EntreLeadership - #337: A Small Business Q&A with Dave Ramsey

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

A whopping 54% of the United States gross domestic product and 66% of all job growth in this country can be attributed to one thing: small business. So it’s only fitting that we dedicate an entire episode to answering questions from the very people that make our economy go ‘round. Tune in as Ramsey Personality Ken Coleman and Ramsey Solutions Executive Vice President Daniel Tardy join Dave to tackle everything from running a cash-based business to succession planning in a family business.   entreleadership.com/podcast EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey Free download: Chapter 1 of EntreLeadership Explore the Ramsey Podcast Network Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   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

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 we've got coming up for you today. It's a special episode. You know, a few times a year, Daniel Tarty, who is our executive vice president of business and leadership,

and yours truly get to join Dave Ramsey on the Dave Rand. Ramsey Show for what we call the Entree Leadership Theme Hour. We've done this a couple of times now, and in case you missed it, we decided to go back in the archives and pull that out for you because it's real leaders calling into the show, asking real questions. This is a great chance for you to ask your questions and hear business and leadership advice from the man who wrote the book on Entree Leadership, and now is the day-to-day CEO of almost 900 team members and growing here at Ramsey Solutions.

So this is a very practical and tactical conversation you're going to get to listen in on. Here is the Entree Leadership theme hour of the Dave Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios. It's the Dave Ramsey Show where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for joining us. We're going to do something really special this hour. I don't know if you know this or not, but 54% of the gross domestic product in the United States,

meaning of all revenues created in our economy, are created by small businesses. Small businesses account for 66% of all job growth. Small business is about as American as anything. can get more so than apple pie, Chevrolet, and baseball. The idea that you can start, dream, and be somebody in this country is still alive and well, and we know this because our Entree leadership team works with small businesses every day. We're going to do an Entree leadership, small business, theme hour. If you own or operate or wish you did a small business or work in one,

and you've got a business question about anything, hiring and firing about, money, about business model, about collecting your freaking receivables, whatever it is. This is your hour. Small business, men and women, we love you. You're heroes. You are the economy. The phone number is AAA 825-5-2-25. That's AAA 825-5-2-25.

Joining me this hour, a Ramsey personality, Ken Coleman, who has the Ken Coleman show, where he takes your career questions, but he also has a side job as the host of the Entree Leadership podcast, which is now 7 million downloads a year. Wow. It's a monster. And one of our EVPs, our Executive Vice President, sits on our operating board over all things leadership, which would be business boutique and entree leadership. Daniel Tarty joins us as well.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. We're going to bring in one of our EVPs, put a microphone on them, and see if he can answer a question. Oh, this will be fun. This is scary. No. We're going to be exposed. Well, that is always possible when you sit next to an icon.

He is in the Hall of Fame. You and I are not. I know what happens. Behind the curtain. He's taking a big risk bringing me in here. That's true. But we've done this before. Yes, we have.

We've done a panel together. Yeah. And it was quite popular when we do one of the entree leadership events. The three of us sitting up there cutting up and answering questions. Essentially. And so Blake Thompson, our producer, I don't know what we call him, C3PO or something. He's in charge of all things, production, says you guys are getting on there together, and you're going to cut up and you're going to answer questions and help small business guys.

And we can do that. Yes, sir. So we'll take your questions. Well, welcome, all of you. Thanks for having us. All right. Sarah's in Dallas, Texas. Hi, Sarah.

Your question for the panel. Hey, guys. Thank you so much for taking my call. Okay. So my question for you is, how do you work through the barrier of fear in scaling up a cash-based business? We started small. Now we are over seven figures, and everything is based in cash, which is a scary thing to do every month. So your advice, please.

When you say cash, do you mean you're physically handling a million dollars of cash a year, or you're just not borrowing money? We don't borrow money at all. So why is that scary? For us, we do behavior therapy, and we wait for insurers. So insurance payments, anything can be between 60 to 120 days in AR when we take on a new patient. So sometimes we are waiting a really long time for any sort of accounts receivable come in, and that can kind of be a little scary when trying to plan out the business. Absolutely.

And you're already doing a million of your top line. Yeah, last year was our first year to break seven figures. Where to go? Wow. It's a proud of you. Good job. Yeah, thank you. Sarah, you're going to have to get there incrementally.

So good job. You're in a really great spot, and it's still going to feel a little bit scary. But the difference between what you're talking about paying and cash and going as you grow and going and getting a line of credit from the bank is you're going to have to become your own bank. And so you've got to start each month setting aside a little bit of your profit and build up enough where you can cover that 60 to 120 lag, and then you're not going to worry about it, because you can pay the bills, you can pay your overhead, not worry about paying your team, do some marketing, grow the business, and you're going to pull from what we call retained earnings.

And then as you get paid, you're going to put back the retained earnings and cap it off, so to speak, before you bonus yourself out as the leader. So you've got to become your own bank. That's the answer. Yeah, I think Dave's right. There's nothing for you to be afraid of. Daniel's right. That was Daniel.

Yes, but you also said there's not, why are you afraid? You're really asking the question, what is causing the fear? And I think in this situation, it's I'm afraid, or we are afraid the money's not going to come in. And you're afraid of your system isn't working. You don't have a pad. There it is. And so when you take the retained earnings that Daniels talking about, and then you can fix your system, you get a system that works. It takes the fear away.

The fear is of the unknown. So how do you address the fear? Well, we get a system in place. We get cash in place. And then there is no fear. Well, some minimum household budget you guys can live on the two of you. You're both working in the business, right? No, so it's me and my business partner.

We've both always taken just a really modest salary. How much? $45,000. Each. Each. What's your profits a year on a million? It's been at least 20%. 200,000, so you're taking 90 out and that leaves you.

Okay, perfect. That's exactly what you need. So run a P&L, run a profit and loss statement each month, and out of that, pay the $45,000 to each of you, right? annualized, okay? And then with what's left, we're going to call that profit after staff has been paid in your staff, okay? Sure. Take a percentage of that every month the rest of your life and build retained earnings.

Until you just got way too much cash in retained earnings, but that's probably not going to happen. Because what happened here is we do that, and we've never been able to catch up. Right. You know, we never, no matter how much we save, we can never get to, the three to six months of business operating expenses. And so, but we always are putting, and the more money we make, the more money we put in there, we're always putting a percentage of our net profits. The second thing I want you to think about, Daniel's exactly right, his suggestion is the answer,

and it's the retained earnings issue. The second thing I want you to think about is diversifying your product line where you're not dependent on the government for all your income. Let's have a private offering as well. well as a governmental offering that's cash on the barrelhead, because you just do not want to have a business where people control you, and they're called the federal government. If that's your only product line, that just leaves you so vulnerable to a government shutdown or to some kind of another issue. And you just need, when you've got, you control the controllables,

and you can't control this one. So you need to diversify your product line and have another stream of income. It's an entree leadership theme hour with a panel answering your small business questions, your business questions. Joining me is Ramsey Personality, Ken Coleman, host of the Ken Coleman Show, and also host of the 7 million downloads a year, Entree Leadership podcast. And business people listen to that every time it downloads. How often do we download one of those?

Every Monday morning, you're going to get a fresh episode. And what is the stuff? What do we cover? on that. I know, but I'm going to ask you like I don't know. Yeah, well, we unpack the Entree Leadership Playbook. You know, it's good for people to know that we actually run on the principles that Dave started this company with and everything from the practical things like hiring and firing and then how do you build culture and things like, you know, developing leaders. The entire way that we run the business, we cover that content. And then many times

we'll have a guest on who we believe aligns with those values, those practices. So you're also getting best-selling authors, thought leaders, captains of industry, you know, world championship coaches. If they're a leader or they are a high performance person, we try to get them. And we're delivering conversations that allow you to get behind the curtain. Yeah, like Craig Grosheel, leading probably, arguably the largest church in America today at lifechurch.tv over in Oklahoma City. He's on episode number 307 that came out on the 25th of February and talking about the no feel do the three steps to effective communication. And he leads a large team.

He's a world-class leader. Yeah, and teaches leadership everywhere. That's right. And they have these leaders and campuses all around the country and all throughout Oklahoma. So effective communication for a church like that that's structured that way is really, really important. So he's giving us practical wisdom on what to do. Dustin is in Indianapolis. Dustin, your question for the panel.

Yeah, thanks for taking my call. I have a question regarding, and I've heard you kind of talk around this and teach around this, but your interviews, one of them is a personal mission statement and a budget. And most recently I heard you talk about two weeks ago during the Entrey Leadership podcast, the summary, and how do you ask somebody for their budgets without making them feel weird about it? I've had better luck with that with single folks as opposed to married folks, I know that I try to outline it saying that we want to serve me well by doing this, but it's always a weird thing.

They feel like it's a negotiation, like we're trying to negotiate salary at that point, and we're not, we're just trying to serve them well. But what suggestions do you have for me regarding how to ask that question and ask about budgets? Yeah, Dustin, look, it's all about how you set this up. If you come out just with an email and say, send us your budget, that's not a typical part of most hiring processes. But every step in our hiring process is asking the question, are we going to be a great fit for you? And are you going to be a great fit for us?

So the more we know about you, can you live on what we're going to pay you? We want to know that before you start with us. Because if you jump in here and you don't have a budget and we're paying you too little for what your lifestyle demands, you're going to be miserable. And then you're going to quit or you're going to be mad and the team's going to be mad around you because you're mad. And we just want to know that we're compatible. And so as much as we can get to know each other in the, you think about it like dating. We're not going to get married if we haven't had a lot of dates. We get to know everything about you.

You get to know everything about us because we want a great long-term relationship. So you've got to set it up that way and let people know, hey, this is kind of unconventional. Not everybody does this. And it's confidential. We're not going to share it with anybody, but really we're trying to figure out if what you're getting paid is going to match what you need to live on. And oh, by the way, it has absolutely nothing to do with our offer to you. The only possibility is that you might get a little bit more out of the offer. but if we're not going to offer you less than we would have just because we see you have room in your budget.

It's quite the opposite. So it's our job as leaders to care for and serve our team. And we're going to do that job. And if this is uncomfortable or weird to you and you think it's intrusive, then that may tell you that you're not a fit. because we're not coming at it with a big brother is watching mentality. We're not coming at it with an intrusive mentality. Actually, I had one lady send me an email back, and she said, based on your inappropriate request for my personal financial data,

I am hereby withdrawing my consideration for employment. And I'm like, well, good, because nobody that works here talks like that. You will not like us here. We don't even use sense structure and phrases like that. We don't talk like that here. We would have just said, you hillbillies are nuts. getting my numbers. You know, now that I could have related to, but, you know, no, you're not getting hired. So that, you know, you're looking for clues all throughout the process that this is

moving in the right direction or that this is a mistake. And as, and I think what Dan Atardi just said was very important, you know, if you get married to someone and you don't know their numbers, well, you're stupid. And if you go to work for somebody and you don't know their numbers, well, You're stupid. And by the way, you can ask for our budget if you want. And we're not going to give you the entire budget, but, I mean, you can ask us what the sales are, you know, in this area. You're going to work for entree leadership. We'll tell you what the gross revenues of entree leadership are.

And that, you know, we can pay our bills. You're worried about that? That's fine. It's turnabouts fair play. And so, but it's a communication process. Yes, doing unusual things in the interview process is awkward. Absolutely. Don't you want unusual people working for you?

I mean, you don't want status quo. You want great people to work at a great company. Well, that's what I was going to say. The leadership lesson here is that Dustin, just because it feels weird doesn't mean it's not right. It feels weird because nobody else does. It is weird. It is weird. It needs to be weird.

It feels awkward. Yeah, but welcome. That's the price of admission. Yeah. If you want to lead and you want to lead well, there are going to be moments as leaders. You've got to step into the awkward. And I think, Daniel, you nailed it. Just explain the why.

And if they don't like it, they're not supposed to be there. Yeah, yeah. And just say, you know what, this is a little awkward. Yeah, there you'll call it out. Sometimes if you say it, you know, it's like, what was our kids used to do? My kids, when they were teenagers, they would do like awkward turtle. Oh, yeah. You've seen awkward turtle?

Oh, yeah. Like the turtles turned upside down on its back and he's awkward. And, you know, it's just an awkward turtle moment, right? And here we go. And you joke about it. Here's why we do this. Here's why we do this spousal interview. That's right.

We go out. If you all don't know, if you want to get hired on our team, the last interview, after basically you're hired. I mean, you've got to screw it up now, okay? Or something's got to happen. You know, the Holy Spirit's just got to ring somebody's bell. But basically you're done, and the final icing on the cake is the spouse will interview, and it's not that we're going to interview your spouse.

We're just all going out to dinner with your spouse. And, you know, if you're going on, work on Daniel's team, it would be, you know, Daniel and his wife, Emily, and the four of you just sit down and you just talk, and you get a sense of the air. and you look at the spouse and goes, is this a fit? And the spouse can ask you questions. And you get to know the family. Because by God, when you get married, you're marrying your in-laws.

When you bring somebody on the team, the spouse at home throwing grenades in the middle of my business from back home doesn't work. Look, if you're running in a small business, you've got to quit worrying about what am I supposed to do in the hiring process. It's your freaking business. What do you want it to look like? If you want to be the best place to work like we are in Nashville, guess what? You can't do what the average companies do. You've got to have your own path. And so you're going to do stuff that's weird.

But the weird thing is you get to be the best place to work and you've got great people, great culture. That's the best thing you can do. But I think the main thing that Dustin's saying, and I completely agree with him. And I appreciate him asking the question is just, okay, how do I emotionally process the awkwardness of this? And if you can kind of just get comfortable with it, and here's the other thing, the more you do it, the more you'll get comfortable. boy that's right um i mean it's like you know the first time somebody quit here it almost put me in the hospital i couldn't handle the rejection

you don't want to work here you don't work for me what what what what you know it's like i can't believe it i'm so rejected i just got fired you know and you don't because you don't when you quit your job you just fired your boss by the way if you didn't know that and so um you know i just got fired as a leader what happened and it killed me the first time i had to fire somebody i was on almost in intensive care. And it's not that people have become a commodity. I've just lived through it a bunch of times when somebody quits or when we have to let somebody go.

And I'm okay now. I didn't die from it. And so it's a lot less awkward now because of reps. There you go. It's a small business theme hour. Entree leadership. Daniel Tarty, the EVP of that area. That's a treat to have him on the air and answering your questions.

This guy's one of our operating board members. Ken Coleman Ramsey personality. And me, we're your panel. Small business is the backbone of America around Ramsey Solutions. We love small business people. You're our kind of folk. You know how to get up, leave the cave, kill something, and drag it home.

We're taking your questions this hour in an entree leadership theme hour. Joining me on the panel, Ken Coleman-Ramsey personality, host of the Entree Leadership Podcast, the vastly popular Entree Leadership podcast. Brad is with us in Chicago. Hey, Brad. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, your question for the panel. afternoon, guys, thanks for the opportunity to run a question past you. Sure.

Family business, we're a distributorship, and we're starting to get to that point in life where we need to talk about trans owners, hopefully my wife and I as well, how do you do that? There's definitely a willingness to do that, but what's the best way to kind of broach that different angles, but how do you deal with that in the most accurate and best way? What do you mean push from a few different angles? Where do you hear from, let's say, your bank or attorney or, well, you don't really think about it on a daily basis.

I know you should. That's the best way to initiate that sit down and say, okay, we know we need to do this. How do we do this and make sure everybody's on the same sheet of music? So it's dad, started the business, you and your wife, are there other siblings? There's one other sibling but has nothing to do with it. Okay. Do you want to run the business? Like if you had a choice, is this something you want to do?

Yeah, enjoy it early. I mean, like any small business, it gives you headaches. How old's dad? You know, we just got to do them quick math. Okay. Oh, you're late. and you're real late. What's the gross revenues of the business?

Annual, we average about 2.3 to 2.4 million. 60 team members? Four at this moment. Four. We went through the transition. We're in middle-working industry. What's your business model? Oh, my God.

That's wonderful for that gross. What kind of business do you guys have? We're a metal-fabillion machinery distributor. Wow. You've got four people working around the clock then. Do that much revenue. well they're just doing expensive items we probably work a little harder than we should so it's high in custom jobs you got high in custom stuff yeah you're good you're you got your per

your per order is real high okay good good okay we got our info what do you think daniel i mean you've got you have to broach this with if dad's not initiating this conversation you got to go out to coffee and go dad this may feel awkward for you i don't know if you have thoughts or feelings about this but at some point if you have in your mind that i'm going to be running this when you're not here we have to start this discussion and dave talks about this with his kids and around here and the idea of succession is not you're ripping this away from dad and it's emotional for dad but if you got you know you the old mile relay where people are running around the track and it's four people add up to a mile and they got the baton where they hand it off there's a lane

where they're running together and you got to be running the same speed together so you have a smooth handoff of that baton and if you just go oh dad's gone and now we've got to run this thing all the tax implications legal money what does mom think like if you you guys haven't sat down and talked through all this stuff and started working on it gradually, it creates a lot of pain, and it happens all the time. So I think you've got to bring it up with that in a way that honors him as the founder. Hey, Dad, you've got a wonderful business you've built. You're an incredible man.

If you grab your chest and as you're falling back into the grave, toss me the keys, you're going to screw this whole thing up. Now, you can say that a little less blunt than that, but that's basically what's happening. Right, and that's kind of I think one of the fear is because we've gotten along so well for many years working together. You don't want to treat an abrasive situation. Yeah, I'm not trying to be ungrateful, and I'm not trying to push you out. But we got to start talking about this. You're freaking 64 years old.

You're not immortal. Well, Brad, and you're not going to have the whole conversation in the first conversation. I think your first conversation is getting an agreement with your dad that you're going to start meeting for coffee once a month. And over the next couple years, you're going to work through this together. Okay, once a week. But your frequency is a little higher because you're starting a little later. But you can't get it all figured out in that first discussion. Your first discussion is just to kind of break the dam and get the water flow and then get out emotionally around the idea that this is going to be a regular discussion you guys are having.

And here's you some bait, okay? All the data we have in studying family businesses, including ours, and my personal experience, too, is the most difficult transition is from Gen 1 to Gen 2 emotionally. Right. Because founders, those of us that start something from a card table on our living room, start something from your garage, founders are hardhead. We are stubborn jerks. We will not be denied. You cannot stop us. We're a bulldozer in a china shop.

And that's how we survived, and it's how we grew this. Okay? And it's often hard for a founder to turn loose because their identity is so tied up in what he's been doing all these years. And turning loose of that is very, very difficult. And it's, I teach it, and I'm doing it, But there are moments when people around here take over, including my family, and I feel less important, and I had a strategy to be less important. But then, dadgum, the strategy worked.

Yeah, you've got to understand that the tension here is what Dave just outlined. He wants it to live on, but it's going to be hard to let go. And I think if you can understand that natural tension, take Daniel's advice when you sit down, Dave's advice on those weeklies. And you do honor, but you've got an. understand the psychology here of what Dave's talking about. It's huge. I got to tell you, man, you guys, you need to be in panic mode. I don't want you, I don't want you to bulldoze too fast, but by Christmas, you need a plan. Yeah, and there's three phases to this. The first phase is emotional, and then the next phase is the strategy and then tactics.

So let the emotional thing happen for a few reps here, maybe a couple weeks, two, three weeks, because Dave's right, it's part of his identity, and you're changing his identity. You're mess him with his baby and then get to tactics by the end of the year so you guys have a plan and your team starting to execute against that plan yeah and dad if you die this year what happens the stock and am i supposed to work for mom right you know you got to you don't have you don't have any of this figured out because you guys are not talking about the elephant in the room you get a list of all the questions how do we give to the elephant part yeah yeah you just hey dad there's an elephant and we got to eat this elephant a bite of time we got to figure this thing out

and the you know what the good news in your conversation is You and your dad actually get along. Yeah, we like to. You like each other. You like each other. You respect him. And I got to tell you, he probably respects you more than you realize. And so this is going to work.

You're going to be able to do this. What we run into too often when we're coaching with people is the family's so freaking dysfunctional. And that dysfunction rolls over into the business, and you can't do nothing until you get that fixed. Yeah. So, hey, it's an entree leadership theme hour. This is the Dave Ramsey show. Our scripture of the day is Psalm 5522. Cast your cares on the Lord, and he will sustain you.

He will never let the righteous be forsaken. John F. Kennedy said those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly. By the way, if you've not seen Apollo 11 documentary in the theater in Imag, go see it. You will stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the Star-Spangled banner when you're done. It's the most patriotic thing I've seen it. I don't know when. I was so proud to be an American. I'm in.

It was great. It's out right now. It was great. It's complete documentary. There's no actors. It's the real footage from the real thing. And of course, we were little kids. You guys were tiny kids or not born or something.

We're not going to talk about that. Sharon and I were little kids and we're both sitting there going, I remember that. I remember that. And the hairdoes from the 60s and the sunglasses. It's just, it's fabulous. Ken Coleman Ramsey personality and our, EVP of the Entree Leadership and Business Boutique brands, Daniel Tardy, one of our operating board members here, to answer your questions, this is the panel for small business this hour, the Entree Leadership panel. Philip is in El Paso, Texas.

Hi, Phillip. How are you? I'm doing well, Dave. How about yourself? Better than I deserve. What's up? Yeah, just really thankful to be on this call. So I work for my dad's business, and I worked there, grew up, working in the shop.

I learned most of what I know from my dad. I read Entree Leadership, Profit First, Hallamighty Fall, I listened to all the Ramsey Solution podcasts and all that. And by doing so over the past few years, I've seen the problems in my dad's business. I've tried talking with him, inviting him to watch and listen, offering help, not in a cocky attitude, but in a humble way, saying some things need to change.

And all I've gotten was a bunch of empty promises. A lot of what I say falls on deaf ears. I know I'm the kid and the whole potter, syndrome, but I really care about my dad and his business. How old are you? I'm 26. Okay. How old is dad?

And my dad's 58. 50s? Okay. This is something I've been praying about long and hard. I started my own business back in December, thanks to King Coleman. Me and him talked this past fall, and he gave me a little bit of a push, kicking the rear to get going, but I'm not self-sustaining. I guess my question being, do I stay?

being miserable working for my dad, go full-time on my business, or go find a job elsewhere for the time being. The timing matters, but what's your long game? I mean, what do you want to do ultimately? Ultimately, I want to do my side business, what I started back in December, doing hand sketches and digital designs of vehicles for customers. Is that a different business than your dad is in? He is in the custom car restoration business, but what I do is sketching it out, doing full color renderings.

You make a living doing that? Yeah. Okay. I'm not doubting it. I just didn't know. Well, Philip, here's the deal. I don't remember everything I told you that day, but I'm pretty sure that if I told you to start the side business, I also told you, that you need to stay where you are until you can step into this as a full-time play. So you have to prove this.

Dave's asking the right question. You do this as a function for your dad's renovation shop. But now you want to go do this for other people. So you have to continue to prove that and do that. And I don't think that you're that miserable, that you can't stay there with dad. I think what's going on is mentally you're going, I'm tired of this. I'm now doing my own thing. And here's what's happening.

So now it's seeping into your heart. And now it's creating a little bit of tension, maybe a slight bit of bitterness because you're going, It's only a matter of time, I believe, before I can step out of this. And I think what you have to do is step back and say... How much money are you making on your side gig? I started back in December, and I've made about $1,000 since. Yeah, he's in the embryonic stages. Yeah.

You're going to starve the death. Well, we will see. I mean, what do you think you can do with this? If you went full-time, you starve. Oh, yeah, that's why I'm saying stay. I mean, he has to stay. Yeah. If things aren't that bad, you can do this.

You know, I mean, I can't tell you, Daniel, Dave, we've all had moments in our lives and seasons where we were kind of putting our licks in, and we were taking the cuts at the plate, and we were preparing. And so this is a situation, if you believe in the side business, you really believe it can be what you're going to do, then you've got to give that a run before you decide to quit. The frustrations you have are not unique to you and your dad's business. Between 25 and 35, there's a lot of stuff here that I didn't really like, but it wasn't my place yet to start influencing how everything worked.

And so some of that is just a few more gray hairs, a little bit more season, a little more reps under your belt. And so if your relationship with your father is good outside of work, you don't want to do something that's going to kind of mess that up, right? And if long term you're not sure you want to work in this business, I would say slow down, be patient, learn, take your dad to coffee and get his advice on life. You've got a cool opportunity to get to work with your dad.

Maybe he could, I would ask him to coach you on your side gig. That's good. The only thing I'm having a hard time with that is, you know, I see a lot of ways my dad is not being, um, not being a good steward of the money that he's receiving and you know that's none of your business you're being so judgmental i mean you just slow down dude i mean he's he's he's he's a he's a he's a 58-year-old guy that has raised you to this point and uh i i don't i don't think your judgment is wrong but let's pretend this wasn't your dad that was just your leader

and they weren't handling the money properly it's none of your business you're an employee I mean, you can look at it and go, I think this whole thing's going to go down the tubes. I need to look for a job. But other than that, you don't walk into your boss and go, you're handling the dead gum money wrong. And I understand that. I really do come at it with a humble heart because I care about my dad. Well, that's true.

But you're holding your dad up to the scorecard that we put out for all these business leaders everywhere on entree leadership and how to run debt-free. If he's not doing that, if he's not bought in, you're not going to push this rock up hill fast. enough for it to impact where he's at. How much are you making for your dad right now? Like, would I get paid? Yeah, what do you make?

I make net $24,000 a year. Okay, can you go do that in El Paso, Texas for somebody else, the same basic function, same basic role for somebody else? Can you make that? Then you've got to consider that as an option. For the relationship between you and your dad, if you're getting to a point where you can't take it any longer and you can't just, you know, man up and finish out until you're ready to step into the side business,

then go work for somebody else. But again, you're full-time until you can make that part-time, that side hustle, a full-time gig. Yeah, I agree. I think that, and the other thing is don't surprise your dad. Yeah. You know, don't just walk in one day and go on doing the side thing. So let him watch this side gig build and let him know that that's your dream. And he may want you to work somewhere else while you're dreaming.

That might be a thing. It might be good for everybody. That's a good discussion to have. And if you don't respect your dad as a leader, that's what he's saying. You've got to work somewhere where you respect your leader, but you're not necessarily going to get them to see the world the way you see it, especially at 26.

I'm sorry, there's a lot of life. You've got to kind of, you got to ramp up to this before you start speaking into things like that. We've got 820 team members, a 26-year-old that we don't have anybody working 24K, but a 26-year-old that's making entry-level money here is not going to roll into my office and tell me how to run this.

I'm 58. they'll roll back out. I would actually like to see that. I would be kind of fun. I wouldn't buy tickets to that. I mean, I'm not disrespectful to our team members. No. But you don't have the chops to sit at that table.

That's what it comes down to. That's exactly right. And you've got to get your chops. That's right. And so go get them somewhere else or prove your business out there in the market and then move to that. And I appreciate your humility. And I appreciate that you're being kind and gentle. And I appreciate that you're learning as much as you're learning and how you're

aspiring to do that. Do all of that. That's all great. That's all great. Patience. But little patience with your dad. It would be an awesome thing right here. A little grace. For the short term, anyway, that puts, hey guys, thanks for coming by. This was fun. Let's do it again. That's a good hour. Really good information. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. All right, speaking of Entree Leadership, the best-selling book that birthed this business, and it's helped so many leaders like you, we want to give you a free book chapter. In fact, chapter one, which is entitled Entre Leadership to Find, is chapter one of the New York

Times best-selling book. Unbelievable how practical this content still is. It just is never going to age. It is the playbook for a Super Bowl winning team. If you want to download this first chapter, it's free from the book, Entree Leadership, text EL book. that's EL book, no spaces, text EL book to 33444-4. That's 33-444-4 or click the link in this episode's show notes. Well, that's going to do it on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.

Hey, if you enjoy this podcast, you should check out our other great podcast from the Ramsey Network, like Business Boutique. Hey, I'm Christy Wright, and I help women all over the country take their ideas and pass. 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. To hear full episodes, just search Business Boutique, wherever you listen to podcast, or go to businessboutique.com.