EntreLeadership - #312: Creating Business Momentum with Rachel Hollis

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

After hitting the New York Times best-seller list in 2018 and with a 500% revenue increase for her company expected this year, Rachel Hollis isn’t slowing down anytime soon. But the founder of The Hollis Company is quick to point out that she has been anything but an overnight success. Join us to hear Rachel make the case for fiercely owning your dreams, listening to your tribe, and staying true to your vision as you build your business. If you’re chasing a big goal of your own, stay tuned as Dave Ramsey joins us to share the key to becoming unstoppable.   entreleadership.com/podcast Rachel Hollis' website Buy the books: Girl, Stop Apologizing and Girl, Wash Your Face #253: Rachel Hollis—7 Solid Social Media Strategies Join our free 12 Days of Growth challenge   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's shocking to me how few business owners are in community with their community, not listening to what it is that they're asking for. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Entree 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. Here's what's coming up today. We've got Rachel Hollis, the chief creative officer of the Hollis Company, bestselling author, and highly sought after speaker. Her latest book, Girl Stop Apologizing. A shame-free plan for embracing and achieving your goals is out. Also, we're going to give you some teaching from Dave Ramsey, our founder, specifically on the momentum theorem. This is one of our core values, and this is going to come from the Entree Leadership stage. So good stuff. Let's get to it. All right. First up is Rachel Hollis. Good friend of Entree Leadership. What a special lady she is.

As I mentioned, her new book is Girl, Stop Apologizing. But her book that just blew up, I mean absolutely, and has still continued to go to crazy heights, is Girl Wash Your Face. And such an encouraging book. But I don't want you to check out, guys, because this is a entrepreneur's entrepreneur. She really does embody the American Dream. 14 years she's been at it, and she understands what it's like to try to make payroll. She understands what it's like to try to get an idea out there and see if it'll stick. And we're so excited for her success. Some great stuff coming to you. If you want to hear the first conversation with her on her previous book, episode 253.

But let's get to it. Rachel was in studio recently, and here is our conversation. Well, Rachel, fun to have you back in studio. Yes. We were just talking about a year ago this time, the first book. Yes. Girl wash your face. Yes.

We couldn't remember if it was out or in the process of getting it, but here it comes. And this is something, this is not your first rodeo. You'd written books before. Absolutely. You were running a business. Here this thing comes. And it goes bananas. And I only want to spend a little bit of time on this for the context about what we're ready to talk about.

How quickly did it absolutely change your business and everything? Well, from the time it came out. How many months? Ironically, it came out and did okay. Yeah. It wasn't this, like, mega success. In fact, I remember the very first week that the New York Times published that, I'd always wanted to be a New York Times best-selling author, and it came out, and I wasn't on it.

And I was devastated, devastated, because I thought it was my best chance. It made New York Times list 11 weeks, which is crazy, right? So it took a minute, and I don't think I could properly grasp what was even happening at the time. And it just kept growing, and it kept growing, and we kept seeing those sales numbers go up. And then I don't even know how to describe the last year to you. Well, it's almost impossible to do so. It's been a massive blessing. And also, I'd be lying if I didn't say that it wasn't overwhelming and hasn't required a ton of prayer and a ton of like trying to come back to myself and center myself.

And because when something happens like this, it feels like all these things you always hoped and dreamed and prayed for, everybody wants to give them to you. And what I can understand now, because I always do work at the end of the year to look back and make better choices as I go forward. And one of the things I can recognize is every single time, even when the opportunity was massive, every single time we said yes to someone else coming in partnership with us. It took my eyes off what we were trying to do. But it's been amazing and hard and all of the things. But thank God and we'll just keep moving forward. Yeah, you are and you're doing a great job. And that's what I want to spend their time on, because we have a lot of entrepreneurs that are listening in.

And I don't want them to check out because of the unbelievable meteoric success you've had, because the reality is that success with the book and you're speaking and all the exposures is one thing. But the reality is you are still running a business. Absolutely. Your husband, Dave, a successful businessman, came over to help run the company. So there's a lot of fun stuff to talk about. Yeah, totally. How have you, as an entrepreneur, how have you adjusted to the changes that you've had to? make from a leadership standpoint?

This is maybe an interesting way to answer this, but I think the biggest change that I have made this year is I have become obsessive about my health because to run a business at this level and to be able to show it for this team as well as a community of people online means that I need to be healthy. And for any entrepreneurs who are listening who are running themselves into the ground, they're not getting enough sleep, they're living off the caffeine, that was me for a long time. And this last year, I became really obsessive with how do athletes, how do professional athletes take care of themselves? What are they eating?

How are they working out? How are they drinking water? Because I want to be able to do this well and do this with integrity. But I also have four kids. And I have a marriage that I want to thrive. And if I'm not taking care of myself, I can't take care of anybody else. I also think probably the biggest adjustment for me this year was I did step aside as CEO. and became chief creative officer, which was a man was that a massive, like, giving up of ego.

There's so much ego wrapped up in CEO title for me. But when my husband and I decided to partner, he had been a president at Walt Disney Studios for a long time. So he had a big job, and he was leaving to come and help me. And he was like, babe, when you describe what it is that you want to happen and what you want your role to be, to be able to create the content and be the face and stand on stage and write the books. That's not the person who's managing HR. That's not the person who's, you know.

So it was, actually, Christy was an incredible, Christy writes a dear friend, and she was an incredible resource for me in that time because I would call her and be like, I don't want to give it up. And she said, she said, why don't you make a list of what your dream job is at your company

and see if it's even the CEO? And I did. And, you know, lo and behold, It wasn't. Because you're in a unique situation, much like a Dave Ramsey, who you're the brand. Yeah. So trying to be the CEO, the brand itself. Yes. So here's what I think would be fun. What have you and Dave learned? Both successful individuals married. Yes. Right? And then we come together in the middle of trying to almost keep all the marbles on the table when success comes this quickly. But you weren't a rookie. You've been running a couple for a wrong time. How are you guys working together? Now that you said, okay, I do need to be the chief. creative officer as well as the break. Yeah. It has not been easy. And I don't want to sugarcoat that because our marriage is so strong. We are best friends. We have so much fun together. And I think that I thought that because our marriage was so strong that we would just like naturally be able to, you know,

peanut butter and jelly. Here we go. We're rocking. But the truth is that we have very different managing styles. And it took talking to a lot of different people before this clicked for me, Mark Cole. I don't you know Mark Cole. Do you know Mark Cole? So he had said to me, he's like, oh, Rach, you learn to manage from the ground up. Dave comes from the corporate world, so he learned to manage from the top down. And those two things tend to be in opposition to each other. So there was a lot of learning that had to happen from him on, here's kind of the grit and the hustle of a small business. You know, he came in and he'd be like, who is the project manager for fill in the blank?

I'm like, look in the mirror. This is what it is to be a small business owner. That's right. But then the flip side of that is I had to learn to adjust to a lot of our success this year is because we really were synergistic with how we lined up our product launches, how we lined up tickets going on sale that was right after this thing. And that was all Dave. Like Dave stacked everything.

And I remember being so overwhelmed. Like this is too much to ask our audience. They're going to be overwhelmed by this. And it's okay. And a lot of the being able to monetize the meteoric success of the book, is because, like, our two brands coming together, we did find a way to make them work. How are you handling business temptation? Temptation is a dirty word to a lot of people.

We're talking about business temptation. Where, oh, my gosh, everything's coming your way. And you had a vision for this. Yes. So it's a two-part question. I'll let you just roll. Such a good question. Okay, good.

How are you handling the temptation for stuff that seems really shining and attractive, but may not be a part of the original vision? And then the follow-up is, how are you adjusting the vision? vision. Yeah. So two things I would say. When we sat down and looked back on our calendar, we did a calendar audit at the end of the year, I felt like the biggest mistake I had made professionally and that we had made in the business was I said yes to too many things. I was telling you before we started that when we moved our family and our business to Austin, Texas, we didn't yet know what was going to happen with the business. And so just to make sure we were

financially safe, I said yes to every speaking opportunity that presented. itself. So I have contracts through the end of 2019, which means I'm on the road constantly. And, well, now you don't necessarily need those speaking opportunities, but I committed in my word of honor and all of those things. So that has been a lot. And I think that that, how exhausted I am, has taught me, we've got to say no. Every single time you say yes to someone else, it's a no to your vision and what you want this company to be. So that was a big, lesson for us this year. And now I think we've been burned by it so many times, just out of like exhaustion, frankly, that we are the king and queen of no. And we have a little, there's this old

saying, not my circus, not my monkeys. I don't know if you've ever heard that. So every time, and it doesn't matter what it is. It's like the shiniest, prettiest, here's a giant pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And we're just, we look at each other and we're like, not my circus, not my monkeys. This is what we're doing. This is what we're trying to build. The vision has adjusted a lot. Because when I believed in my heart that we were stepping into a white space, and if people aren't familiar, personal development for women, and not personal development for people who had ever really considered it before. So we have a lot of friends in the PD space, and we joke with them like, oh, you guys are going after the 2% of the population that is into personal development. We're going after everybody else. We're going after the people who never thought about reaching for more.

So that has adjusted many times of the year because once we started to prove that this was a market and that they were hungry for content, then we started to double down on how we could serve that content up to them in a bunch of different ways. The interesting thing about our business, I think, is we only have four products. We only have four products that we offer people. We have books. We have live events. We do coaching. And I have a journal. That's it.

And those four things in 2018 versus 2019, revenue will increase 500% off four things. Because we have total clarity about what we're doing. That's good. And we serve it up to her, because our audience is women, we serve it up to her in a way that she wants to receive it. Right. I love that. Yeah. Discipline.

Yes. Discipline. Then you're thinking about within those four things, you're looking at how do we scale, how do we iterate. And that allows you the discipline to be able to say no. Yeah, for sure. I think if I have a like my spiritual gifting in this space is that I know my girl. I know my customer so well. And I know her because I've been with her in social media, in email, on blog comments for the last 15 years.

I mean, I started out as a blogger and a lot of those women are still with me. How much of it is, I'm interrupting. Yeah, no, no, no, go. Yeah. How much of it is there was a point where you were her? Oh, yeah, for sure. See, I think that's the power. Yeah, absolutely.

You know them so well because you're speaking to them about things you walk through. Yes. And I only give advice on something that I have walked through and I feel like I've made traction on. That's right. But I would say, too, it's I'm sharing, because I love, I'm such a junkie for either my business or my personal life. How can I do this better? How can I be a better mom? How can I be a better wife?

How can I be a better leader? So I devour books and podcasts and all the things. And then I'm sort of disseminating that wisdom. Here, I'm going to take it, and now I'm going to give it to you. But honestly, beyond just knowing what I'm really into and then finding an audience that's into it as well, we're just listening. It's shocking to me how few business owners are in community with their community, not listening to what it is that they're asking for.

For instance, we have a series of journals that are really successful for us, and we release three new covers every month. It's a scarcity plan, and once the covers are sold out, You can't ever get them again. Works really well with women, by the way. So we released the covers at Christmas time, and we love them. And the thing that we kept hearing was, oh, we wish it was a little more girly. And I'm not really girly.

I mean, I love, you know, I got the lashes and the hair, but other than that, I tend to be like a sneakers kind of girl. So, like, we really love pink. We really love. And it was such a great reminder for me, and I don't know if this is going to resonate with you. But I'm kind of an anthropology girl, and she is a tart. girl. So it doesn't matter who I am or what I'm into. What matters is what she wants. That's exactly right. So just making sure that you're constantly listening to the audience, they will tell you what it is they want from you. Well, I'll just add one thing. One thing's we do at Ramsey Solutions is we are

absolutely maniacal about audience surveys. So all of the Ramsey personalities have had a deep dive. I've got a 20-page report set on my desk of our radio audience of the Ken Coleman show. And to your point, there are things in there when I saw it, I was like, oh. Yeah. And I think you make a very good point that Dave has figured out as well, which is you're there to serve your customer, period. Yeah. And so you've got to know. I mean, you have really been so focused on knowing the customer.

And the dialogue you have with them is great. And I'm just going to add lib here because one of the things that I want to know is now that you have gotten out with the success of the book and you've got these bigger live audiences when you do your own events. Yes. Not events for the people. Yes. But it's a hollis event. How much do you value listening to those women in those moments? And even from the stage, when you say something and you see it hits them like a tuning fork.

Absolutely right. Absolutely right. Our events are so much fun. I'm sure you think the same thing. Because it's like, this is the hometown crowd. They know us. They know what we're about. It is exactly.

There's something in the air, like the Holy Spirit's there. It's so much fun. I think that the event space has been such a fun one to step into because that is a, you know, I remember going to Entree Leadership Summit and sitting in the audience years ago and being like, oh, my gosh, if I could ever, oh, it would be so great. You know. No, but it is crazy. Like how far, how far I've come.

We've talked about this before. How much your work and Dave's work, the whole team has affected me and my business and just like sitting there wishing and hoping. I'll, like, beat the drum. And I've been talking about it a lot lately on the importance of knowing your crowd and knowing your customer because the thing that trips people out is and no people are like it's not true it it is we don't spend one dollar on marketing or advertising not one is that right all through your social media you're looking at the head of marketing right now just through your channels social yeah literally

social and email that's the only thing we do and i'm not saying that i'll always be the way because certainly if someone was like here's how you actually do a facebook ad sis man that would help but when you know you know girl us your face has sold just under three million copies you know are very first conference we ever did, barely got 200 people in the room, went $42,000 in debt on it because I didn't know what I was doing. We have two conferences this summer. One was 3,800, which felt like the biggest thing we could imagine sold out in 30 minutes, added a 7,000 seat theater sold out in two hours, and not $1 in marketing. Because I am every single day still on live stream, checking in with them. There's so much power in serving your customer well because I feel like for years and years and years, we just said, here's free content, here's free content, here's free content, oh, here's something you can buy. And she was like, I got you, sis. Yeah. And here's what I want to say is I think this may be the most valuable lesson that our audience, that I can learn anybody that wants to do something that lasts,

if I'm right on my research, 14 years. So you are not an overnight success. Now, did it explode seven months or 11 weeks in yes yes but 11 weeks into the how many times how many books had you written before that was my sixth book six book yeah yeah so this is the message i want people to hear for yeah not get all yeah you know starry i wish it this girl rachel was going after for a long time so that now when it happens even though it is new and crazy the fact the matter is you do have the background yeah oh yeah i want people to hear that yeah is it worth it oh my gosh is it worth it right i know the answer, but I want people to hear me say, 14 years, the doubt, fear, the rejection. Yeah. I will tell you the truth. So this year, because I never had a book, obviously,

do what this one did. And I remember the very first time that Dave, we were at breakfast, and he told me what my first royalty check was going to be. And it was the most money I'd ever heard in my life. And I don't say that I'm not actually, I just started bawling, balling. You couldn't process. Because all I could think was, I will never have to worry. about payroll again. Right. And if you are listening to this, if you are an entrepreneur,

if you are struggling, if you don't know how, you know you have a vision, but man, it just feels like such a slog, it feels so hard, there comes a day. As long,

I feel like, as long as you're not living the same entrepreneurial year twice. I might have made mistakes, but I never made them twice. And I always learned the knowledge is out there. I just kept going.

I kept getting back up. I kept trying again. And every time I did it a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. And just getting to a place where you know, oh, man, like, just that relief of these people, your team, like, they've invested their time, they've invested their love, they've worked to build this with me. To get it to a place, that's what's worth it. All of these people being able to benefit, to be able to buy homes and take care of their family because of the work that we built together, oh my gosh, worth every

sleepless night, worth it all, worth it all. Yeah. Yeah. The new book is, Girls Stop Apologizing, a shame-free plan for embracing and achieving your goals. And, you know, I saw that subtitle. And I just absolutely love the shame-free. One of the things that we hear a lot on my show is people saying, hey, I'm making this move, but I've got friends and family that are kind of bringing me down. I'm almost bothered by it. And the shame-free plan, why did you feel like you needed to offer the shame-free part? So every single thing that I create, truly.

is a response to something she, the customer, has told me she needs. So people read, Girl, Wash Your Face, which is all about taking ownership of your life. And they were like, okay, I'm in. How? I want to pursue this side business, but I'm a mom. I want to do this thing, but my mother-in-law doesn't like. And I just kept hearing the shame wrapped around their dreams.

And I thought, man, we need to have a conversation about the fact that you are a to have a dream for yourself, even if nobody gets it, even if they actively disagree with this hope that you have for your life. So that was the intention when I wrote it was I just, I'm like, we've got to like lift this weight off of our shoulders of who we're supposed to be and how we're supposed to show up. And I absolutely wrote it for entrepreneurs, for hustlers, for people who have a little thing. But I made sure that I could also speak to, if you're a stay-at-home mom, and you want to, maybe the goal is that you want to run a 10K this year. Maybe someone else's goal is that they want to start a million dollar business.

I just think that you need a goal. It doesn't matter what it is. It only matters that you're in pursuit of something because I think we become who we're called to be when we pursue something for our lives. Who knows if you'll even get there? Because I certainly set out with a target in mind and I've become something else along the way,

but that pushing yourself, that moving, through discomfort, that challenging yourself to do a little bit more than you thought you could, that is so powerful, especially for women who have struggled with a sense of self. One of the things that I love about what you do, whether it be social media, your podcast, your events, is give me some license here because I think you know what I'm saying, but you've almost glamorized in some way failure because it's like, girls, what are we worried about here? There's not been one successful person, there's not been one successful company, not been one successful sports organization, not one successful politician, pick the venue,

yeah, okay, the channel of society. Yeah. Nobody has experienced success without some level of failure. And I think you've really blown the kind of the hush off of that. Yeah. Well, I feel like, I guess for me, because I grew up, I had pretty hard beginning to life. And so it just never occurred to me that anything would be easy. I just assumed 100% I'm going to fail at this.

I was never surprised. What I'm surprised by now is when I go speak on stages and people, you know, what are you struggling with? And they're just like, well, what will they think? I'm like, who? The girls from eighth grade that you're friends with on Facebook? Are you kidding me? Those girls or your mother-in-law or whoever, they don't have to live with regret. They don't have to get to the end of their life and go, man, I could have been something. But I was too worried about what other people would think of me for failing. And here's the gift for everybody who's listening and they're worried about, trying something new and whether or not they fail, you are going to fail. You are going to suck because everybody does when they start. It just is real. Give yourself the gift of sucking. Just, you know, hey, we're going to try this. It's not going to be very good. And then I'm going to get better. And then I'm going to get better. Because that's the only way that I know how is to just

figure it out as you go. My favorite, one of my favorite Dave Ramsey quote ever, which I do give him credit for when I steal it is, you know, you see people on the mountaintop of success and you think, oh, they got to this great height and they're so successful. He's like, nah. Well, he doesn't say nah, I do. Dave Ramsey, no, no, no, no. He's like, no, I'm not standing on a mountain top of success. I'm standing on my failures. I'm just on top of them instead of buried underneath them. That's exactly right. Just keep getting back up, man. Let's talk about a cousin to fear and doubt, and that's rejection. Yeah. This is when actually some really rejects us. You know, fear and doubt are kind of lies in the mind. It kind of lies or

lies. But rejection is when somebody, whether it's personal or not, says no to the dream or no to the opportunity, and that is devastating. Absolutely. You and I've had our share of it because we are the product in our particular world. Yes. So it's not like somebody saying no to our copier machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I would love for you to talk to people who are, they're not just terrified of failure. Yeah. They're terrified of rejection. Yeah. Will you like me? Yeah. I guess the two things I would say on this, because I speak at a lot of multi-level marketing, direct sales type of things, and those gals tend to really worry about someone saying no to their product because they internalize a no to the product as a no to them. And I like to remind people that you personally

have said no to things many times. You didn't have the money. You weren't interested. There's a million reasons, but rarely did you say no because you hated the person selling it. So number one, stop being so dramatic. Stop making this about you. It's not about you. Number one. Number two, just accept, just tell yourself from the get-go. I'm going to get a hundred rejections before I get one piece of acceptance. You know, and then there's this like coaching, like in your face part of me that wants to remind you, if you can't handle rejection, you're not going to last. Like, I laugh all the time. It's like people are like, oh, I wish I could speak on stage like you do. I wish I could do. I'm sure you get, you know, I wish I could do this.

And I'm like, great, start talking on stages. I learned to speak on stage at local Mops groups and senior citizen homes and with my hands shaking and I was so bad. I have been told no a million times by family, by friends, by experts. And the thing was, I just don't think that my dreams or anybody else's to manage. You can tell me no all day. And in fact, my husband knows this. If I come up because I'm a dreamer, so I'll be like, babe, we're going to build a rocket ship to the moon.

He actually knows not to have a negative reaction because if he hasn't, it will only fuel me more. I'm like, oh, you don't think I can be a cosmonaut? Watch this. Watch me work. Hold my beer. Yeah, exactly. I'm in. So I feel like, let's flip this script a little bit. For those people who are listening and have a fear of this, of rejection, just be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be rejected. and that is part of this work. You maybe need to get rejected 50 times or 100 times so that you can have skin that's thick enough to handle what the Lord's about to throw at you.

You need to walk through this exact valley and take these exact punches to be a strong enough warrior to climb that mountain. Big thanks to Rachel Hollis. Again, the new book is, Girl, Stop Apologizing a Shame-Free Plan for embracing and achieving your goals. Well, I like this transition.

because it says here in my notes that we're going to get you to Dave's teaching on the momentum theorem, and I can't think of a better transition because you want to talk about momentum right now. I mean, Rachel is riding a rocket ship, and many people have described Ramsey Solutions as a rocket ship as well. So who better to talk about the momentum theorem, what it is, and then how you apply it and what it can do for your organization. Here's Dave Ramsey, teaching on the momentum theorem. The momentum theorem. Momentum is what every marketer yearns for. If you have momentum, you look smarter and better than you are.

We were at lunch yesterday and one of the guys goes, it seems like you've got it all together. And I said, that's an illusion. I've told you enough stories about the stupid things I've done. I hope that you don't think I've got it all together. I really don't have it all together. But we've got so much momentum, we really look like we do. You know?

When you got things going your way, everything you touch turns to gold. You know what I'm talking about? Everything that works, works. And it's not that you don't have frustrations. It's that you've got this big mo in your life, man. I mean, mojo is happening. I mean, you can have that in your marriage. You can have that with your kids.

You can have that in your physical training for a marathon. When you get things running the right way, it feels like everything's downhill. Yeah, you've got to put forth effort, but it's downhill. When you got momentum, you look better and smarter than you are. You're not as good as you look. When you don't have momentum, you look dumber and worse than you are. When you're getting started and there's mud on you and you're clawing and you're scratching and you're digging and you're clipping coupons and you're doing all these false starts and you're

bumping into the wall like you're blind and you're running around out there, you are doing stuff that's going to cause things to happen 10 years from now that you can't see yet. And you're better than you look because you look pretty dumb when you don't have momentum. And you see that in people's personal lives sometimes when the pendulum swings back and they don't have momentum and you're going, you're not nearly as stupid as this situation looks. You know, there's no way. I use this as an example all the time. After doing financial coaching and working with people in crisis situations now for a couple of decades, I can tell you this. Once someone has made $100,000 a year, two or three years in a row, and it was based on their talent and effort in the

marketplace, it wasn't a fluke. It wasn't based on somebody, they hit the lottery. I don't mean that. But based on something they planted and they were. able to harvest in the six-figure range. Once they do that, when I talk to them and I hear they're making $40,000 a year, it's really easy for me to tell them that there is a very high likelihood of them getting back above 100 pretty quick. There's a gravitational pull that pulls you back into that because once you've done it, you know you can do it. You think you can do it until you've done it. But once you've done it, you know you can do it. It's not like you'll get up there and be surprised again. So once you've been there, so I talked to a guy that other day, he said,

I made $200,000 a year for 15 years. I'm making $30,000 a year right now. I can't even pay my bills. Is there any hope for me? And so there's a lot of hope for you because fools don't make 200 grand a year for 15 years. You're not a fool. You may have done some foolish stuff. I mean, you're not an ignoramus, though. You have the ability to do something in the market. And the ones that are easiest to tell that to is a salesperson. A salesperson that is sold at that level, they can sell. They are marketable. They can sell something at that level again. They know how to move that kind of volume. There's a gravitational pull to move them back into that. All that is is about momentum. That's what it's about. They look worse right then than they really are. They have a proven track record of being better than they look right then.

Now, several years ago, we had this wonderful experience where I had been on all these TV shows. I've been on Larry King and Good Morning America and the Today show and whatever. were Sally Jesse Raphael. You remember her? I used to go on that show. Lord, forgive me. And, oh, man, I've done all this stuff. And the big deal in those days, and, you know, in the last few years, it's not been nearly as big a deal. But the big deal back then in the financial peace days was if you could get on Oprah, boom, your book goes to number one on the Times. If she extended her scepter to you, boom, you're in. I mean, she had unbelievable power. Publishers worshipped at her feet. Publicists that could book you on that show. If they thought they could get you on that show,

they would charge you an arm and a leg. And we worked Oprah and worked Oprah, and she just would not. I mean, part of it was she had Susie. And the weird thing was, was that this book comes out, stinking book hits the street, January 7th. We're cooking. We hit the New York Times. Everybody's calling us. I'm on 700 Club. I'm on the Today Show. I'm on People magazine. This thing's going, going, going. Susie comes out. I'm kicking her butt, man. This thing's like number two, number three on the Times, and she's hovering down there, you know, just barely showing up on the Times. Her first book, my first book.

It came out the same month. We're going along, going along, going along. She gets on Oprah just left me in the dust. I'm still bitter. I mean, she just, and then she was Oprah's girl for a while. I mean, man, she just ding, ding, ding. Then they kind of didn't like each other for a little while, and then they kind of liked each other for a while, and they've been back and forth and all this.

So Oprah's people, though, they would call us some teases. They'd call and say, you know, we're thinking about, would y'all send us some stuff? A couple truckloads when you want it tomorrow? I mean, what do you want to see? How much video do you want to see? I mean, what do you need to see? Because we will have it there in the morning. Dave will drive it to your house.

You know, what does it take? And so they did this like five or six times. They would call us, you know, three or four, five requests. They'd start discussing subject matter, what we could do on the show, what it would look like. Could we get some of our radio listeners to come on as examples and talk about marriage and money or whatever, all this stuff? And, you know, we'd be going, we're going to get on Oprah, it's going to happen. And then they just wouldn't return our calls. Just beat, just cut us off.

Just wouldn't even talk to us. This happened like six times. So our joke got to be, we're the people that have almost been on Oprah more than anybody. So finally they call up and they said, okay, we're going to put you on. And we said, yeah, right, sure you are. And then they did. We went up and taped the thing in like April or something like that. And so we called, oh, before that I forgot, in November, Leslie Stahl called and said, 60 Minutes

wants to do a piece on you, and we went, yay, oh, God, what's that mean? Because 60 Minutes is not always nice. And so it's like this could be a mixed blessing. And so she came down and spent forever with us. It was unbelievable and just wore us out. And God protected us. We had 60 Minutes Peace in November of that year that was 12 minutes long, and they didn't say one negative thing.

that is a miracle of God right there. The chances of that happening ever, because they always have to do a nice thing and at least put one zinger on the end. But his detractors say, you know, they always have to have that on there, right? They just positive all the way through. Man, it just blew up.

Our server's almost shut down. We got hit so hard. It was awesome. So that happened, and then a couple months later, it's now Oprah's got a great idea. She's going to have his own. So by then we're just like, well, we may or may not. But, right?

Anyway, we go up there and shoot it. And, of course, we get all excited. so Thomas Nelson gets on the phone starts calling everybody Barnes & Noble orders like 9 million copies and I'm exaggerating but they ordered a bunch a total money makeover because they don't want us to be on Oprah and them not have the book right books a million orders family books everybody's got their books ready because here comes Oprah it's going to it's going to happen in May and then the Oprah people called up and said you know we're not going to air it in May you want to call Barnes & Noble and tell them that what the flip are you talking about well we actually like this particular segment and we think it's so good we want to air it in September, and we've got a lot better ratings in September, it's going to be better for you. I said, better for me except for the fact that Barnes & Noble is going to strangle us because they've got enough books to choke a horse. They're going to sit on until September, and they're going to ship them back and forth and bill us in and out and all this stuff.

Lord, him, mercy. So whatever. So anyway, Oprah puts us on and sets us up for like the 12th of September. 60 Minutes calls up in August and says, that's the highest rated show we had last year that you were on. We're going to do it in reruns. We're going to run it in August. And I said, could you run it, like towards the end?

to August. Sure. Yeah, we'll put it on last week of August because that way we got 60 minutes and then we got Oprah back to back, right? And so we called Larry King just because we didn't want to be left out. And so, but he didn't put us on that time. But we were home with the King a bunch. He's a good guy. But anyway, so we had all this publicity momentum going on. Well, our guys, this young crew is running around going like, oh, we're just, this is unbelievable. Everything's perfect. All of our dreams are going to come true. Oprah and 60 minutes right together, oh, God, and we're just going nuts around here, all this momentum. And they started acting like and talking like this was a random event.

I kept saying, no, guys, you got to understand. You work your butt off for 15 years. You're an overnight success. This is not a random event. This is called harvesting what we've been planting. I've been talking to Oprah six years longer than you've worked here. And I'm trying to communicate this. So we came up with this whole idea of trying to explain momentum,

and it was so good that we've used it to explain momentum ever since. And it's become a central part of our whole place. We call it the momentum theorem. Momentum is not an accident. It is a created process. It is art and science, but there is a formula. The entree leader understands and applies the momentum theorem. The momentum theorem is this.

FI over T multiplied by G equals unstoppable momentum. Now let's unpack that. The FI is focused intensity. Focus and intensity are vital to creating momentum. If you are focused and you have no intensity, you can forget it. If you have intensity and you are not focused, you can forget it. If you are focused and have no intensity, you're just sitting and looking at one thing. If you have intensity and you're not focused, you're running around like a chance.

chicken with his head cut off. And you're not touching anything because you have no focus. If you can keep your focus and you can be extremely intense, you can win. We did some work with the NFL. Chris Hogan used to do a lot of work with NFL players, trying to keep some of them from being on one of those ESPN specials. And so I went and I was speaking to a group of rookies, a rookie camp one year at one of the NFL teams and standing against the back wall was this guy leaning. Now, you know, I'm a football fan, but I don't know what these guys look like with their helmets off. You tell me their name, I know who they are in a lot of cases, if they're a big name especially. But I, you know, I don't study them enough that I know

what they look like without their helmet on. I mean, I don't have any idea what the guy's face looks like. There's a big old tall lanky guy standing against the back wall, and I finally figured out, and I won't say who he is because he's a world-class Hall of Fame receiver. He's leaning against the back wall, and he was older in the league at that point, but he's hanging around listening to me talking rookie camp. And I'll start up a conversation afterwards because I was a fan. He's a cool guy and a great, great football player. And I just said, he was asking me about money stuff and said, man, these rookies, they got to learn this stuff. He said, that's why I came in here. I'm going to encourage all of them. I'm going to put my hand on all of them and pop

them on the head because there's nothing smarter than a 22-year-old except a 22-year-old with a $10 million signing bums. I'm trying to explain to these kids. The NFL stands for not for long. And 3.7 years, and you will leave the league disabled. 82%. have a permanent disability of some kind. And 78% divorce rate in the first four years they leave the league. It's amazing. It's a horrible, horrible condition they leave. It's not anybody's fault.

It's just the result of the process, the meat grinding process that they go through. You mean, when you get run over by a car three times a day, it eventually takes a toll on you, you know? And some of those men are the size of Kia's. So anyway, I'm standing at the back wall talking to this guy, a world-class receiver, and I said, listen, I really admire what you do, man. I said, it's an amazing thing, the level of focus, the level of intensity. And I'm always talking to people about, you know, focus.

And in order to stay focused on something and to catch that ball in some of those circumstances, the level of concentration that's required, I said, it's amazing. But I've got to ask you something. I'm just curious. And don't take offense, please, because you're very large. Seriously, you have been doing nothing since you were six years old but catching a football. you get paid $10 million a year catch a football. How can you get hit in the numbers with a football and not catch the football?

How could that happen? Now, I'm not trying to be offensive, but I'm just curious, what in the flip is going through your head? And he said, people lose their focus in life, and you lose your focus on the football field for two reasons. he's a philosopher. It's great, though. It's good material.

He said, people lose their focus when they're afraid. And he said, have you ever heard the announcer say he dropped the ball because he heard footsteps? He said, Dave, that's not a metaphor. You can hear Sasquatch coming. Boom, boom, boom, boom. He said, it sounds like you're getting ready to get killed because you're getting ready to get killed. Because you're getting ready to get killed. He said, I know when I'm catching some of those balls that I'm going to spend the next two days in an ice bath after the hit that's coming.

And he said, and that is in slow motion and it does run through your head while that ball that I get paid $10 million to catch is hitting me in the numbers. And he said, if you can't focus past the fear, you drop the ball. He said, people in life do the same thing. They become afraid and they lose their focus. they focus on the fear and the pain instead of on the success and the result of working through the fear. He said, if I can block out what's getting ready to happen to my body, I can catch the ball. But there's a reality to that. It's painful. I said, what's the other one? He said, people lose their focus when they're greedy, when you get greedy. He said, the other one is,

have you ever seen the player running down the field? He's running a route. He turned, and the DB turns the other way. Translation, he's run his route perfect and crisp, and he faked the other guy, and he's standing there by himself. He's completely open. The ball is coming. It's a perfect play. Right there's the goal line.

He knows all of this in his head. I'm getting ready to score. I'm getting ready to do the dance. I'm about to get cheered by 100,000. people. All of this is happening in your head in a nanosecond, Dave. The other guy's gone this way. There's nothing that can go wrong. All I got to do is catch the ball. And I'm not even worried about that because in my mind, I'm already dancing in the end zone. And you take your eye off the ball when you're greedy for a nanosecond. And it comes at 45 miles an hour in a perfect spiral, hits you in the

numbers and drops to the turf. Because for just a second, you went, this is going to be fun. that's greed. You've seen that play, and I've seen that play as a football fan. It's amazing. So focus is destroyed by fear. Focus is destroyed by greed. In anyone's life, I think that's true. It's a great metaphor. I think he's a great philosopher. He's probably got a future after the game. And so focus and intensity. Now, I meet people who can be intense and who can be focused, but I don't meet many who can do it over time. Real momentum never happens quickly or easily. It's over time. I over T focused intensity over time. You have to do it over a long period of time. If you can find somebody who can be focused and be intense for 90 days, I tell sales people when they come on board,

if you'll go bananas for your first 90 days, go crazy. Just create unbelievable levels of activity in the first 90 days. For the next two years, you'll eat off of that 90 days because you create so much momentum in that period of time. If you can find people who can be focused, for a year, you can find people that everybody in the city will know what they do. If you can find somebody who can stay focused and intense over 10 years, you have someone that the whole nation will know their name and they begin to change the whole culture in their industry. They're what's known as an industry leader, focused intensity over time. How would you like to get the kind of momentum that Dave is talking about? Well, we've got a resource that's absolutely

free designed to help you do that. It's the 12-day challenge that will walk you through the core lessons that Dave uses to run our business, Ramsey's Solutions. Twelve days of growth. So what is the 12 days of growth? It is a 12-day challenge. It's going to take place April 15 through April 26. You'll join a group of thousands upon thousands of leaders across the world. And each day, April 15 through April 26, we're going to send you a lesson along with one simple challenge. We'll to complete. And this is going to help you grow as a leader. And I love this. And I'll take why. Because you know you're part of a really big group and the accountability is massively important to the intentionality of this growth challenge. So here's what you're going to get when

you sign up. It's absolutely free. A free downloadable guide to help you follow along with the challenge. A closed Facebook group just for the other people that are in this challenge. And you're going to get daily emails with the challenge and then some exclusive Ontario leadership content to help you maximize the challenge. And here's the bonus. If you register, you're also going to get the Entree Leadership e-book completely free. That's Dave's number one New York Times bestselling book, Entree Leadership. We'll give you the e-book absolutely free when you register to be a part of the 12 days of growth. Two ways to do it. Click the link in the show notes or text EL Challenge, no space, EL Challenge. Text that to 33-4-44-4. That's 33-4-4-4. That's 3-4-4.

All right, that's going to do it. We've just truly filled up your mind. You need a break following this masterpiece. On behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you 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 Christy Wright's Business Boutique podcast. Hey, I'm Christy Wright, and I help women all over the country take their ideas and passions and hobbies

and turn them into profitable businesses. If you have an idea in your head or a dream in your heart, and you've ever wondered if you could make money doing it, I'm here to help. Join us on the Business Boutique podcast where we are equipping women to make money doing what they love. If you'd like to hear full episodes, just search Business Boutique in iTunes

or go to businessboutique.com.