EntreLeadership - #332: Why Ramsey Solutions is Built to Last with Dave Ramsey

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

Most entrepreneurs would readily agree that the path to success isn’t easy or predictable—and it’s certainly not without its share of failures. And while Dave Ramsey’s story is no exception, it’s proof that perseverance and hard work pay off. What began nearly 30 years ago on a card table in his living room has now grown into a $200 million business with more than 850 team members. Join us for a candid conversation with Dave on what it takes to start and scale a business, what he’s learned along the way, and how he’s planning for the future of Ramsey Solutions.   entreleadership.com/podcast EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey Turning the Flywheel by Jim Collins Good to Great by Jim Collins Built to Last by Jim Collins Great by Choice by Jim Collins How the Mighty Fall by Jim Collins The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni Episode #288: Dr. Henry Cloud—5 Keys to Future Success Free Download: Chapter 1 of EntreLeadership We want your opinion! Review this episode.   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

If we're not engaged in personal growth, if we're not learning something, we don't know something tomorrow that we didn't know today, we're not going to be something tomorrow that we weren't today. 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. Oh, my goodness, the man whose name is. on the building, joins us today, our feature interview with none other than Dave Ramsey,

our founder, the man who came up with the term, Entree Leadership. You know, it occurs to me, there's probably people listening to this have no idea the story behind it. Dave came up with the term, Entree Leadership became a number one bestselling book, and now a podcast and very successful events. And this is fun. Alex Judd, who is one of our leadership coaches, has been contributing here to the program, is sitting down for his first interview across the table with Dave

Ramsey. That is so fun and he joins me in studio. Alex, this was a big deal. This is a big deal. Yeah, that's an understatement. You're not a stranger to Dave by no means, but first time doing an interview with Dave. It was, it was remarkable. He's one of those people that the closer you get to him, the more you admire and respect him because the person he is on stage, the person he is talking to 16 million people a week on the radio. That's the person that he is in person. And that really shines through in this interview. It's hard to believe this is the same guy that 30 years ago, he and his wife were declaring bankruptcy. And 27 years ago, they were starting a company. And now that company that started with just him at a card table in his living room is now a $200 million

company that you and I get to work for with over 850 people. So he talks in this interview about the different stages and seasons of leadership as he was building this thing. I heard tell stories I've never heard before. It is so cool. I'm so excited to share this with our audience. So here's my conversation with Dave Ramsey. As we were talking about this interview in this time today, we thought about the angles that we could dive into and really thought it would be fascinating to walk through the different stages and seasons of business you've been through and extract some the lessons that you've learned throughout those stages and how they can apply to the listeners that are listening today. Fun. So as we were thinking about it,

We said there's a billion places we could start this story, but I'd like for you to jump in at in college and right outside of college. You had built up a real estate business. And I think you built it. What I've heard is like a $4 million business. So you saw some initial success. Pick it up right there. Who was Dave at that time? How would you describe yourself at that time?

And then tell us what happened next. Well, from a leadership perspective, I was nothing. I was just getting stuff done. I had no idea about leading. Bull and a china shop. I mean, just whatever needed to be knocked down or run over, I would run over it and knock it down. And that's how, you know, I got things done. I mean, I wasn't nasty to people, but I was just ambivalent to people.

We needed to get this house painted, and so we dealt with a house painter, you know, and he needed to paint the house. You know, and we need to get this carpet laid. You dealt with a guy laying the carpet, and the renter need to pay the rent, you know. And so it was just transactional things, and so, but there was just a lot of it, and I was hard charging. very, very busy. What happened next? So you built this business up. Walk us through the story that I know is kind of at the crux of your whole story, which is you built everything and then you lost it. Yeah, we had gotten to right around $4 million worth of real estate, maybe a little bit more,

maybe a little bit less, and owed about $3 million on it. I was doing flips, buying houses, fixing them and flipping them. And my team consisted of an accounting, a lady that did accounting, a lady that did our property management, collected the rents. and a half-drunk maintenance man all the time, half-drunk. He lived in his truck, I think. Everything was working because I was making money on everything, but we had short-term notes because we were doing flips, 90-day notes, and the bank got sold to another bank,

and the other bank looked down and said there was a 26-year-old kid, owes us a million dollars, and that was our main bank. We don't want to do this, and so they called our notes. And we weren't late. We hadn't been done anything wrong, but they just, they had that right because that was stupid enough to sign a short-term paper like that commercial paper. And that started a crash because word got out that day was in trouble. And, you know, the next largest lender called about $800,000, 90 days later.

And so close to $2 million due of the $3 million in a very short period of time. You can't get your money out of real estate that fast. And so it took two and a half years of fighting it. And he actually paid and sold off and or got foreclosed on. from $3 million all the way down to $378,000. So I only filed bankruptcy on $378,000. I almost made it. Thank God I didn't, but I almost made it.

The story would have been different if I had made it. But you did file bankruptcy. Yeah, oh yeah, we filed bankruptcy September 23rd, 1988, and hit bottom. And, you know, most everybody had gotten paid by then. Percentage-wise, 90 or 85% of them had been paid. And I actually went back about a decade later or something. so and paid the rest of them.

Really? Even though it wasn't, it technically wasn't due, but I just felt like God was telling me to do that. You file bankruptcy. What does your mental state look like at that point? What's going through your head? What are you thinking? Well, I mean, I was on top of the world. I was driving a jaguar.

I was high roller. Everybody thought I was smart. I thought I was really smart. And so I went from that high to the ultimate low. I mean, our marriage is hanging on by a thread. The business which had my whole identity was destroyed, so my identity was destroyed. And so I had nothing. I was not only broke, I was broken.

I met God on the way up, but I got to know him on the way down. I think most people would advocate that you should start a business from a place of strength. And I think most people, in a situation where they file for bankruptcy, the first thing they'd be looking for is I just need to find a job. And I know there's some space in between the story. but you start building a business out of that in a pretty vulnerable state. How did you have the tenacity or the resiliency to be able to start building something from being broken? Well, I didn't. The first thing I did is I kept doing real estate deals because I had to eat.

I had two little kids and the lights were getting cut off. And so I would find a piece of real estate and flip it to a buddy that had been a competitor and another investor and make a spread or make a commission, one of the two on it. And I was back making six figures again, but that was just out of desperation. And I did that from 89, 90, and I just started teaching the financial peace stuff at my church. And because I was learning it myself, we decided we're not borrowing money anymore. We're going to be on a budget. We're going to be tithers.

The stuff we teach in financial peach, the wheelhouse stuff at Ramsey. And, you know, that was all just ministry. And it was a catharsis, just healing for years. actually before I made any money in that world. I think the first money I ever made was probably around 1992, four years later in financial peace stuff. Really? So I didn't really start a business.

I mean, I started a ministry out of that. I had no aspirations of it being a for-profit thing at that point. I was just helping other people learn what I had learned. And it was real raw and doing a lot of coaching counseling at the church and that kind of thing. And that laid the foundation, you know, kind of got your rhythm of what works, what doesn't work, almost proof-texted the concepts, even though I didn't know I was doing that. And then a guy called me from a local restaurant chain and had me come in and speak, and they

gave me $250 and coupons to the restaurant. I could make $500. And we ate at that restaurant. And we hated it. Oh, God, it was all. And that was my first speaking gig that I got paid for. You know, and I started coaching and I started making a little bit of money doing that. And that all started really probably around 92.

Yeah, 92. When you think back to that period where you're just starting to build this thing, it's the early days. Do you think about it as those are the good old days? Oh, no, no, no, there's nothing good about it. We were, we didn't know what we didn't know, and we knew we didn't know. I mean, it was bad. Yeah. And we weren't making any money.

And I had to do everything. I had to do all this stuff I hate doing, like accounting. When you're running a one person, two-person business, you're the CEO, the chief everything office. and there's not enough money coming in, none of clients to know if you're going to make it. And so, no, those aren't the good old ones. They were horrible. The startup is a nasty process.

I don't want to live in a one-person operation. It's too much work. I work all the time. And I did a whole bunch of stuff I hate doing. I mean, I was the guy that set up the projector, and I was the guy set up the screen. I was the guy that set up the sound system. I was the guy hauled the books in on the two-wheeler

and set them up on the book table, and then go take a shower and come back in my suit. And I was the guy that spoke. I was the guy at the back table selling the books. I mean, it was like a one-man band, you know, a little monkey thing going on here. But, yeah, it was, no, I don't want to do that again. What was the fuel to keep going? Like, you're sitting there setting up tables in the room thinking, like, what am I, what am I doing?

Oh, no, I didn't think about that. I just thought that's what I had to do to get to do it. Everything we did was to get to teach, to get to have an impact, to get to look at that person and watch their face change as they got new information. And was that what you were passionate about in that moment? Definitely, definitely. We were just trying to help people not, you know, people that were broke, mainly, and not be broke anymore. And we're just showing them these things that we had learned and that set us free and watching them be liberated and watching the power of scripture. When it enters someone's life, it changes the trajectory of their life, the truth of being on a budget, being out of debt. Just getting to do that and the accounting and setting up the chairs and hauling the stuff around and all the stuff I didn't want to do is I did all that to get to do the other.

I think so often, and we have a lot of the millennial generation that listen to both your show, this podcast, I am one. So often people criticize that generation, whether it's correct or not, of just thinking of the destination and not thinking about the setting up the tables, the journey that it takes to get there. Well, I don't think that's the millennials. I think that's anybody that's never done it. Until you've done it, you don't know how much work there is. I mean, I'm sitting here now 30 years the other side of all of that, and people go, wow, I mean, the success of Rams. today and the Ramsey organization today and yeah, yeah.

But I had no idea how much it was going to work is going to be. We have worked so hard. All of us, not just me. I mean, this place, we get her done, man. I mean, and it's not, you know, I can see that destination when I was starting to heal after the bankruptcy.

I could see this day in the distance in the fall. I couldn't see all the details, but I knew there was tremendous market potential. I knew the market was huge. I knew that we had the end. answer. So, you know, I knew that we would be something that would be remarkable. I know we could do something big, but I had no idea what it was going to entail. That's what I didn't know. But you just do the next right thing. You just do the next right thing. And you do the next right thing.

And it takes you one step further. And, you know, the Bible says in Isaiah that God's alighted our feet, not on the horizon. And so he shows us one more step, one more step, one more step. The vision you get sometimes is no more than three or four feet. It's not a beacon five years out where it's really clear. People that say they knew something five years before, they're unusual people. I've never been one of those people. Are there moments you remember where you didn't know if you could go anymore? I always knew I could go.

I just didn't know if I wanted to sometimes. Sometimes I just like, and almost all of those are around disappointment. of almost always people. Oftentimes a team member that I trusted and counted on and really believed in. And not only do they quit, but then they go out in the marketplace and say nasty stuff about me, you know.

And a guy I did stuff for, a gal I did, you know, I did incredible stuff for them. And yet the betrayal of that makes me go, ah, it's not worth it. But then you go, If it was easy, everybody would do it. You know? And that guy doesn't get to decide my destiny.

I'd decide my destiny. God decides my destiny. He doesn't make that decision. So it's just that disappointment just mounts and builds up, have build up on your heart over time, as Ken Coleman says. And you reach a point, it's like, I don't think I want to do this. You know, it's just too much to add gum trouble. But it wasn't like, I don't think I can.

You know, we've been the Blues Brothers from a start, man. We've been on a mission from God. Yeah. And did you personally? receive it as a calling as a mission from the beginning? Definitely. Definitely. I didn't just perceive it.

It is. I mean, I've written stuff in my journal in those early days where God was talking to me and telling me this is what was going to happen. And, you know, it wasn't out loud or weird. I mean, it's just in my head. But my prayer time is like, this is going to happen. Okay. Write it out. And then you go back a few years later and you go, wow, look at that.

That actually was God. Amazing. Are there specific moments where you think back to them and you kind of fondly remember having this recognition like this, might actually work, and you start to feel that traction? Yeah, yeah, I mean, the successes are there. And, you know, the opposite of those disappointments in people are the people thing might work. You know, we win the best place to work. And we start to learn how to lead, not just be a boss and not just execute.

We actually learn how to invest into folks and love them well and pastor them and walk with them. And when you've got a high-quality person standing on your right, and you look up, And there's a real high quality person standing on your left, and you're going, hey, I could be working for them as easy as they're working for me. These are studs, you know, studettes. And I, this is pretty cool. This might work. And that's the people part of it. But then also when you launch a product and it goes, phto, you know.

That's got to be pretty gratifying. Yeah, those are fun. You know, you think you're going to do 1,000 units. You do 10,000 and 20 minutes. You're like, dadgum, look at that. That's fun. Does it surprise you sometimes? Do you still get surprised?

Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. And sometimes I get surprised and disappointed in those things, you know. You launch them. You know, I'd say you probably have more failures than you do surprises on the good side. But, you know, you start poking around the edges of stuff. And now I don't get surprised as much as I used to because I probably have a better sense of the market. Yeah. With just experience, you know.

There's nothing more fun for an entrepreneur than to launch something and it freaking work. It's like, freaking worked. That's right. You take that every dollar app, man. Six million people are using this. every dollar app. Yeah. I mean, the day we launched that thing, I mean, it was just a few, just a little while

before we had a million people in it. I mean, you go, whoa, that worked. This is going to be big. You know, and that just makes you smile deep inside, you know. That's a good day. You talk about this in our Entree Leadership Master Series event, and you kind of just referred to it, the difference between a boss and a leader, and a boss is looking for compliance, and you talk about a leader is actually driving and serving people.

You tell the story that you were a boss for a period. Are there any boss stories that you think back to and you just cringe and you just say, I just wish he would. Is there any specific stories you remember? Yeah, I think I've only reprimanded someone in anger in 30 years maybe three times. And every one of those I really, really remember clearly and wished I didn't. and it's not your best day. But I was just pissed off and they didn't do what they're supposed to do.

They screwed up. They screwed up. I mean, they deserve to be reprimanded, but not the way I did it or the situation I did it in. No, that was not good at all. And, you know, I woke up 5 o'clock the next morning and God said, my son, you are a jerk. I said, yeah, father, I am. You have to go in and try to fix this, but you can't unring that bell. I mean, once you hit a dog, you're a dog.

They cow every time you walk by, they duck, you know. And so you can't unring that bell. And the more you do that kind of stuff, the more the whole place does that, the whole culture does that. And creativity is killed and entrepreneurism is killed when you don't lead, when you just boss, when you manage by anger. And I don't manage by anger. I do get angry. I get frustrated. I get passionate.

I drive hard to excellence. And sometimes people think that's anger. It's never anger. It's just, it's almost this desperation. If we don't get it right, we're going to. die. Yeah. And you believe so desperately. Yeah. Well, and it's just, there is this healthy that kind of, you know, once you've been broke, you know, you can be broke, you know, and so everything doesn't turn out like in every story the way it's supposed to. Yeah. The marketplace is speaking to

you. It says you suck, you know, so you better fix this. And I'm like, yee, you know, it's like a little bit of fear-based thing almost, not terror, but it's like, you know, this drive for excellence is so passionate with me with our team. And there's a, the ups and the ups and sided to it too. I mean, that's who we want to be as our brand. So in the midst of that kind of thing, sometimes I have, in my high D personality, which is what I lead from primarily, is the, just again, being task oriented, not people oriented, and I've had to stop and back up. That's where I've been a boss more often, but it wasn't really an anger thing. But yeah, I've done plenty of stuff. And I mean, one time, gosh, there were probably 10 of us or 12 of us or something. We

were at the other location. And it was like February. And I come to work on time. And I don't understand people don't want to work on time. You need to be at a Lombardi time, 15 minutes early and leave 15 minutes late. I don't expect you to work until 10 o'clock at night. But, you know, come and drag button in 30 minutes late. I mean, we're not on a clock at our place, but you need to be freaking work.

I'm paying you. You know, I don't understand that. My brain doesn't work that way. And so people were just dragging in. in. And I talked about it in staff meeting one day. And like the next week I come in, people are just dragging in 15, 20 minutes late. And, you know, I get there. And after I, you know, I'm just standing there watching it, five, six people. Half my staff is coming in late. You know, and I'm like, I'm done with this. So staff meeting the next week is February

in Nashville. It's cold. It was like about five degrees. And I just took all the chairs for staff meeting and put them out on the sidewalk. Outside. Outside. Outside. We had staff meeting outside. And I said, listen, if you people don't come to work and do your jobs, we're all going to be out in the cold. So I wanted you to know what it felt like. You're telling them this while they're sitting on the curb. Freezing to death. They're all out there like, come on.

I'm like, and you know what? People weren't late after that. Yes. You know, it's like probably a fun example, but probably not the best leadership style. You know, so one guy kept coming in late. That was in this building, a sales guy. and this wasn't that long ago, probably five, six years ago. And finally, I just kept observing it because he would park near my office and I would see him.

He'd come in 30 minutes, 45 minutes late. So finally, I just went and sat at his desk and put my feet up on his desk. And when he got there, I was sitting at his desk. This is a big deal. The CEO is sitting in your chair. And you're late again. You know, he never was late again. There you go.

I didn't say a thing. I just said, you know. But that kind of stuff, you know, you have to learn to do it well. You still get the same accomplished without being a butt about it. Yeah. I just have, I hold myself to that standard. Yeah. So I expect everybody else to be.

And I mean, I'm really curious, how do you set your standard? Like, how do you make sure the world's not setting your standard for you? How do you, like, how does Dave Ramsey set his standard? Well, the benefit of going broke is is that my need to impress other people went away. I really don't have any fear of man. I want to serve you and I want to interact with you in the moment. marketplace and get a tip for having served your table well, so I want to do that, but I don't fear you.

Yeah. You know, and so peer pressure used to set all my standards because I was the way I looked, the way I talked. I wore a fake Rolex when I was had that real estate. I mean, that sounds shallow I was. And it's horrible. And so I'm quite the opposite now. I'm so unassuming it's ridiculous.

So, you know, we just look and say, okay, God, you're running this place. I work for you. So you set the standard. And, you know, it's served people and it's love people well and it's be fair and tell the truth and treat other people like you want to be treated and excellence and hold this company up and everything we do in the marketplace as a witness to our faith. Because if you have but do stuff, people don't want to know about your faith. Yeah. You know, and so if you're going to put a fish on the back of it, drive it right. You know, so it's like, geez.

So that's us. And that's what drives me. And then, you know, I've got good. close friends that are in our leadership team here and in the community that pastors and people that speak into my life that, you know, if they see I'm out of line on something, I'm accountable to them. And my wife is wholly unimpressed with Dave Ramsey. So very accountable there. I mean, if she's here, David, you can't say that. So that kind of stuff. And so that's all good. And those are people I actually do care what they think. Yeah. Probably because you trust them.

But I've got, you know, we've got so many critics out there that, you know, but if you quit doing something every time somebody criticize you, you'd never do anything. I mean, there's only one way to avoid criticism, Aristotle said, do nothing, be nothing, and say nothing. And these are not options for me. You just decided I'm not going there. Well, I'm just not going on. I'm going to be dictated to by the hell.

Yeah. Well, you know, I hear these people say, well, you need to read what your social media is saying. That's customer feedback. That's not customer feedback. That's a free control. and my customers are different. There's a lot being written today and probably for the past decade or so about that term servant leadership. And I've heard you talk about that.

And it's almost like you look at it a little bit differently. And also you teach our team that we subscribe to servant leadership, but talk to our audience a little bit about, like, what do you view as servant leadership? And what does that look like in action? Well, I've always taught in Autry Leadership. The first time I heard the term was a Christian leadership thing. And I didn't hear servant. I heard subservient. And I went, no, uh, I'm not subservient.

I sign your due check. I'm not subservient. Because that was the boss me, you know, a little bit. But really the leader of me. But when I really realized what serving someone means is it means you have their best interest at heart. And so if I'm sitting down with someone who's not doing a good job and we're having to work through a reprimand, am I bullying them, which is serving me, or am I? helping them get better, got their best interest at heart. It changes the vernacular. It changes

the conversation. It changes the tone. It changes where you would sit down with them, in whose presence you would sit down with them. I got your best interest at heart. And if I can get you doing these things, you get to stay. But if it can't get you doing these things, you've got to work somewhere else. And that is serving you. It's to be very, very clear and let that person know what it takes to move to the next level, what it takes to get to a level where your, you know, your performance is reasonable and those kinds of things. So oftentimes you hear someone serving. And in the South, we're particularly this way. We want to be nice to everybody. You know, it's like it's almost passive aggressive. It's behind their back, right? Yeah, it's passive aggressive as an art form,

you know, and so it's like, you know, just be nice. And I thought I was being nice, but I was becoming increasingly frustrated with these situations. And that's not serving them. I'm actually serving my children by teaching them to behave. Now, they don't feel that. They don't go, well, my dad's a servant. No, they go, my dad makes me behave. But that's their best interest at heart. And I'm not making them behave so that I have good kids. I'm making them behave so they can be good adults. My grandkids, too, for that matter. Like, you know, Papa Dave will serve you. And so, you know, and so the same thing's true with the customer. What does it mean to serve a customer? You know, we've got the customer's interested at their heart. That's all it means.

Yeah. That's what it means. I'm not extracting. You're not a unit of revenue when you're one of our customers. You're someone we want your life to be better. And the natural byproduct of if we cause that to happen is we make money. But if we just go in to extract money, the whole spirit changes, the messaging changes, the relationship is not there. It's a transaction. And we all meet companies that are transactional and people that are transactional and they don't know how I serve. Yeah. That's what it amounts to. They talk about customer service. They have to have seminars on customer service because they don't know what service means. All service means is you have the other

person's interest at heart. It's all it means. I think we all get to hear this on the radio or at least 16 million people a week get to hear you do this on the radio. And the way you do it on the radio is kind of how you do it with our business as well is there are some people where they will call in with a question or a thought and you will take them to task on air. But then there's some people, they'll call in with a similar question or thought and you'll be very sympathetic and you'll walk with them and make sure they get pointed in the right direction. So it's not like it's a cookie cutter approach. How do you decide or like, why is it not a cookie cutter approach?

Well, it's based on what their knowledge base should have been. Again, I'm going to treat them like I'd want to be treated. But you can't call the Dave Ramsey show and say, I've been listening to you for 10 years. I've been through Financial Peace University three times. And I at least a car last week. What do you think? Well, I think you're an idiot.

That's what I think. And I'm probably going to say it about that way, right? Because you should have a knowledge base. And everything you just told me, and then you do this action that is 1,000% perpendicular to everything that you claim you know. Versus a kid called me, you know, yesterday, YouTube kid, listener, viewer, and says, you know, I'm 21. And I've been listening to you for three days. I'm really enamored with this stuff. And I'm really having trouble with taking money on my savings and paying cash.

paying off my debt. I just, I'm struggling with that. I'm meeting that guy where he is. He's brand new. I don't have any expectation that he understands all the history in the background and that. So I have to go way back and start and walk him gently through that, persuade and teach and let him get there. Now, sometimes I do that and then they still want to argue. I'm like, no, I'm not having an argument with you. You called me. You're either going to do this or you're not going to do it. About the third time they argue with me, I'm like, listen, do what you want to do. You call me, next caller. You know, I'm not going to sit and I'm not going to debate you on this stuff. And that's true around here. We'll sit and talk through something. But once we all decide what we're going to do, you don't get to come back three weeks later and go,

well, I just decided I'm going to do it. That's not how we, that's not how our team runs around here. We're very project oriented, very task oriented, and we're very unified. We have a lot of communication. I don't thump people. Our leaders don't thump people. We get a consensus. But once there's a consensus, by God, get it done. You know, execute. And you don't get to go, well, I wasn't feeling it today. I'm sorry. That doesn't fly.

Because you have the knowledge base. You were in on the discussion. You can't agree to something as we fight through and say, okay, there's this and this and this, but we're going to do it this way. We all agree. And maybe it's someone else's idea that wasn't my idea. And we all agree on that. And you were in on the discussion.

You don't get to come back later and go halfway through the project and go, well, I never really did agree. No, but you were sitting in there. You know, it's one of the reasons I get my wife and I agree on stuff. She can't come back and say, I told you so. You know, it's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. You were there. You don't like the result. You helped make the decision, you know. That was one of the first lessons I learned in working here is at a certain point, once we've had the discussions, you've got to be able to disagree and commit anyway. Yeah, we all do. I do. A lot of stuff we do here are things I don't agree with.

Yeah. But I look around, I go, okay, there's four people here smarter than me sitting at this table, and there's three that might be, and everybody at the table is coming to this conclusion. I'm going to say again, I don't feel good about it, but I'm trusting in the multitude of counsel. I'm going to go against my own. That happens? Oh, all the time. All the time. So you mentioned, you said you're surrounded by people that you feel like, you legitimately

feel like are smarter than you. Especially in their given discipline. Yeah. And they're specialists. When you take our tech guys? I don't even know how to speak that language. Of course they're smarter than me in the discipline. Or our digital marketers?

I'm a great marketer. I'm a world-class marketer, but I'm not a great digital marketer. There are some nuances to that space that I've got to listen to these guys. You know, your leader, Daniel Tarty, is brilliant on not only leadership, but on strategy and on org chart stuff and business acumen. And he's 20 years my junior, you know. But he's brilliant. You have to know.

I mean, the guy is stud. And so, you know, you put those things in place. And I have to go, well, he's the general that I gave the tank army to. And he's on the front lines with the tank army going, this is what the tank army needs to do. And I'm going to, I don't think so. Yeah, I think so. And I'm going to, well, we're going to go with you, not me. We see so many businesses that we coincide with around the country or that we meet within the all-access program,

that truly the thing that is limiting them is the leader isn't willing to put people around the table that are smarter than them because the leader is insecure. Yeah. How do you get, because you're a competitive guy, there's no doubt about that. How do you get past the insecurity of like, I'm surrounded by people like, I may be the stupidest person in the room with regard to this given specialty or with regard to this area? Well, I reserve the right to play the Trump card if I want to. But the question is, what's best for me if I play the Trump card?

I own the place. I can decide. I have that right. And sometimes we're in an executive. Committee or Operating Board argument, and it's pretty fiery. And finally, one or two of them will back off and go, Dave, you're not letting up on this. Are you playing the owner card? Are you just arguing with us?

I'm like, no, we're arguing the problem. We're going to fight the problem down. If I'll play the owner card, I'll let you know the discussion just ends then. But I almost never do because it doesn't work out good for me. It doesn't work out good for the company. It doesn't work out good for the customer. What I'm arguing for is I'm a challenger. I'm an aide on the Enigram.

I mean, that's the way I get two good decisions is fighting with people through it. it. And so it's a decision-making process that's very valid. And I just use that to say, you know, you come in, you present, you want to change this thing. I'm going to start poking at it. And if you don't have answers on those things I'm poking at, then you're not ready to go change that thing. You just had this idea over your coffee this morning. You need to go work on that some more. And so I'm going to push back and see if there's cracks in your stuff. But if you've got your deal solid, even if I'm going, you know, it feels weird to me, dude. I'm going to say it feels weird to me, but have at it.

You're the general one on the front line of the tanks. What's the biggest thing you're learning about leadership right now? A lot of people talk about the implementation of strategies and leadership strategies internally and market strategies, and almost no one knows what they're doing. It's very difficult to find people who really understand all the unintended consequences and the nuances of strategic ship, because our company's gotten big enough now that we have to run it with strategy, not tactical.

The tactical has to be the result of strategy. We cannot just go do stuff. We used to just go do stuff. We didn't think about what five-year plan or flywheels or hedgehogs or, you know, we didn't talk about it. We didn't have any idea what that stuff was. So the flywheels on a car or hedgehogs on the farm, we didn't know. And Jim Collins started teaching us different then.

And Pat Lincione started teaching us. And we've had several people over the years join our teaching us. team that were good at strategy with MBAs and so forth. Most MBAs have good strategic thought that's taught as a part. It's one of the disciplines you're taught to get an MBA. And I don't have that. So I haven't had to learn that. But I'm also starting to realize that even sometimes supposedly sophisticated very large companies really have no idea what the crap they're doing. There's some that do. There's just a handful. And a lot of medium-sized family businesses like ours or small family businesses have a better handle on it. It's more primitive in some cases than

maybe a big-time Fortune 50 company or something like that. But what it takes for this place to operate a decade from now when I'm 68 years old, and the thoughts around that kind of stuff is what I'm learning now. And there are people that know, and there's a lot of Jim Collins, I was just reading his new monograph this morning, finished it up on the flywheel that he just sent out. It's really good. And I sent him a note this morning encouraging him. He's so brilliant. And, you know, and good to great did that for all of us back in the day. Bill Thelast did that to all of us back in the day. And Great by choice did that. I mean, Jim's just, he's just a classic. But the Henry Clouds and the Pat Lynchionis, the people we expose our Entree

Summit people to are the people that I learned from. Stuff that Henry Cloud has done and Lynchioni, for that matter, from a strategic standpoint, inside our company showing us and coming in and giving us decision-making frameworks to put things in place or things I didn't even know existed. I don't even know. I didn't know there was such a thing a decade ago. I will never forget, we were at Entree Summit. It was not this past one. It was the one before it. And I will never forget sitting in the room and listening to the former CEO of Ford Talk, Alan Malawi, and looking behind me and seeing you taking notes. Oh, I take notes on all those guys. I know that now. I didn't know that at the time. What is the

drive to just you're still reading, you're still learning, you are still incessantly, voraciously learning. What is the drive? Well, if you don't, you die. It's probably a little bit of desperation. I mean, because things are they're growing or they're dying. And that's people and organizations. And I'm the problem with this organization. My leadership team is the problem with this organization. We're also the solution. And if we're not engaged in personal growth, if we're not learning something, we don't know something tomorrow that we didn't know today, we're not going to be something tomorrow that we weren't today. And I'm certainly a whole lot better husband than I was 37 years ago.

I'm a lot better dad than I was with my first child born. They don't come with a manual. I didn't know what the flip I was doing. I mean, I know a lot about nurturing children now. It's a little late. But I mean, the grandbabies are like, my kids are like, who are you? Where'd you come from? But, you know, you should get better at every area of your life.

If you ought to be better in your spiritual walk and your communication with God, you ought to have a better understanding of Scripture, you ought to have a better understanding of leadership. If you're not, you just quit. I mean, no, no thanks. If someone comes to you at one of our events or calls you on the radio and says, I'm leading this team or I'm responsible for leading people or I own this business and I know I'm the lid

and I feel like this thing is passing me, what do you tell that person? Well, you own it. So it's not going to pass you unless you choose to sell it. It's going to wait on you. That's even scarier. It's not going to leave you behind. You write the checks.

You own it. But what your feeling is that you probably have some reading to do and some work to do. And you have some people to come in contact with. And it is the old Charlie Tremendous Jones quote. Five years from the day, you'll be the same person you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read. And, you know, so somebody's writing something right now that I don't even know that I will be reading when it comes out in the spring, the fall, you know, whatever. I mean, it's, and they may be speaking at an entree summit two years from now. I don't know who they are.

And some of them are early enough in their careers with their ideas and their frameworks that they haven't caught up and they won't be there yet. But that's okay. They'll get there some of them. And, you know, that's who we're watching and who we're listening. but there's going to be, you know, the hungry, humble, smart thing of Lynch Yonians. I mean, we've been doing that stuff. We just didn't have a framework for it. We didn't have words to put to it.

And it's such a simple framework that it applies so beautifully to our hiring process here. And none of us had ever heard those words in that context used that way in a hiring model, what, three years ago? Oh, yeah. And now it's probably used here every day. Oh, almost every stinking conversation when it comes up with something. I got you tired of it. Are they hungry? What's the problem?

Or, you know, I don't want to be too hungry. And, you know, what is it? It's like, you know, it's everywhere. But it gave, it gave vernacular to the way we already felt. We were saying vague things like, that person doesn't get it. What we meant was they weren't either hungry, humble, or smart, or they weren't two of those, got help them, you know, and they really weren't going to get it in that case. So, but we just had these vague things like we knew they weren't one of us, but we didn't

how to, and then he gives us that framework. And so that's, that's the kind of stuff that will help someone that's hit the lid is you keep searching, you find stuff and you go, okay, that's why that's not working. Ha, I got it. And you go when you fix it, you know, and, you know, Henry Cloud came in with that desired future stuff, and we were looking at one of our business units and went, deadgummit, I know better. That's why that wasn't working. And you go, okay, never again. We took the whole stinking company through it then. And, you know, and it's seen results. Oh, it's amazing. So related to that, I mean, this place feels like it's on fire. in ways that it hasn't been in the three years that I've been here.

Like there are areas that are clicking, and it's across the board. How do you explain that? Well, we're getting better. I mean, some of the stuff, we were more siloed. We were, some areas were more primitive. Some areas, we hadn't done a good job with pruning and hiring. And, you know, you look over and you go,

head gun, man, that's an island of misfit toys over there. We got a problem. And, you know, I hope we can turn them around. I don't know if we can turn them, but we're going to turn that business unit around. Well, they get to be here and not. It's up to them because they're going with us or they're not. The train's leaving that station, I'm telling you. And so you start looking at that stuff and you push on it, push on, push on it. It spins up and cleans things.

And people self-select, they go, you know, I don't ride this train. It's not the speed I like to go. And it's not the way. It's not, y'all are crazy, man. You know, and I understand. We are. It's fine. You don't fit in.

You know, that's okay. But, you know, you just have to say, okay, here's something that works, and we were missing it over here really bad. It was really ugly. But when we take it to an area like that desired future thing that was already kind of working and we just add some extra additive to the fuel, then it gets even better. And then you do that again here and again here and all these boltons and these APIs and the whole thing. And boom, you're going. You know, it's going crazy then. Kind of related to that.

I'll never forget. it was within my first year here, and I heard you talk at staff meeting one Monday morning, and you were announcing a new project that one of the business units was rolling out, and you were talking about kind of the vision of the company, and you spoke with such confidence, and there was such conviction and such belief. And I wrote down after that meeting, the difference between a good leader and a great leader is a good leader believes the team can win, a great leader believes the team will win.

And I truly believe, like when you get up on the state, and rally our team around something, like it's not a question. You believe we are going to do something once it's been discussed, prayed over, and thought about where does that level of confidence come from? Because we've done it.

We've done it. We've had unbelievable success in spaces that a lot of people have just given up on. You know, I mean, the publishing world, we're a mess. And we're unbelievably successful in the publishing world. there's the list of number ones we have created out of this place. It's scary good.

We're good at that. So I can stand up. I mean, it's not my first rodeo. I've got 17 bestsellers that have come out of here. And some of them, some of them, Remsey personalities, and more of them, Ramsey personalities lately, which is as it should be. So I can stand up and go, when we do a book launch,

we've done this 17 times, y'all, and gotten better every time. But the last four or five, it's on my. almost, you know, it's a lot. Now, and again, we're getting better, and the market's shifting, and you have to think about how you're doing things and what you're going to spend money on, what has an ROI and that kind of thing. But still, we don't do many things that we, when I stand up in staff meeting and say, this is the way we're going, that we don't have proof text on it in the marketplace. It's not like we're suddenly going to go into some business we don't know anything about, and you can't speak with confidence about that. You should, that be arrogance. That would

be confidence. But confidence is based on, I have done this 62 times. And this is just another version of that. And the people I'm working with now are smarter than we did it back there. So, you know, this ought to be easier. My first staff meeting here, there was about 50% of the time that was talked about what happens after you're gone. And it was kind of a morbid conversation. At first I was like, this is kind of weird. And then I started to realize what was the thought process behind that and I started to realize that takes a lot of humility. It's kind of a weird position to be in, but you're thinking well beyond you being a part of this company and you're thinking about the legacy. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I'd like to say it was because I'm

noble or something, but it's not. It's just I've come to grips with the reality. And the reality is, I'm going to die. You know? And if I'm the only thing that makes money around here, then everything I've worked my whole life on as far as this company goes is going to die with me. That's reality. And so it's not nobility. It's just recognition of what things are. And we can call it noble things like legacy and succession planning and all of these transitions and ownership transfers and brand shifts and all that kind of stuff. We can put all these vernacular on it.

But at the end of the day, it is whatever percentage of the revenue, this place is created by me is going to die when I do. And so the leadership shoes that I feel, the owner position that I feel, and the brand revenue generation that I feel dies with me. And so, you know, and worse than dying suddenly, like now at 58, while I'm relevant, is it dies gradually because you become irrelevant. And so I'm that 92-year-old guy that never gave up his radio show, It doesn't make sense on the radio anymore and no one's got the backbone to take him off the air.

You know? And so the thing just dies a slow, brutal death. And the problem is that your team dies with it because talent will not stay at something that doesn't have a future. And if they see it dying, they jump. And it's not because they're bad people. It's where there's no vision that people perish. And these people are getting ready to die. I'm not going to ride that boat.

I'm not getting on that. And you can't attract talent, you can't keep talent, so you can't get better. It becomes a death flywheel. You know, Collins talks about, a doom wheel. Yeah. And how the mighty fall. And the worst generation to do that is the first generation of a business, because the owner becomes all about me, and they're egocentric, and they're stubborn,

and they're driven, and they take great joy in being the guy. I do. I'm all of that. and by all of that causes you to not let go and not plan the future. And when you don't let go and you don't plan the future, you kill the thing you love. Including God help you bring your own children into the thing and you ruin their lives. Because you hand them a business that's dying. There's all of you guys.

There's my kids, my grandkids, and your life's work, in quotes, you know. Which all the people we've helped, if that's all we do and the thing died with me, it wouldn't be the end of the world. God still did a thing. Yeah. You know, that's not the other world. we have the opportunity to think bigger and think beyond ourselves and serve, be other-centered rather than self-centered.

And, you know, that calls you to a place of nobility. It is awkward as crud. And it is emotional all the time. You know, we're getting ready to move in this new building and I'm down there standing and what's going to be my office and I'm going, I'm going to be in that building probably less time than I was in this one. And I just built a $70 million bill. building. That didn't for me.

Gosh. That's awkward, man. It's just a pain, you know? But there's the practical part of it that just calls you back and goes, well, and your alternative is what? Kill it. We got to do it. You know, you can't. What does success look like at this stage? Succession. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Success looks like Ramsey personalities, you know, King Coleman having a number

one bestseller as our latest launch, you know. It is Rachel Cruz's show going Zoom Zoom, Chris Hogan's latest book being Lockbuster Mammoth. That everyday millionaire's book is huge. That material is going to go. That's got a two-decade shelf life. That's some sweet material. And the culture needs to hear it so badly.

And, you know, the entree leadership stuff is on fire. Small business is bigger, better, and more fun than it has ever been in the history of man right now. Watching this, listening to this, it's you, are the backbone of the economy. And I don't just say that. I observe it. It's a real thing. And to get to dance around in this space is fun. You're a grandpa now. And kind of here within the organization, you've kind of become a grandpa in that it used to be the people you would mentor kind of have become and gained a lot of influence. Now it's the people that you have mentored are now mentoring people and they're

mentoring people that are now having influence. How do you reflect on the role that you get to play today? Well, that part is rewarding. I mean, that part is rich. The downside of stuff like that is I don't know everybody anymore. I used to know everybody's wife and husband and kids and dogs and know everything that was going on in their lives and it feels a little disconnected sometimes. And because of that, then sometimes weird stuff happens. It's like, you know, I walk into a room and people start doing different things. I'm like, dude, you should have just been doing what you're supposed to be doing before I walked in the room. Why are you, that's weird. It has this effect, you know, and it's not celebrity. It's more like the big boss thing and it's like, ah, it's stupid. It's not

how this place is built, but they're newbies. They're not, they haven't been here long. They haven't got it yet. And so there's a little bit of intimidation factor because it's so far removed that is unintentional and I don't know how to do away with it. Yeah. Other than just hang out with them more, but there's 900 of them. I don't know how to hang out with everybody more. So it's just logistically, it starts to be a problem to keep relationships built where things stay real and they don't have these perceived hierarchy things that aren't really there. Because it's real simple.

I mean, if you've been here 10 minutes or 10 years, it's are we serving the customer together? Are you bringing it? Are you bringing excellence? Are we having good, solid arguments for good reasons? That's the only thing I'm caring about. And so everybody else has come, they come out of these other places where it's all politics and they can't get anything done because somebody stabbing on the back, and they spent all their time trying to figure this place out,

and this place is about execution. If you could go back today and talk to the Dave Ramsey that was just starting this whole journey, what would you tell yourself about what's ahead? It's going to be a lot harder than you think. And you're not as smart as you think you are. You're going to learn a lot more and put up a lot more than you ever dream, but you're going to get a lot more than you ever dreamed.

in terms of the richness of soul, the depth of hanging out with this team, it is worth all of the negative interactions with people over the years to get to be where we are. All I saw was we needed a team. I had no idea what it meant that it was going to be this hard. And it's going to be a constant thing. The human resource is our number one line item. It's the largest thing we spend money on in almost every business. Payroll. And consequently it is the thing we have to get an ROI on to stay open. Consequently, you have to pay more attention to it. And when you start doing all of that, you're going to have these wonderful joys and these wonderful sorrows.

And I didn't know all that. I would tell him that. Well, Dave, thank you so much for your time. I know I'm better for it. I know our audience as well, so we're super grateful. Good to hang out with you, brother. All right, good stuff, Alex. That was fun indeed. It's always a little bit of a thing when you walk into his studio.

This is the behind the scenes that people don't know. They've just heard the conversation, but you walked into his studio where he broadcasts every day for three hours to millions of listeners. And you had to go and sit in his turf. And it had to be equal parts exciting and a little bit intimidating. Not to mention the guy's my leader's leader leader, right? He's at the top of the food juice. He's the CEO of the place. I think one of the biggest things I learned.

sitting in there with him, I truly believe one of the driving factors behind his success on the radio with our team is he is who he is. He's such an authentic leader that the person that he is is is the person that he is. And that makes me someone that's proud to follow him. Well, sure. He walked out of that interview inevitably into a meeting. No doubt. What people don't realize is he's the day-to-day CEO of the organization.

And then, oh, he pauses his CEO duties and does a three-hour now. national radio show. So it's, it is phenomenal stuff. Good job. Very proud of you. Thanks for doing that. Hey, we talked about entree leadership, the term and how it became a book and how it became, I believe, now a movement where you got guys like Alex Judd coaching leaders like you men and women every day. So how about we give you the first chapter from the book, the New York Times number one bestseller? And it is, in fact, Antre Leadership defined, where he breaks down the term. It's good stuff. And we're going to give you this chapter for free out of the book.

You can download it by texting EL book to 33444. Text EL book, all one phrase, no space there. El book to 33444. Or if you're averse to texting, then you can click the link in the show notes. Go get it. Why wouldn't you get this? And if you've read it before, read it again. Some of my favorite stuff I've read over.

and over and over and over again. Big thanks to Alex Judd for hanging out with us and doing the interview with Dave, so on behalf of Alex and the entire Entree Leadership team. Thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey, folks, I want to make sure that you're aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Chris Hogan Show. I am so excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out.

We're going to talk about your money, your life, your dreams, and your goals. know why? Because I'm your coach. Whether we're talking about building wealth, paying off your home early, investing, paying for college, and guess what? How to become an everyday millionaire. We're going to focus on taking your calls because you matter to me. Together, we can do this. This is the Chris Hogan Show. If you'd like to hear full episodes, just search the Chris Hogan Show in Apple Podcasts or go to chrishogan 360.com.