership position is because of his value system, his passion for our mission, and his enthusiasm about how it's changed our life. And so it wasn't just this, here's this guy from the corporate world

who has a skill set and a resume and a pedigree and look what he's accomplished, but he just wants a job. We really tap the brakes on that heart. In fact, we slam on the brakes. And if you're going to bring somebody into leadership role, you've got to go, do they love us? Do they love our mission?

Are they going to be one of us instantly? And as the team they're going to be responsible to lead instantly going to buy in and get excited, more excited about the fact that they're here instead of, oh my gosh, we got a new boss, and this is going to slow everything down. If I understood the question, right, it's do I bring in someone out from the outside who can fill the position now, or do I bring someone up from inside the organization, and I might have to train them? The problem is, from what Daniel's saying, whether it's a leadership role or whether it's not,

we don't bring in anyone who can really fill the position now. They might have the professional skill set, but they might have. might be culturally clueless. And we get more work done with our culture than we do with our professional skill sets. So your skill set makes you irrelevant in our organization unless you can culturally plug in. And so we really can't bring someone in from the outside, unless they like bathed in entree leadership for three years like Sean. But I mean, that's such a weird thing that doesn't happen. But I mean, most of the time we bring someone in from the outside, they know their stuff in the space they're in, but they're completely culturally clueless. And it

takes us a while to get corporate crap off of them and get them to act like a human inside our organization and actually function like we function. And that takes longer than training someone professionally, usually. Now, obviously, you can't move someone up who doesn't have skill sets and can't do stuff if you're doing programming. You can't put a programmer in that can't program. My God, you know, you've got to have some guidelines around this. You have to think about it.

But culture drives so much of what we do, our effectiveness, our productivity inside the organization, whether your internal effectiveness or your external effectiveness with us, your productivity with us. It's all based on that. And so we do some of both. We bring in someone from the outside, but they're really not that effective for a while because we have to get the corporate crap off of them. We have to get them plugged in. Or we bring somebody up, and they're not that effective for a while because they're still a little green. But when you say we're that way more now, but early on, it was all about attitude, culture, crusader.

I mean, it was less emphasis on. Yeah, I mean, there was a whole bunch of us that were really pretty stupid. just enthusiastic. But, you know, we just got it done in spite of the fact we didn't know anything, you know, it's easier to do it with smart people that are enthusiastic, you know? And so, you know, it's just, it's better. It's a better way of doing it. So we did. I mean, because we couldn't afford anybody that knew what they were doing. So, you know, we just hired people that are like, yeah, you know, okay, here we go. You know, and so you don't want to lose that part of it because being willing to charge the gates of hell with a water pistol is a prerequisite.

to doing what we do. I mean, that's how we are. There's enthusiasm and having a sense of calling, a sense of caring, a sense of ownership. It's a big deal. And it really does offset a ton of, quote, unquote, skill. And the problem is our culture is we've told everybody, if you get this degree, you're going to be successful. Well, bull. You and I know that degree is freaking worthless until you learn how to work and smile while you're at work.

And do these kinds of stuff. I mean, you don't know how to do relationships of a kindergartner, and yet you've got a professional degree. and can't figure out why you can't get ahead because you look like you were weaned on a pickle. You know. So, I mean, it's that kind of stuff, right? And so we have to work on that kind of stuff. And so we do both today.

We do. Now, before we will move you up into a role or into a lateral role, even across the company, we have a rule. We will take up to six months to hire your replacement first. So we don't steal you away from your team and leave a hole. because we had a lot of internal theft going on that way, and we were leaving all these holes around, and it got to where it was like VP on VP violence for a little while.

So we had to put, you know, okay, we're going to take up to six months. Now, after six months, if you still hadn't filled the roll, well, you're just going to have a problem because we're moving the guy, or gal. But that's how we do our internals. We do some of each, but in neither case do you get away with, oh, I've got this perfect person, and they just dropped into the slot. I almost never. David, Daniel, before we move on, I want you to address the other added benefit to training

that internal person who's bathed in the culture and is performing well in another role. And I've seen this. And I think that benefit is that it shows there's a ladder. And it really inspires great performance because somebody goes, wait a second, if I do a good job in the now, in my present, and I show myself worthy, I'm going to get an opportunity to grow here. And many times the opportunity to grow is the greatest. benefit you can offer a team. And I've seen that you've moved so many leaders up in just the time. It's authentic optics. I mean, when you move a guy out of shipping and he becomes one of your top sales guys, and then you bring him up on stage and you give him an award for sales and you

go, oh, by way, remember when Nate used to work in shipping, you know, and everybody's like, yeah, I can even come from shipping and go, you know, I can, or this guy used to be a computer programmer and he's doing this other thing now. And there's all these, you know, this lady was an intern and now she's on our operating board, Suzanne Sims, you know, and so started as an intern 20 years ago or so. And didn't even think she was going to make it at that. But turns out I was wrong. But yeah, but don't tell Suzanne she can't make it. But oh, Lord, a mercy. But the, you know, but that's what, the optics of that are real because it tells everybody sitting there watching and going, yeah, if I bust my butt, I do a good job. When something opens up,

they're going to notice, you know, I'm going to work while I'm at work. Hey, there's an idea, you know. Yes. All right. Good stuff. All right. Next question comes from Zach. Zach, I assume you know who you are. As you hear your question, then you can stand up. When do you say no to business growth opportunities? There he is in the back left. Not all money is good money. We all know that.

If the people you're dealing with are jerks, you don't want to do it, or crooks, you don't want to do it, because life's too short. You know, move on. Not all money is good money. Some of it will just pull you down the rabbit hole. You'll never get out. But the other thing is, does it fit your mission statement? Is it who we are?

You know, mission statement is really your business statement? boundaries, it's your guidelines that says this is who we is and this is who we isn't. And we have to stay in that. Our organization is not, you know, we're not in the medical supplies business business. And so there could be a really good medical supplies business opportunity. It's nothing to do what we do, though. And so even though, just because we know how to run business and we know how to sell and we know how to market and we know how to do technology and we have the money to go into it, just because we have the resources, doesn't mean it's smart to get completely off mission. As a matter of fact, it'd be really dumb. And because you've become

double-minded man is unstable in all his way. ways. Two-headed monster is what you end up with. And, you know, you become that squirrel on the road. You remember? Bum, boom, boom. Yeah. And so you can't bifurcate you. You have to stay clear and stay real focused and pure, because the team gets confused. The customer gets confused. They're like, what is you? We don't know what you is. And you have to spend all your life trying to tell them what you is, what your brand differentiation is, what's your brand, what's your market message, what's your position, how authentic are you? And then all of a sudden, you aren't that because you saw, oh, there's something sparkly over there. I'm a bass. I'll go after it,

you know. And that's what these business opportunities are. Success destroys more small business people with these strange bifurcated opportunities that don't fit in the mission statement than anything else because they get off track. They don't dance with a girl that brought them to the party. And that'll get you in trouble every time. You know, dance with a girl you brought to the party. That's the rule. And stay on the rule, you know? I mean, it's a problem, you know, but the other measure we would use, and I'll chime in, but is we look at a couple things, do we have the money because we don't borrow money, and is this going to put us, you know, in a hole, is this going to put us in a problem, make us tight?

Nothing is good enough to go into debt for, for us. We're not going into debt for nothing. And do we have the technology? Can we get the bandwidth to it? Can we actually, is the technology going to overwhelm us, and do we have the people? So if I got the human resources, the technical resources, the financial resources, then we can consider it. If it's a lot of it's, in mission statement. But if it doesn't hit those three, it's off the table, and that puts most stuff off the table really pretty quick. I would say there's a leader that's attributed for this saying that it's called advanced decision-making. So we're making decisions ahead of time to use his filters. A guy came into my office on our team earlier this morning, and he had on these

crazy socks from someone in this space who has all these sayings, and he had sent as a gift these quotes on his socks, and they were funny. And this guy goes, hey, Dave's got a lot of awesome sayings. Could you imagine how many socks we could sell if we had these little Dave quotes on the... And I said... Oh, God. Interesting. Help me with how that helps give people hope through transformational content. And he just kind of hung his head and walked down.

It was like, you know, he was excited. He saw someone else was making money here. And as entrepreneurs, we're always doing that. I mean, this guy, I mean, he's got an idea every 30 minutes. And it turns out a lot of them end up being good and have made us a lot of money. but he just he kind of like that bass he was like oh look socks let's go and we just forgot about our mission so as leaders we're constantly coming back to what's our mission how does it help advance the mission i will say we do care about having the resources the money the other thing that i've always

admired about dave is we have not waited till we had a perfectly clear start to finish between now and the next 10 years all the resources all the pro forma we get enough to feel like we can take a good big first step and we challenge our teams and go, go for it, man. If you got a vision for this, let's see what happens. And the resources show up when we start out as leaders as being resourceful. We start out with vision. We start out with passion. We start out with this thing is something I believe in. And we need a couple people to get this thing going. And if it makes some money on the way to becoming millions and millions of dollars, we'll find more resources. We don't wait until we have it all figured out. We err on the side of when in doubt, if you've got vision, if it fits our mission,

go for it and let God bring the resources because they're going to show up if it's the right vision. All right. Our next question comes in from Kent. How do I deal with the emotional aftermath of relieving an employee from their duties? Even if I do it properly and for good reason, I feel terrible for days. Any suggestions for getting over the hump? That could be you let them go from the company or it could be they're still at the company, which would be probably two different scenarios there. It sounds like you fired them. Yeah, I think it's firing. Kent, are you in here? Where's Kent?

Do you fire them? Yes. Okay. Relieved of their duties. Thank you, Kit. They work in a different office now. No, they're gone. It's good to clarify.

You know, the thing is, it's like a lot of stuff you do. The first time I did let somebody go, fired them, whatever you want call it, relieved them of their duties. I was sick for like two days. I mean, I was sick for a day before. I think I was more upset than they were, and they got fired. You know, it was ridiculous. It just tore me up because I just loved people, and I also felt like I screwed up.

I didn't do a good job leading by even letting them in the building in the first place. You know, most firing happens because they should have never been hired. And so, you know, it was upon me, and I felt bad about that. And, you know, this guy's got a wife, he's got kids, or this gal's got kids, or whatever the deal is. But, you know, I've been doing it now 30 years almost, and it's not that I've become. came callous or I don't love people. It's that I've seen so many of them go on to do something really cool with their life. And, you know, it's like this guy, he's doing sales and he sucks. And it's like, obviously, this is not God's desire for your life. You suck. So he must have another plan for you,

you know? And then the guy goes and he becomes a world-class photographer working on his own. True story. It really happened. A guy we fired many years ago. And he's a, He's a world-class photographer. I saw him not long ago. He charged a lot of money. And we couldn't even hire him. So I just got a lot of relief with going, I'm not God. That's his job.

And he's going to work this out for them. As long as I'm not mean or nasty or I own what part of this debacle I should own, which is I shouldn't have hired them in the first place, maybe, or maybe I should have done this sooner, or maybe I should have given them more resources. Something happened here. Some of it I own, and some of it is, they lied, they cheat, they stole, they slept around, they sucked at their job, whatever it was.

They did something, and they own that part of it, and I'm going to go, God's got something else for you. And it may be, you know, it may be some trouble before you get to some light, because you've got some trouble going on in your brain. And so you're going to bump into some stuff for a while, so until you figure that out. But you're not going to do it on our watch. We're done. The more I've done it, the more I've seen their life turn out better, the other thing I've seen is what does for the organization. Oh, my Lord, when you fire people that need to be fired, everybody looks around and goes, they were kind, they were gentle, but he needed to go. Everybody in the building knows it. And when you do it, they go, thank God Kent's a leader.

Because I used to work for a guy who was a whist. We never fire anybody. And so we had all this, we're running the aisle in the misfit toys. I mean, because everybody stayed, except the people that shouldn't. it should have stayed. And they all left because they didn't want to be on the island. You know, I mean, they weren't a misfit toy. So it's like you end up, what do you want to collect here? What's your collection look like? And, you know, I had a lady come in the other day, and she walked through our office and said, everybody in here's working. Everybody in here's happy.

She was from New York, and I guess they aren't that way there. And she said, you know, this is the nicest place. Everybody's productive. Everybody's doing stuff. They're smiling. And it's like, how do you do that? And I said, man, we fire the other ones. You know? And we're not mean about it, but it's like, If you're going to fit in, this is what we do here. And if you're not going to do what we do here, which is excellence and caring and happy and caring about each other, and we don't cuss and scream at each other, and we get our work done, and we're good at it, or we learn, or we help each other when something's wrong, all that kind of stuff. If you're not going to do all that stuff, you don't

fit in. That means you can't stay on the island. You know, I mean, you get voted off. And so it's not that I became calloused. I watched our organization three. I watched our organization three, that arrive every time I had the courage to lead well, and it made me less sick at my stomach dealing with the individual situation. And I watched those individuals leave who would have never prospered inside of our organization because they sucked at that job, and they go find what God has for them somewhere else, and they flourish. And I see that happen.

Isn't it funny, the words we use, release? We released someone today, as if we had them captive. You're releasing something, you know? Look at what he said. What was it? He said, relieved. relieved them. That's what he said. I relieved them. They were up to, I relieved. They had a relief. Did you hear it? You know, they were relieved. Everybody else was too. Yeah, and everybody else was too. It's

amazing. By the way, we're not even halfway through and I want to call back a point here. Dave is already up to 20 pairs of socks, sains. So if anybody wants to create the socks, he's already up to 20. Somebody else can do that. You're rolling today. Was that your idea? No. Okay, shut up then. Heaven's no. I mean, he's on a roll with the Saints. It's unbelievable. Somebody is going to make money on sucks. So Dave is referring to, you know, the emotional state of the team, especially when you're sanctioning incompetence and the team notices

and then you release them. Everybody goes, oh, thank you. I want to comment on something we've experienced in Entree leadership in the last few months. We had a trend of a few exits relieved of their duties, and the team was surprised because there are some things going on behind closed doors. doors around attitude or performance or various things. One ended up being a kind of an ethics issue, not moral, but ethics. In our building, we really work to think all the time, how would I want to be treated?

So if somebody leaves, for a reason that's yucky, we don't come and tell the team, here's what they did, and here's why they're gone. And at the same time, we're trying to make sure our team knows, hey, this is something, if you have questions, we'll answer them. And so Sarah, our VP of Entree Leadership and I sat down just a few weeks ago. and getting questions from the team about why do they leave? And I don't understand. Why do they have to leave so fast?

And oh, that was kind of weird. And how does this work? And our team is growing and getting bigger. And we thought, you know, let's just take questions from the team and sit down and do kind of a lunch and learn. And we'll talk about principles that we use when it's time for someone to leave and make sure the team understands. We put a lot of work into doing this the right way. We don't do this casually. But the perception from the team could be that happened really, really quick.

And for me, it was the 110th day. and for them it was day one. So it didn't feel quick to me because it was just the next natural step of these conversations we've been having. And so I think it really helped our team to hear these are the kinds of things we think through. This is when, if it's a performance thing,

we create clarity, make sure they have the opportunity to rise to the occasion. If it's an ethics or a moral failure, here's why this has to happen quick. And if you have questions about that, let's talk about it. Not naming any of these people as individuals in the specific instances,

but the principles of, you need to know in this team, you're safe. If you're following these principles, here's what we expect of you, and here's what you can expect of us. And so it was a great healthy conversation. And the byproduct is, for me as a leader, I had been wrestling through some of this, did I do the right thing and the insecurity that Dave's talking about when you have to release somebody? You just always go, ah, did I do that right? We were looking back through, Sarah and I were looking through these principles going, we did these exactly right. We should be proud of how well we served everybody, the person exiting and the team,

in all of these situations. And it was a great. morale lift for the team because there's more clarity. So anytime somebody's leaving, don't do that casually because the rest of the team is kind of going, I wonder what happened there. And it's always great to sit down and let them know. We're not going to tell you all the details of why it happened, but we're going to let you know, this person's gone. Hopefully we're still friends. You don't have to be weird around them if you see them at the mall. And at the same time, they no longer fit who we are. And they're on a different journey. Now, Ken, I would also say that if you didn't feel terrible for days when you first start doing this, you're probably not fit to lead because you don't care about

people. But when you start out, it's a normal process you go through. But the more you do it, it's not that you become calloused, it's that you see the benefit of having the right people and the right seats on the bus and the wrong people off the bus and moving people around and that kind of a thing. And we realized that we're not, you know, we got rid of our Messiah complex. We're not a cult. You can not work here and go to heaven. And so it's, it's, you know, we got rid of our Messiah complex. We're not a cult. It's going to be okay. You know, it's going to be okay. Their life did not really come to an end.

And so, you know, it's like I over-dramatize everything. And so, but it's a good sign for you personally if you did feel terrible the first time or two you had to do this. Because if you didn't, then you're probably just a bully. And that's not a real leader. That's just a boss. Any fool can be a boss. You wouldn't even need to be in here. If you won't be a boss, you wasted your week.

We're not teaching you that stuff. The first time I heard Dave say you could not work here and go to heaven. he said it quick and I thought he said you cannot work here and go to heaven. I never heard that. That's funny. I don't care who you are. I was scared. I said up straight, didn't you? That's so great. That's so great. All right. Our next question comes in from Dion as a small team that is growing quickly. What is a healthy percentage of adding team members? There's not a magic number. It's how fast can you absorb them into the culture? And we're struggling with that right now at this moment.

I mean, we heard 200 people last year. There's 600 of us. We're up to 800. And, you know, how do you get that percent? That's a fourth. I mean, my God, that's a lot. And the problem is what you want to make sure of is that the new people aren't establishing the culture because there's so many of them that they become, you know, they bring all

their crap in from all those outside jobs that you don't want in your organization. So you have to do it slow enough that you are controlling the culture, whatever speed that is and whatever thing that is. We're kind of teetering on that. And ours isn't culture on that. Sometimes it was just like we got marketing people who are really good at marketing, but maybe they didn't know how to do marketing the way we do it. And so we had to catch that up.

And so that's the percentage we want to keep with. I don't know. It's not a certain number. It's how robust can your culture be to absorb them into it and cause them to take it on so they don't infect you. Dave's always done just an incredible job of teaching our teachers. team all the time. Staff meetings after a devo, just quick emergency meeting, get everybody together. This is why we're winning. This is who we are. This is our identity. These are our

values. Let me tell you this story about when this core value became a core value. Most of our core values are counterintuitive. They're against the grain. That's why they're our core values. They aren't these plastic things that you would go, oh, that all is logical. We value customer service. Oh, brother. None of the stuff on the wall is logical. So when an outside person brings logic and corporate and whatever their baggage is from all that into our world, they're naturally going to go to, well, this is just all I know unless we stop and go, hey, we get that's what you know and what that used to be over there for you. That's fine over there. That's not who we are. Here's who we are. Here's the why behind the what. And so I think you're just constantly beating that drum of here's why we do it

this way. I know it's weird. I know it's crazy, but it's always been who we are. If who you are got you to where you are and you're winning, then the biggest threat to you winning in the future is losing who you are. And so more businesses fail because of growth, runaway growth, not because the revenue, the revenue is amazing, but under the surface, you're eroding this foundation of your entire identity as a culture changes, and you look up and you don't run the culture anymore, this new culture's running you. And so that's what Dave's talking about. So I don't think there's a magic percentage. Be careful with it, be wise about it. If you were doubling every single year, year over year, that'd be crazy and you'd be high risk of losing your culture. But even then,

I think there's ways you can offset it by making sure that you have these moments where you're teaching the team consistently, and we do that really well. So we have really aggressive growth and revenue, and we have really aggressive intentionality about making sure our team understands this is why we do what we do. Yeah, but you can't just throw bodies and stuff to fix it. You'll get a mess. You really get a mess on your hands. Petlin, she only talks about that in his book, The Advantage. If you hadn't read that book, you need to read it. The thesis of the book is pretty simple. Most companies hire smart people. Most companies know how to organize them. They've got an MBA somewhere in the mix that knows how to organize the smart people and know how to create projects

and launch projects. Most people can pull that off. But what most companies don't have is organizational mental health, which is unity around a cultural value system. And they don't do conflict well internally. They don't have trust. And they don't have loyalty. And they don't have high levels of communication. If you can start to have that kind of culture, then you've got a brand differentiation in the marketplace. You have an advantage, thus the name of the book, in the marketplace, over the other group of smart people who are all out for themselves. They're not communicating.

It's a toxic environment, and they don't have a methodology inside the environment for dealing with conflict that's healthy and all that kind of stuff. And so your cultural differentiation is more important for your future prosperity and your survival than adding people. So you can only add people to the extent it doesn't kick that on tilt, is what I'm saying. and that's not an uncertain percentage, but there's times that we felt the tension of that around our place because they're coming in at such a fast pace because we too have work to get done and would like someone to do the work and hire them. And then we have to, there's a whole bunch of them all of a sudden, and I'm like, crap, where did all these 26-year-olds come from?

And now we've got to, you know, we've got to get them on board. And Dave, you did this, I think it was two or three weeks ago, where you got up again and we'd had so many new people come in in the last two or three months, and you just reminded everybody. One more time, what we're about. You took us back. You can't do that enough. And it's not a thing where those of us that have been there, Dana's been a long time and there four years myself. I've heard it.

But I just want to ask you to follow up on that. There's a reason why you do that, and it's not just so the new people. There's a bigger reason why you got back up and you felt the need. All right. Let's remind you, folks, who we are. Why is that so important? Why do you do that so often? I do it all time because, oh, it's also for the people there who,

it's time for them to leave and they hadn't realized it. That's exactly right. You know, because we always tell people, you know, when your spirit leaves the building, you should take your body with it. And some of them don't, right? And so when I keep reminding us, this is who we are, this is who we are, this who we are, suddenly they go, I've been here six years and I'm not that anymore. I think I should go.

I was the idea. You know, Dave Ramsey runs a cult. No, I regularly ask people to leave. Cult leaders do not do that. So, you know, that's what we're looking for. And I'm just trying to keep that thing out there that this is who we are, this is who we are, this is who we are. And if you isn't that, you isn't us. And that's not a hard thing, you know, but it doesn't matter what your thing is, but keep it there.

This is who we are. This is how we think. This place exists for those people that are not here. We love small business people. We love business leaders. We are capitalists, pigs, capitalist pigs. We love you serving your customer and serving so many of them that they give you those certificates of appreciation with president's faces on them. We love you. You know, this is who we are. And if you

don't like that, then you don't need to work on the entree leadership team. You ain't us, you know? Hit the road, Jack, you know? And that's the message over and over and over and over again. And it prohibits me from having to revive the body and then remove it. It just removes itself because the spirit already left. There's no reason to have a Lazarus moment here, you know? So I want to get, I want to get capitalist pigs on my socks. Exactly. By the way, we're up there 32 pairs if anybody's thinking about this. I never get tired of here and Dave talk about the vision and the values,

and I've been hearing it for 15 years every week. Because, listen, vision leaks. We forget as leaders, more often than not, we're adding more value by reminding people of something they already know than teaching them something new. Bring them back. You got a compass, you got a heading, bring it back. We're off heading, bring them back, bring them back.

We're just constantly, it's human. nature to just drift. We get busy, we get distracted, we start thinking about stupid ideas like socks, and we just bring them back, bring them back. And so whether it's core values, mission, vision, this is why we do what we do. I mean, you would be amazed how much time we tie up not working, just communicating about our culture and vision, because we believe that if we get everybody to understand why we do what we do, then we advance all the decision-making to the front lines. They don't have to have a policy manual. they just do the right thing based on their judgment and knowing what our principles are

where we stand and they're freed up to be adults and make a good decision. And that frees up so much more of what otherwise would be meetings than having to review the policy manual. So the net on the back end is it really is, there's an ROI on this. It matters. All right. As you grow, you need space. This comes in from Jennifer. There may be 30 of you. So as you recognize your question stand up. Jennifer, you need space. If you need space and you're Jennifer. As you grow, you need space, how do you decide on what space to buy, or, there she is, rent that's not too big, yet not a place you'll outgrow in six months. And her problem is, it's a good problem, two years old, about to be moving to a third location due to a lack of space, growing really, really fast.

Buy a rent, Dave. I would rent. I would rent, rent, rent, rent, rent, rent. You're not in real estate business. You're in business. And too many times, if you are in real estate business, But yeah, okay. If you're the business of selling real estate is different than I'm talking about the business of investing real estate. So I love real estate. And it killed me for a long time to rent space. But number one, I couldn't anticipate what my needs were far enough out. And so, you know, your location changes, your size needs change.

And then all of a sudden you have this building that you own. And now you're forming your business around the shape of the building, instead of the building being formed around the shape of your business. And so, you know, you're much better off to rent unless you have a very stable business situation. Now, I got a buddy who's an insurance agent. He's a two-person insurance operation. Has been for 20 years. So he bought a little office building. He's not going to be at 63 people in four years.

He's going to be at two people in four years. You've got a very stable, predictable, size need, location need, then it's okay, buy, stable. We're growing at 200 a year. We're buying, but it's just because we got the cash, and I'm building stuff, and I'm having a blast doing that. But this is, I'll stay ahead of it just because I'm going to own a bunch of it. But the thing is, I caught myself even with the building we've got that y'all were in last night. Some of you came over there last night. That building.

I bought that building is 55,000 square feet, and we were all of a sudden we blew out of it. We were bigger, and I'll start renting spot. all over the dad-gum area around us, and now we can't fit in the building. And I found myself going, but I love this building, and this is where it all started. And all of a sudden, the bricks and mortar started telling the business what to do instead of the business telling the bricks and mortar what to do. And I know better. I teach otherwise. So I would rent, rent, rent, until everything's stabilized, and then if you got the money to pay for cash and you build something way bigger than you need, and you can rent the rest of it until you need it, and you pay cash for it, you want to do something like that, that's cool, and get out ahead of your growth and that kind of thing.

We're building 200,000, 220,000 feet that we're moving in in June, and as soon as we move in, we're breaking ground on another 200,000 feet. And it's all cash. And as we do that, then I'll have that other 200,000 feet. And if I don't fill it up, you know, in a year or two, I'll just rent it. And then I'll rent it until I need it, you know, that kind of thing. So I'll get out ahead of it that way. But unless you've got the cash position to do that kind of stuff, or unless you're just stable,

rent. Okay, next question. So, well, talk about one of the things that comes up. It's a little controversial. when you're at this capacity issue and you're on, I don't want to rent, maybe we just get a virtual team. We have not gone that path. And it comes back to culture. But I think a lot of people think, hey, it's 2018.

Let's just have our staff be virtual. Let's not do physical space anymore. And everybody can just come to the office whenever. And we've been very intentional to guard against that because of some... There's just not any good case studies on it. It's a bunch of theoretical crap. Well, I mean, Best Buy tried it. They put all their people out there at home and they were all virtually and they virtually didn't work.

And, you know, and it just, they brought them all back in. They pulled everybody back into the home office. They don't have any, hardly anybody off-site. A lot of these big companies thought, oh, this is cool. We'll have everybody. Now, we have some contractors that are virtual. We'll contract the developer thing, you know, with a programmer or something off-site, and it's paid by the job.

And so if they want to sit around play Game Boy or whatever else they do while they're supposed to be working, then they can do that. But now, we don't have that because we value the culture of the physical connection. but also there's just no data. You can't find companies that are like over a seven-year period of time at prosper. They may have tried it for seven months and had some productivity results or they may have attracted some talent, but overall the thing hasn't worked. It hasn't.

We've not seen people do it very well. All right, similar question here from Jeremy. He says, I have one location in auto repair shop. What steps and benchmarks do I need to achieve before opening up a second or third location? what's the magic sauce that makes your location work and I suspect it's you and the smile that you have and the trust that your customer's placing you you probably are still customer greeter as well as checking the guys turning the wrench I suspect I probably would be if I was in that setting and so you've got to have you got to duplicate you because you're not going to be there very difficult but that's the next step because that's what Gerber talks about in E-Meth. He says, you know, until you can duplicate you and people are working while you're not there doing what you would do if you're not there, until then you don't own your business,

you own your job. And so you're at that step. Now you're ready to really, really run a business at a very sophisticated level, and it's to duplicate you. But you need to kind of sit down and almost draw out what your job description is because you need to hire you for the next location. What is it you do every day that makes this thing work? because there's some magic sauce.

There's some special sauce in there. You know, how is it you walk up? How do you greet? Why do they trust you? Why do they come back? What is the thing? When do you give them a repair for free so that they send their brother later? When do you have a hard conversation with someone?

How do you have a hard conversation with the girl who's broke and she needs a $1,500 transmission and she's crying? How do you do that? That's the special sauce in that setting. You've got to have that guy that's over there that has that sense of emotional ownership. of that KRA, that job description. We talk a lot about bringing up leaders and having bench depth. And I'll tell you what, help with this.

When you're hiring somebody, don't just hire a mechanic. Hire somebody who's a potential leader who happens to be a mechanic right now. And encourage them, train them, equip them, bring them up. And if you don't have bench depth there and you think, I'm just going to go launch a new store, either got to launch someone over there or you've got to go over there and then you leave your team behind and they don't have leadership in that facility anymore and that thing's going to implode.

So, I mean, I just agree with Dave. Like, you've got to bring up your bench, and we're always working on this thing with our team going, hey, you need to have one foot in your KRA and one foot in the next KRA up. The natural thing is to have one foot in your KRA and one foot in the KRA that you just left. And so we're constantly evaluating asking our team going, what are you doing to put one foot in this next KRA? It's not a title. It's not a promise. It's not a forecasting of promotion. We don't know.

But we better be getting you ready if we're going. because at some point when we're ready to launch the next store, launch the next business unit, a buyer shows up over here and this leader needs to go over there and squash that fire. We're going, do they have the leaders that they can backfill? In other words, bring up and continue to maintain what they were doing and hopefully grow it beyond what they were doing.

So bench steps a big deal. Let me add a quick point for those of you that run trade-type businesses like this. When you're interviewing these people and you find out that their gearheads, clearly they've got the ability to fix the car. But ask them, do you like coaching? Do you coach? Have you ever found yourself teaching? at Sunday school class or just ask an opening a question. And for those that say, hey, yeah,

I love coaching my kids team. Ask them why. And if you can identify early on that they may be a potential leader, okay? That's just that before what Daniel just said. Then you've got somebody who you could train to be the one that runs your shop because they've got some desire to do some type of leading and then show them a ladder. If you show them a ladder, that's how you replace yourself so that you can't open up to second shot. But I hear that a lot from people. Well, they don't want to to leave, they just want to fix cars. Not true. Not everybody. Not true. So just a quick point there. All right. One more here. This is from Mandy. She said I'm a millennial hiring other millennials. I'm finding younger millennials have zero clue about their why, their mission and their vision.

I've worked to help them discover their why, and in the meantime, they self-select off the team. How can I help themselves discover their why sooner? Where are you at, Mandy? There she is right over there. Okay. Cool. We love millennials. We got a bunch. I'm on a lot. our team. They're the easiest to interview because there's only two kinds, awesome and sucks. Yeah. They either come in and say, you know, what's your job? I'm a stay-at-home son. Or, you know, or they... I've never heard that one before. That's brand new. It's for the socks. Stay-at-home son. Or they're so passionate and missional-driven that they're the best team member you'll ever have in your life, they will charge the gates of hell with a water

pistol. If you, if they believe in and plug into what you're doing and why you're doing it, it's the best generation I've ever hired because they are not, neither one of them are looking for a job. There's one's looking for an adventure and one's not looking to do anything. And so, you know, you just got to help them do an adventure. And the other ones, you just don't hire them. I mean, that's easy. They are real easy to interview because they just come in and go, here's my participation trophy. I suck. Or they come in and go, man, I'll do anything. I'll set up chairs to get to work here. What y'all are doing is changing lives, and they're crying, talking about it. They're so passionate. I love them. They're incredible. So the thing is just try to, you know,

you're not going to keep millennials because of the stage of life that they're in. They're in their 20s. And so they're getting married, they're moving, they're changing, they're having kids. You're going to lose them to all of those life transitions, and you're going to have have some of them that just go, you know, find their passion. That's fine. I've had a lot of them leave us that they kind of came in and got our company on them and they learned how to build a business. They learned how to be entrepreneurs and they've, a bunch of them. I've started businesses in the area. I mean, I can think of about 10 right now at the top of my head that are 35 and under that have started businesses in our area, which is wonderful. That's fine. You're not

going to keep them. They're very transitional. But the ones that you get on board, you're going to get a lot out of them while they're there. They're going to get a lot out of you while they're they're very missional, they're fun, help them get that Y. I just want to get their Y soon in the interview process. I'm going to go deep in the interview. I'm going to get real philosophical in the interview because I want to go ahead and identify, you know, my, the thing that makes me is I just, I just want to go to Africa. And I'm like, I'm going to have a branch there. So, you know, and you've got a lot of passion, but you're not going to be here long. You're only going to be here long enough to collect enough checks to go to Africa. And so,

I got you and no. And so I'm going to get into their why in the process and figure out what it is they want to do and show them how they can live out their calling within our calling. Hey, Mandy, I want to encourage you. I've always been a younger leader for the role that I'm in. And I had this complex about leading people that were older than me early on. And you're allowed to hire people that are older than you too. And that can feel a little awkward.

And you may even have someone working for you that could be one of your parents. and you've got to just kind of have that conversation to go, look, I need your advice on life, but I'm the leader. And if you want to roll and if you want to follow me, they're going to follow your passion, your energy, your enthusiasm. So potentially broaden the scope of your hiring to be on just millennials so that you've got some life season in there as well. Yeah, I wouldn't just hire any one group, but I am a fan of the, I'm a huge fan of this age group.

Absolutely. This age group's amazing. And the reason is, is because more than any generation, the data is showing us that they care deeply about are they good at the work that you're offering. They want to be really good at it. That's because they've been rewarded their whole life more than any other generation. For doing nothing. Well, that's fair. But, okay, the other thing is, is they want to do work that matters to them. So Dave's right. So, Mandy, in the interview, I taught on this yesterday, intentional interview,

you've got to include in your interviews for millennials. It's a different interview. And Dave's absolutely right. Now, he made a joke about the Africa thing, but that's a great example. because if you find out by asking them about their talent and their passion, what makes them come alive and things like. And if you don't see a fit or they throw out some answer like Africa, you go, well, hey, appreciate you, that's not us. However, you've got to be discerning in the interview process to really get to the true why and then show them, if you can, that this company and this role could lead you to that

why. Here's what millennials are struggling with. They want it now. Now, every generation has always wanted it now. This is not a millennial thing, but they want it faster than most. But if you can say, hey, if you come in here in this role and you win with this KRA, let me show you the next run, and let me show you the next run, and the next run. If you know your role, accept your role, and maximize your role.

If you can be discerning and show them that in this organization that you can meet your why and fulfill your why, they'll turn into some of your best leaders. You've got to understand that. And one other point on this, that you've got to understand, I'm reading this data like crazy, but you've got to get this. More than any other generation, millennials are also not looking at a job

as something they may do for more than a year. Not because they're not loyal, not because they're just shiffless. They watched Xers, they watched their grandparents work one job for 35 years, and they went, that just doesn't seem fun. they're looking for a ladder and you're going to miss it if you don't show them that the ladder could exist at Ramsey Solutions.

It could exist here. But if you grow them and you develop them and show them a ladder, you might turn these millennials into absolute rock stars. So you've got to figure it out in the interview and then remind them of their why and how it matches up with their current role. Be patient. Be patient. You're getting closer.

I just say for the non-millennials, we owe it to the younger generation who expects this on-demand lifestyle to remind them that life still honors loyalty. There is a principle in life that time and season and experience matters. Just because you've never had to go to a blockbuster to get a movie. What's blockbuster? Doesn't mean that relationships don't take time to build. It doesn't mean that the value of being with something over time and the discipline of pushing through a hard season, not hitting a JECT, every time you get a little frustrated or annoyed because the screen doesn't load fast. I can't unfriend you.

Right. You know, so I think we've got to mentor them as well and go, hey, we love the energy, we love the passion, we love the why. We'll show you a why that can connect with your why here. And some of them didn't have parents that actually taught them. There are ebbs and flows to life. There are seasons. There are generation things that are.

a part of this and there's some wisdom in that that we can impart. Cool. Good stuff. Good stuff. Hey, want to say a big thanks to all of you here in the room. You've been an incredible group. Thanks for your questions. And before we leave, you want to say a big thank you to all of you out there. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll talk with you very soon. Thanks for being with us. Hope you enjoyed our panel from Antre Master's series. Hey, next year's EMS is going to be coming before you know it. Our 2019 event will be November 3rd through 7th, 2019, November 3-3-7, 2019 here in downtown Nashville.

We'll have 600 business owners from around the country. If you'd like more details about the event, go to entreleadership.com slash master series. That's entreleadership.com slash master series. You can also get the link in our show notes, episode 290, and you can get the lowest price possible if you act now. All right, our friends from Infusionsoft have a great tool for you this episode. it's how to identify your target market. This is an actual worksheet that will allow you to work through things like pinpointing your ideal customer's paints, establishing why your customers actually buy from you, and then how to build your target customer.

All that and more in this worksheet. To get it, go to infusionsoft.com slash target dash worksheet. That's infusionsoft.com slash target dash worksheet. Or you can get the link in the show notes. at episode 290. All right, folks, that's going to do it on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.

Hey, folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman Show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to do

and then will help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman in iTunes or go to Ken Coleman Show.com.