EntreLeadership - #383: 6 Drivers of Business with Daniel Tardy and Sarah Sloyan

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

You’ve probably heard the alarming statistic that roughly 50% (yes, half!) of all small businesses fail within the first five years.1 Kind of takes the wind right out of your entrepreneurial sails, no? Well, we’ve got some very good news: It doesn’t have to be that way. After working with hundreds of business owners over the past 15 years, EntreLeadership has discovered that if business owners focus on six key areas, their chances of success skyrocket. Tune in as Ramsey Solutions’ own Daniel Tardy and Sarah Sloyan break down the six areas to concentrate on—and why each one is so important. Get ready to take some major notes.   entreleadership.com/podcast #357: The Business Owner's Path to Success with Daniel Tardy and Sarah Sloyan #346: How to Recession-Proof Your Business with CFO of Ramsey Solutions 6 Drivers of Business Success wheel PDF EntreLeadership's Business Health Assessment Learn more about EntreLeadership Elite Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   As an Amazon Associate EntreLeadership earns from qualifying purchases.   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

Over the past few years coaching small business owners from around the country, one of the things that I've learned is that y'all do not lack intensity. Folks, passion is kind of the price of admission if you want to start, lead, and own your own business. So I don't doubt your passion. But what I've seen is that the difference maker between business owners that fail and those that succeed is that the ones who succeed, the ones who win at the highest level are the ones who have a plan for consistently executing on the things that matter most over an extended period of time. And that begs the question, what matters most? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits.

I'm your host, Alex Judd, and today we get to sit down with two of our senior leaders here at Entree leadership, Daniel Tarty and Sarah Sloy. And I am so excited because they're going to walk you, the small business owner through the things that we have identified here at Entree leadership matter most for your organization. We call them the six drivers of business success. And if you're going to grow as a leader, as a team, and as a business, you're going to have to focus on all six of them. Now, six drivers, it sounds super simple, but just like most things, it is far from easy. Alex, I remember the first time that I started learning about business. I started hearing from

my dad and my granddad, these different phrases that were businessy phrases, you know, like things like a P&L and income statement and sales and marketing and revenue. And, you know, I think business is such a fascinating world. But it's also really complicated because there's all these words and these models and these different ways of doing business. And then you get to hear most businesses fail. You're like, well, crap, how do they fail? And how do you make sure you don't fail? And, you know, you start learning about it. And you kind of get excited. to explore this world, but then you also realize it's Pandora's box and it just keeps going. And there's so much infinity when it comes to what it takes to win in business.

And that was the backdrop of what I stepped into a leadership role in business for the first time, essentially going, there's so much here. It's so confusing. It's so overwhelming. I'm going to do my best. I got a few things figured out. But I still feel like there's something in my blind spot that's going to take me out. And I don't really know what to focus on.

And so the key with all of this is we have figured out that business actually isn't that complicated. We just make it complicated. And we've spent a lot of time with Dave, with our leadership team, and looking at our journey and looking at thousands of customers that we've worked with. And we've said, what's true with all these businesses that's making them work? And what we figured out is it's really about six simple things that if you'll focus on these six things, you're going to win. And you actually don't have to worry about anything else. So we took this very complicated, overwhelming space that for people like me, tend to feel intimidated with how much complexity there is and go, let's just put the cookies on the bottom shelf and go,

what are we really talking about here? And I know the last time we had a conversation here, we talked about those different stages that we've really realized every small business, including our own, goes through from the treadmill all the way to the peak performer and ultimately the legacy builder. And it seems like Sarah, that there's kind of like this option of like, you can either wonder, through those stages on your own, or you can follow a guided path. And it seems like the path is the better option for the business owner. I mean, it's my preferred option just because I feel like if I can get to where I'm wanting to go faster, because someone else has forged the way and can say,

hey, here are the key milestones. There's a reason why I don't usually take all the back roads when I'm trying to get somewhere fast. I like all the back roads when I've got the luxury of kind of, you know, if I'm just trying to see the sites, but if my purpose is getting somewhere, then I want to get there, you know, as efficiently as possible. So, yeah, I'd love having kind of a roadmap and signs that I'm on the right path for those things. Well, and I would even argue you don't really wonder from the treadmill to the pathfinder to the trailblazer, most people, if they don't focus on these six areas, they never actually get off the treadmill, you know, so it's not just a matter of, do you want to get there fast or slow, or do you

want to take the long way or the short way? Unfortunately, if you stay on the treadmill and you don't focus on these areas, one of them will become your blind spot or your Achilles heel and cause you to stay on the treadmill so long that eventually you collapse. Statistically, that's what we see happens with small businesses who stay on the treadmill. Oh, yeah, and it's not even necessarily that the business fails. It's that you are then your lifestyles threatened. Most of these folks start their business for freedom. You know, they don't want to answer to other people. They want to go to their kids' soccer games. They want to make money to be able to afford to go on vacations. And if they stay on that treadmill, they never actually get to do those things.

Well, and it's crazy. Sometimes it's like, unfortunately, we'll coincide with business owners, we'll meet them when they are just sick and tired of being sick and tired. And it's like I'm just so fed up with being trapped by the thing that I built. And it sounds like that's what this path is about. Yes, totally. Yeah. I mean, I feel sad when I hear that because I know so many business owners, they believe that there's a better way. That's why they started. But I mean, use the word feeling trapped by the thing they started, you know. And it's, It's very normal for a small business owner to end up in that spot where they feel trapped. They feel desperate. They feel hopeless. And so our goal with creating this framework and observing and researching what does it really take to win in business is to take that business owner who's feeling trapped and starting to wonder if they have what it takes and give them a clear guided plan that says if you'll just focus on these things, you're going to win.

Because what happens is that business owner starts thinking they're the problem and they don't have what it takes, they're not cut out for it. And the truth is, like, they probably are a lot better than they feel like they are. They just need a clear plan so that if they follow the plan, they combine that with their driving, their ingenuity, and then they're off to the races. And, man, haven't we all been in that place where you're so overwhelmed and then you don't know what to focus on? Because you're just at that point so stressed out that you just feel like everything's wrong, and you're like, where do I even start? And that's what I love about these six drivers is it gives you kind of that focus. I think focus is what's the key here.

is you can focus on a lot of things and do kind of a mediocre job, or you can focus on these six key things, and that will drive your business forward. And it seems like it's a never-ending process, right? Like regardless of where you are, this is something that is ongoing. Yes, that's what was so fun, is we were talking to Dave about this as we were kind of identifying these things. And it was really neat to hear him talk about how he is still going around these drivers, that you're always focusing on these things, no matter.

matter how big, no matter how successful. And I thought that was really encouraging. It's not this thing that you just kind of check off. It's this game that you engage in and that you thrive from. Well, that's how you know that you've really hit on a principle, you know, because a principle is timeless and a principle is not contextual to a certain size of business or a certain industry. When something can essentially be universally true, and we believe these six drivers are universally true across all types of businesses, all sizes of business. And we've really stress tested this thing and tried to break it and make sure that that was the case. And when you refine it down and go, no, it's really stood the test of all the specific applications, small, big, you know, North America, South America, Europe.

I mean, all of these companies, like, this is true in businesses everywhere. Then you can go, okay, I can really, I can really take this to the bank. I get super excited when I know that Daniel and Sarah and our leadership team are in a room locked in there with a whiteboard because I know that good things are going to come out of that, and that whiteboard always looks like a beautiful mine. But before we jump into each of these different drivers, where did this really come from? Like as you step back and said, okay, let's observe and let's create a framework that every small business in America can follow to win. What were you pulling from and how did you come up with what you came up with?

Well, it was a combination of things. I think we started with our own story. And when you look at how Ramsey Solutions has progressed over the decades, it's pretty incredible to look back on, I love hearing Dave. We really sat down with Dave and said, tell us some stories. And he started talking about when he had not so proud leadership moments and how he's grown from those. And it was awesome. And then we started, like Daniel said, looking at we have interacted with so many business owners. And so we started thinking of certain people in our heads and saying, okay, let's take so-and-so's path, where are they now? How did they get there? So it's really been from taking a concept and then stress testing that across all of the business owners that we know that we've spoken to and their

journeys. Yeah, I mean, we certainly so much of it's foundational to Sarah's point on the way that Dave has built this. Sarah and I both grew up here in the sales role and in the sales role, we're talking to business owners every day about their businesses. And our approach to sales is not to hype them up and just tell them a bunch of benefits and say, you got to do this. It's really to listen and to ask questions and to take a, I would call it like a consultative or a coaching approach to sales, which is you spend 90% of the time asking them about their business and what their pain points are and 10% of the time positioning our services and offerings as a solution to those things if it makes sense. And so, you know, Sarah and I have

well over 10,000 hours each of on the phone with front lines business owners who are really in who are really struggling, who are really fighting, and the ones who are winning. And then we've got all these clients through the years who have been winning, who've gone from that treadmill to peak performing businesses. And so as we started developing this framework, I reached out and started calling some of those clients, and I said, tell me your story again. Tell me entree leadership intersected when you were on the ropes and you were basically desperate and then you did what?

Okay, you went to this event, and then you went back and you told your team what exactly. And I just started mapping a lot of these stories and listening. and looking for those themes. Actually, I interviewed my dad, who's a small business owner, who went from kind of that treadmill state when he picked up the business to he's now a peak performing business. And I said, you know, what were the critical...

He was in my office and on a whiteboard where we're mapping with a dry race marker at these inflection points and basically just taking the stories and making sure those stories actually validated these frameworks and principles that we were starting to kind of refine. And we get back with Dave at his house

and we take a few hours in his living room, and have several of us sitting around with more flip charts and more whiteboard sessions. And we just kept beating up on this thing. When I said earlier that we stress tested it, it wasn't like one afternoon, like we threw it up on the wall. We're like, oh, that's it. That's good enough. Let's go.

I mean, we really have spent a lot of time ensuring through research qualitatively, quantitatively, sales calls, talking to people, you know, Alex, you're one of our coaches and we've been talking with you and with our other coaches and going in the coaching process. Is this true of what's going on with these businesses who are going from again, the treadmill to the peak performing businesses. And so we've just been so excited to see that it's been validated over and over and over again. And it stood the test of not only Dave's story, but thousands of real businesses out there, not just a shiny idea that we just kind of pulled out of our ear. You know, it was fun is last fall we had our Master Series event. And it was the first

time we had talked publicly about the framework, the stages and the drivers. Yeah, it was crazy. And it was a little nerve-wracking because we had never talked, I mean, we had talked one-on-one, but we had never in such a large setting talked about this. What was it like 400, 600 people? I think it was 650 people. And not that I was counting. And so it was the first time we did this and Tarty got up on the stage and talked about it. And then I think our director of executive coaching, John Falcons, got up and talked about it. And then Dave got up and talked about it in different settings, if I'm remembering correctly. And it was so cool to be in the foyer of that hotel during the breaks because people were buzzing.

And they were saying, yes, I'm totally here on the stage. And it's because I have a flat tire in this area. And it was so cool to hear them self-identify and be able to give words to something that they had had frustration around. That really was the first time for me where it just made my heart leap. Because we had done this homework. We had tested it, like Daniel said, across thousands and thousands. of real businesses one-on-one, but then to hear the communication between these tribe members talking about it, that was awesome.

And so we did a whole conversation where we talk about the stages of business, and if you haven't listened to that yet, we'll put the link to that in the show notes as well. But what we're talking about today is the things that every small business owner should be focusing on if they want to go from one stage of business to the next. And if they don't want to become trapped, if they don't want to plateau, isn't that right? Yes, and I was just going to say, selfishly, I have loved this process. because I mean, we're going through this too, you know? And there are moments like Dino, so we came up through sales. Alex, I didn't know what P&L stood for. And so there's been plenty of moments of like, do I have what it takes? Do I know what this? Okay, we've never encountered something exactly like this while I've been in this role. So it's been awesome to kind of go back and center myself and say, okay, well, there's six areas that I need to focus on to win in business. And so selfishly it's awesome to be able to. able to have this as a diagram and built out. And I love being able to talk about it with my leaders,

too. You know, I want to highlight this. I think we've been saying this, but this isn't just, here's a cool thing that we've figured out and here's a good podcast episode or here's the thing we want to throw out there. That's just another resource. This is essentially taking the all you can eat buffet of all the entree leadership lessons that we've been putting out there for the last 15 years. And we're saying, this is the entree leadership plan. This going forward is going to be the drumbeat of everything that we filter how we produce content from entree leadership, how we organize our live events, how we do guest selection for our podcast. It is the framework. If people are familiar with Dave Ramsey's seven baby steps on the money side, this is tantamount

to those baby steps. This is the entree leadership game plan. And so this is a big moment because we're actually launching this. And it's not going to be the last time that you hear about it. This isn't just another podcast episode. This is the framework. This is how we believe. in Entree leadership, you should be running your business. And we're going to continue to build on this platform. But this framework is the thing. So I want people to really tune in and take notes. And even if you're driving, maybe pull over and write this down. Because if you get these six things right, you are going to win in business. I love that. John Maxwell says that an educator takes something simple and makes it complex. And a communicator takes something complex and makes it

simple. And to your point, what you just said is you said, we're taking years of work and observation and testing and failure and success, and we're boiling it down into six critical targets. So let's dive into these. And the first one, I don't think that's an accident that this is first. It's the personal side of leadership. Why is it so important that this is the priority at the outset? Oh, gosh. Well, because you are the lid, right? If you're not growing, your business can only be as good as you are. And that's something that I've had to really confront. The reality is what my business needs from me a year from now is very different than what it needs for me today. And so if I'm not continuing to push and grow, the business isn't going to be able to grow.

And everybody under me is going to be stagnant. And so personal has to come first. And you're right. These are in an order. They really drive. Each one kind of builds off the others. And so you are at the center of your business and you are key to making all of this happen. And so that's why personal absolutely has to come first.

You know, when I started in leadership, I was a terrible leader. And there's so much that I didn't know. There's so much growth that I needed to do personally. I had a lot of insecurities. I had a lot of ego. I had a lot of feeling like I had to have it together. And so I manufactured a lot of performing or showing off or trying to fake my way through it. You know, the whole fake it until you make it.

That's not really a great plan. You know, I mean, faking it out loud in front of the team when you really have no idea what you're doing, that's not good leadership and the team can pick up on it. But that was me. And I sucked as a leader. And through some pain and through some feedback from people, let me know how bad I sucked. I started going, I don't want to stay here. I want to figure out, I want to be a good leader. And, you know, honestly, I initially I wanted to be a good leader because it was about me becoming a good leader. But it wasn't until I figured out that that's not the right reason. That's not the calling to leadership. The calling is, how can I better serve the team? How can I better set up the team to succeed? And I realized I was holding the team back. You know, every problem that the team had really was a result of me not being a great leader. And so I had to do a lot of change in my heart and in my attitude and get really coachable and teachable and figure out how do I grow so I can be the kind of leader that my team deserves. And I'm a huge fan of transformation. And I've had the benefit of getting to go through a lot

of transformational experiences and seasons in my life, in my own health, in my leadership journey, and how I am as a husband and as a father. And thank God that none of us are stuck and have to settle for where we're at today. Thank God that we have the ability to transform and become better versions of ourselves. And so this one is a little bit depressing because, as Sarah said, you're the problem. And so, yeah, you're the problem. But the good news is transformation is an option. And so when you can grow yourself as a person and become a better leader, then the byproduct of that is your team gets better, your business gets better, your customers are served more, and you get to make a bigger dent in the universe. You get to make a bigger difference in the world for positive things as a result of your personal transformation. I love when Dave tells that story about leaders are built, not born. No baby comes out and they're like, this one's a leader. He's going to be great or she's going to be great. And it's so encouraging to think, like, yeah, we can all totally do that. We can all make improvements. I think the key that what Daniel said is right, it starts with you having the right heart behind it.

If your heart is, I want to be a better leader so I can make more money in my business. I hate to tell you, that's not going to get you there. If your heart is, I want to serve my team better, I want to serve my clients better, and I want to grow so that I can do that, man, the sky's the limit. It's so interesting. A lot of times that our events will have conversations with business owners, and they would call themselves, accidental CEOs where they're like, I just started this thing because I liked it and because I couldn't work for anyone else. And then one day I looked behind me and there were actually people following me and I'm supposed to pay them and like they're looking to me for guidance. But a lot of

times I think those folks find themselves in that treadmill or that pathfinder position where they're like, okay, I love the idea of personal growth. But I'm getting to the office at 6 a.m. and I'm leaving at 10 p.m. And this is the blessing and burden of owning a small business. So where on earth does personal growth fit like what am I supposed to do what are y'all's thoughts there well i mean the first thing that comes to mind is you know what do you want do you want to stay on that treadmill do you want to be coming in at 6 a.m and leaving at 8 p.m every night and missing your kids soccer games and just grinding it out and you know not knowing if it's ever going to actually hit the way that you thought when you started this thing like what do you really want do you want it to be better do you want it to be more peaceful

to run your business do you want your work life balance to actually show up in a way that your your feels that. What do you want? If you want it to be better, you've got to start with believing that it can be better. And then you got to believe that you, not the outside circumstances, but that you as the leader, can do something about it, that you can actually change your circumstances by changing who you are. And when you get that mindset, you decide, I want it to be better and I can do something about it. You figure out the personal growth thing. You figure out how to work it in. You figure out how to make tradeoffs and go, you know what, I'm going to let that little fire burn over there for a little bit, and I'm going to go read a book so that today

I'm getting better putting seeds in the ground so that I get new fruit tomorrow that's going to more than offset the fact that I let that little fireburn short turn. You figure that stuff out when your desire's deep enough. That's so good. I'd love to know just from y'all's personal perspective, is there a specific habit or a specific rhythm? Maybe it's talking to someone, maybe it's podcast, maybe it's book. Is there something you've applied yourself that has really been effective for you growing personally because I think it's different for every person, but I'd love to know y'all's perspective on that. Totally. So I'll start with the fact that I have three tiny kids and I have a team of 67 people. So, and I have a great husband. He's amazing. But still, it's a

time crunch, right? Those are two organizational cultures you're working on. You could say you have 70 children. Yes, it feels like it. And I love them all. And actually, some of them probably parent me. So it's, you know, I don't know if they're actually children or it's just more of a family. I'm multiple, multiple family here. I would say the day that I stopped pressuring myself to do this through one specific way, that was the day that I could finally breathe and enjoy it. When I, back in the day when I thought, oh my gosh, I have to do this or I'm not good enough, I have to check it off my list.

It felt like something that was stressful. And so the day that I kind of had a change of heart and said, man, you know, I just need to make sure I'm working this in in a way that feels exciting to me. and if that means that sometimes I'm having incredible conversations with other thought leaders in the organization, man, that's awesome. It doesn't have to be a podcast. It doesn't have to be a book. Also, I think even if in the beginning you can build in 15 minutes at time. I mean, it's just like when you start eating healthily or deciding to work out. Like, it's a shock to your system if you try to go from zero to 60 in one day, right? So let's say first week, you start by just adding in 15 minutes. My father-in-law gave me the best advice. a couple of weeks ago, what he said is he commits to reading 10 pages a day. And he said he can get through a whole book in X amount of time because he's just knocking out 10 pages. And we all go, oh, 10 pages, that's fine, you know, or 15 minutes. Sure, I can do that. So I would say, don't put pressure on yourself to have to do it like everybody else and just chunk away at it,

just committing to it, chunking away at it a consistent amount of time. Don't worry about the actual amount of time. Just consistently do it. That's the key. You know, I think Sarah is exactly right. What I hear her saying, and I would wholeheartedly agree with, you've got to figure out what works for you. And wherever it is, if it's in a book, if it's in a coaching session, if it's with a mentor, it has to come from a place where you've got a burning desire in your belly where you're going, I'm going to figure this out. I'm not going to be denied. I desire so deeply a better future for me, for my team, that I'm going to go through all the options. I'm going to, test and try different formats. And I got to tell you, I buy a lot of books, but I don't finish a lot of books. You know, you come to my house, you're going to see a lot of books that I started. I highlighted some, and then I got excited, and I moved on. And if you just looked at my bookshelf, you go, man, Tarty's quite the reader. No, I'm just a constant sponge for, let me grab that, let me jump in, get a little bit, take a little bit, and move on. And for me, I got to have the inspiration of books,

but I also got to do the audible thing on podcast and audiobooks and things like that. I got to be talking to people. I got to bounce ideas off people. So I think what you got to think about is when is a season in your life where you were learning something new and you really enjoyed it and you went from struggling in that thing to getting pretty good at it? What was true for you? And it's going to be different for every person. Sometimes it's like, man, I read a great book on that thing and I am a book person. Buy more books.

Someone else is going to go, I had a coach that could tell I was struggling in class and I wasn't really connecting. academically with things, and I never really could get into books, but I had this coach. He would just sit down with me after practice, kneecap to kneecap, and he'd look at my eyes and he would tell me that he believed in me. Maybe you need a coach. Maybe you need a mentor. So I think you've got to try all of the above and find your combination, but we all kind of lean towards, I'm a kinesthetic learner. I'm visual, you know, something, my wife, she actually needs to see words on the page, and I need to see illustrations and images and charts and graphs and things moving around. And so I can learn more off of watching a YouTube video where she's going to dive more deep into a textbook.

So, you know, Sarah's exactly right. You've got to figure out how do you learn. But more importantly, is are you committed to learning every day of your life? I'm going to add one more thing to that, if that's okay. I was thinking about, you know, I wasn't a worker outer as of like four years ago. I don't know if that's an official term, but I wasn't one of those. And I, so it was like four years ago. And I was like, I value my kids are going to get older and I want to be able to keep up with them and keep up one day with my grandkids and I value, there's something I value around continuing to be healthy and stay active. But my lifestyle was not reflecting that. And so that's when I decided I did not want to part with the money, but the only way I was going

to work out is to pay and commit to, I was doing CrossFit. And so I think there's no shame in the same thing with personal development. If you value personal development and you need to pay for a coach or some kind of program that will help you continue to do what you, find valuable, then freaking do it. Who cares? You know? I just am going to put that out there. Freaking do it. Because I think that was a game changer for me. I built that community at the gym, and now it's really easy for me to show up. I go at lunch three times a week. And I feel like I'm letting myself down, but I'm also letting them down if I don't go. And so like Daniel's saying, get creative with whatever has to be true for you to live out what you value. Well, this is so cool,

because what Sarah is saying is if you really believe that you're the problem, you're the solution, then you're the biggest asset that your company has. You're the biggest asset. So you invest in your plant, you invest in your physical equipment, you invest in the team, you invest in cost of goods. But do you invest in yourself and your own personal growth? And it takes time and it takes money. But so many times, Alex, we go, well, I'll just put myself second or even last on the list

and put everything else first with my dollars and my time. And we don't actually do the work to invest in. What we're going to get the most ROI is from actually growing ourselves. And so I think you've got to pay the money. You've got to invest the time. And you've got to do it consistently. I mean, the reality is I can sit down and work out one day for 60 minutes, but it's actually more impactful if I do it every day for a shorter period of time, right? So it's the same for personal development. You can't sit down and read one book and go, okay, I'm great. You need to consistently be doing that every day. It changes your thought patterns. It changes how you view things. Holy cow, we could do an entire conversation on leadership personal development. Maybe we will. That's right. But I think what you said, too, relates to the way Dave teaches this, because when he teaches this, he tells everyone in the audience, he says, I want you to picture a leader that you deeply admire. And it's like you pictured being healthy one day with your family.

It's like you picture the person you want to be. And then it's exactly what you said, Daniel, what are the steps to create that person? What are the steps to create that leader? Okay, so let's jump into purpose now. This seems like the driver that when we're talking to business owners on the mastermind is. is the one that everyone agrees is important, but is the easiest to kick the can down the road on. And so why is this not just important for someday? Why is this driver of purpose one that is important right now for small business?

A lot of our clients are accidental business owners and leaders. They look up one day and they've got all these people following them. Well, it was fine maybe not to write down your purpose when you were just one person. But you look up, you got 10 people. They don't know your purpose, right? And so how can you expect them to deliver on what your business's promises to the marketplace if they do not have the understanding clearly in writing of why this business exists? That's so good. I don't know if I've told you all this story before.

There's a guy named Wayne. He's one of our business owners that we've worked with. I think y'all have met him at our events too. But he's from Texas. He's got this big handlebar mustache. And we were talking about mission statements and purpose. And he said, Alex, when we started this business, my mission statement was. three words, feed my family. And he's like, that's, because that's all he cared about.

He's like, can we put food on the table? If so, we're good. And now he finds himself at this spot where it's like, okay, I've got to put a little bit more meat on these bones. So what would your advice be to Wayne of like saying like, okay, we did that, we checked that box, we fed the family. How does he start to think bigger about his organization's purpose? You know, earlier I said, leave a bigger dent in the universe. And it occurs to me, that's a, That was a Steve Jobs thing. And that actually doesn't help when you're getting started because, to your point, you're just trying to feed your family. But most people are not Steve Jobs.

Most people are not Elon Musk. You know, when you start a business, it's typically, my purpose is I don't want to work for this dirt bag that I'm leaving my J.O.B. over here. And so I want to go start my own thing and have some freedom. And I bet I can make enough money doing it on my own, hopefully as much as I was making in my J.O.B. and I just want to get out. Oftentimes, that's the catalyst for a small business owner to get started. Or their purpose may be, well, I kind of grew up in our family business, and I was always there working with dad, and I love dad, and I'd love to work with him more, and, you know, he's going to be kind of retiring.

So my purpose is to carry the torch of the family business. It's a sense of duty or responsibility, maybe. But generally, it comes from a place of survival and just do I have what it takes to create my own income? And, you know, you kind of stall out there. You kind of go, all right, well, now we've got 50 people, 80 people, and our purpose has not been revisited. And so what we're challenging people is, you know, if you're on that treadmill stage and you're just thinking about survival right now, your purpose may be a version of purpose that's good enough for where you are today. But we want you to come back once you get your nose above water and go, okay, what could I do now? What's now possible?

I got the bills paid at home. The kids are in school. They're fed and they're clothed. We've got a roof over our head. We've also got team members that are doing pretty good. What's possible for our business? We really want to make a difference beyond just we do these transactions with our customers. What are we about here? Like if we're going to spend the next 20 years investing in this thing, then what's the broader impact that we'd like to make beyond just turn in a buck? You know, so I think the purpose is one of those things that it goes on the shelf when we forget to come back to it because, you know, it needs to, evolve as our business evolves. But what we can tell you is it has to evolve beyond just growing your bottom line for your team to be excited about following you to the full potential of what your business is capable of. And no pressure, but this really originates with the owner, the founder. You know, there's something special that God has wired that person to do, and that is why this business has flourished. And so you really have to do some soul-seeking. Other people can't tell you what your purpose is or what your business is

purposes. This is what you uniquely, Luke Lefevre, our creative director over all of Ramsey's creative, he talks about what is it that God has wired you to do that you can't help but do. And a lot of times that's what the business is turned into, but no one has ever identified. It's like, oh, I'm just good at this thing. So I've started a business because I really need to make some money and feed my family. That's right. You know? So when you're revisiting purpose, it doesn't have to be this mysterious thing. Spend some time thinking about what is it you can't help but do or what is it there that you're mad about, that you want to change out there, that is usually what kind of fuels your business. And our purpose here at Ramsey Solutions is providing biblically based common sense,

education and empowerment that create hope for everyone in every walk of life. We've said it a billion time. And that word hope is really the centerpiece. Can you speak to what that gives you as a leader to be able to have that one thing you can always point to is this is why we exist? Well, what it gives me and what it should, this is a good litmus test for, do you have a good purpose statement? And that is, can the team get excited about going on that trip? So when we say we deliver hope, we give people hope, does that make people light up? Is there something in every heart that's represented by the team in the building that kind of starts beating a little faster? Like, yeah, I want to do that. I want to be a part of something like that. So, you know, you think about your purpose. Your business should be a vehicle that

takes you to the purpose destination, right? Purpose is where we go. And your business is something that's going to turn down different roads and it's going to adapt and evolve and do whatever that vehicle needs to do to get the whole team to the destination of that purpose. And so that's why, you know, Sarah's point earlier, that's why we start with personal, because personally as the leader, who you are and what you're about in your life and the difference you want to make with your life should be directly impacting the purpose of

the business. and the destination that you want that thing to go on, because you can have 100 different companies that do the same thing. Let's say heating and air conditioning, but they have 100 different purposes. They're going to go different directions. Some of them are just going to make money and provide some jobs.

Some of them are going to change their entire communities. Some of them are going to take, if that business owner values, let's say kids with special needs, they're going to take the profits out of that business and they're going to start a program that helps special needs kids in that community. Well, that's a different purpose. Same company. They all do heating and air conditioning, right?

But it's a different purpose because that's what's important to that leader. It's also a great filter, you know. It's what causes Chick-fil-A to not get outside of what it actually does, right? That's so good. I think it's so easy for business owners to be like, okay, well, I own a plumbing company. And so we're about plumbing. It's like, well, Chick-fil-A isn't about chicken, right? They're about way more than that.

I love that you use that example. Okay, so we talked about personal. We talked about the purpose driver of business. Now let's jump into the next one. It's people. and we always say business is easy until people get involved, right? This is my favorite one. I love this one.

Okay, so explain that. You just got this huge slider. Oh my gosh, I just love it. This is my favorite. Why is your favorite? Daniel would have a different favorite. Because we're wired differently, I love the people element of things. And I tolerate people.

That's what Sarah is really saying. No, that's not true. That's not true. But we light up differently. Like, I love the idea of building this team and rallying them around what we have said is the purpose to serve these clients. I love giving people, you know, believing in them more than they believe in themselves. I love giving them constructive feedback so that they can be the person that they want to be.

I love just everything about that, the hiring, the firing, the accountability. Like, I love all of it. Even the firing and the accountability. Well, I think done in the right way, right? Because I think if people want to, everybody has this vision of who they want to be, whether they've acknowledged it or not. And I think when you can as their leader tap into that potential, you're just holding them to what they said they wanted to be. That's so good. Man.

Okay, Daniel, for someone that this isn't maybe, it's not your favorite. It's something that you're really good at, though, and it's something that you've focused on. My assumption is that the reason why you'll say it might not be your favorite is because you're such a hard driving personality. Like you are a very results-oriented person. You move really fast. And I think that's a lot of the business owners that we work with a lot of the time. How have you developed in this arena to make sure that people is a crucial priority? Because Entre leadership is known in our business as really valuing and putting people as a priority.

So how did you get there? You know, the journey I've gone on, Alex, is I started out in the business world and sales, really trying to prove to myself that I could figure it out. and I've always been very goal driven and objective driven. And it took me a while to realize that if I don't really value people and see myself as a part of a broader team, then it's going to be a really lonely journey. And I might even get to the top of that mountain, but I'm the only one there to enjoy the view. And that's a really sad place to be. And I think I come at business oftentimes from, like Sarah's saying, and the business model and the strategy and the goals.

But you do this long enough, and people come in and they work with you, and then they move on. And, you know, I've had some experiences where God has really brought me to the end of myself. I've had experiences where, you know, people that have worked for me have moved on, and there's brokenness in those relationships. I've even had the unfortunate experience where somebody who moved on, I got the call that they had passed away. And you get that phone call and you evaluate everything that your life is about.

And you really question as a leader, am I being the kind of leader that's really empowering and building people in a way that's not about me and my agenda in this business, but still what Sarah is talking about, which is unleashing their full potential, allowing them to become who they're really capable of being. and how can I serve them as a leader in a way that sets them up to thrive? It's an area where I'm not as gifted. I mean, the reason the Entry leadership team is so strong as a team is because Sarah Sloion is a people builder. I mean, she invest relationally, and she's very natural and she's very intentional with that. I'm not as natural, but I've learned to be very intentional. That's so good. It seems like it's been an intentional decision on the part.

of leadership within our Entree leadership team to make sure that we keep people a priority as we grow really rapidly. We're now 70 people. I think I was higher number 23. And I've heard you use the phrase a lot, Sarah, scale with soul. So what does that look like practically? What does that look like in action to make sure that as we grow, we keep people front and center? Yeah. So first I want to just point out that all of these drivers, you are innately wired to be naturally good at some of these and others are going to be your growth area. And so when you look across our leadership team, Daniel and myself and our other senior leaders, we are real good balance of these things. And so it's always important to push to improve yourself in all of these

areas. But the reality is you're also going to surround yourself with people on the team, you know, that maybe that's why we have been such a great team is Daniel jumps up and he has these business ideas that are incredible, you know? And then I can come over and rally the folks and talk through it. And so you don't have to be the end all, be all. And I always botched this thing, but if you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together. And that's why I love the idea of team is you come together and you go far and it's a marathon together. And so going back to your question, how do you scale with soul?

It has been harder as we've gotten larger. You know, when we all sat in cubicles that kind of opened up to each other and we were one lane, it was really easy. Communication was super easy. You just yelled up the thing like, hey, this person's coming to this event. make sure you get on the info, you know. Some of us still yell up the thing, but some of that doesn't change. Yes. So it was super easy, you know, when there were seven of us.

And so I've really had to spend some time thinking about, and that's where we started our core groups, is I started realizing there's a magic to our salespeople and our developers being genuine friends. Because if you don't have trust, you're not going to move very fast, if at all. And in order to have trust, you have to have that proximity and you have to know. each other's hearts. And in order to do that, you have to spend time together, right? And so I started thinking about how do I continue to make sure that our developers and our creatives and our salespeople and our content folks and our marketers don't all just kind of separate and segment themselves into

their discipline. And so what we've been doing is core groups. And we even did it virtually this morning. It was really fun. Well, what that has also done too is like prior to that, everyone had a relationship on the team. Just everyone's relationship was with Sarah Sloy. And it's like, Like Sarah had 70 best friends. And it seems like part of what that's done is it's dispersed it a little bit so you're not the bottleneck on people having a relationship. Because that was the hard thing is I am so relationally driven that it kills me not to know. Like I have to know every single person's family, their spouse name, their child's name. How's that person doing? And I started finding that I was the bottleneck. I can't spend the time that I need to making sure that we're staying ahead strategically on vision and all of that good stuff. if I'm spending literally all of my waking hours just checking in on 70 people's family members, you know, and I hate that. So I still am staying in touch, but I can't do that on a daily basis or even necessarily a weekly basis anymore. And so I had to take that and make sure that we still maintain that as a team.

And so these core groups are awesome because the reality is we're all going to go through hard stuff. In the course of a year, in the course of a couple years, people are going to have hard things happen. And they need to have connection on the team to be able to talk about those things. So if they don't get a chance to talk about with their leader or if it's a situation, they maybe don't feel comfortable with their leader, I want to make sure I'm giving them other outlets on the team to be able to talk through that and have somebody that can have their back, bring them a meal, whatever, you know? And creating the environment where that feels right but not awkward.

Yes, totally, totally. I want to talk about the net result of doing everything Sarah's talking about. Yeah. Is you end up with a unified team. and if you don't have a unified team, there is no business model good enough. There is no marketing campaign savvy enough. And there is no product that is fantastic enough to compensate for the fact that you don't have a unified team. Because if you're fragmented at the level of the team, all those fragments will show up in everything that you take to the marketplace.

And as your business scales, and you may scale, I'm not saying you can't scale. You may scale for a season, but then something is going to implode, and you will be able to do the autopsy on that and trace it back to the fact that you didn't have the unity. And the reason we don't have unity is because you're not doing the thing Sarah's talking about, which is taking the time to build these relationships. Oh, my gosh, and call out toxic crap. You know, all of us can stop right now. All of us, all of us listening, all this room, because we're not perfect either, can stop and think about an example where there was something people related. that was toxic and it got everything else off the rails. And so I can think back to like toxicity with people that we did not address fast enough

that then spread. And I spent hours and hours of my time then cleaning up that mess because I didn't address it soon enough. And instead, I should have been spending that time on things that we're going to serve our clients and our team in a better way, not dealing with one person's brokenness that I didn't address soon enough. I love that because that highlights that this. specific driver is one that you can't ever really take your eye off of. It's just you've got to

always have an eye on it. And then there are certain seasons where you need to even level up. And if it feels funny, you've got to address it with these people. You know, don't kind of put your head in the sand and think, uh, I probably just heard that wrong. No. I mean, Stephen Mansfield talks about this. Explode it while it's a two. That's how healthy things happen. You wait to explode it when it's a 10. That's when things start to really break down and it causes hours of wasted time addressing it. So good. Okay. Let's jump to plane. And this is the next one. So we did personal purpose, people. And then the next kind of way that we build on this is having a plan. Explain to us what we mean when we say you need a plan for your business. What are we actually talking about with regard to that? It starts with what are all these people going to do? That's right. It ties into that topic of unity. I've got a team. Where are we going? What's my role? How do I know if I'm doing my job? So, you know, planning, it can get really sophisticated and it can get academic. But essentially in our world, what we're talking. about is people need to understand why are we here and you got to have a plan to communicate

your purpose and your value and your mission statement everybody's got to understand why we're here and then everybody needs to understand where are we going over the next three to five years as an organization what's our heading what direction are we going as a business and then everybody's got of kind of you got to line on if that's where we're going where are we at today and then we got to go okay what's in the way what are we going to do about it how are we going to clear those blockers when we figure out how we're going to do that, that's our strategy. We start riding down and mapping with the team. We usually do this with whiteboard sessions and flip charts.

It's one of my favorite things. I geek out on it. Everybody's like, why I do you care about this so much? This is where all the awesome visuals come from that you were talking about. It's incredible. Yes, it's awesome. I like coloring pictures and drawing, and it's an excuse to basically be a kindergartner at work and get paid for it. No, but what we're doing is we're getting the whole team to speak into where are we going

and what's it going to take to get there? And then how do we turn that into a plan that we can take action on, that we can execute? And execute means everybody has a task walking out of this room. They know that they own that task. We all agree on what success looks like in that area because we built it together. And then we wrote it down. And then we said, okay, we're all going to come back and check in on this and you're accountable. And then when we check in, you're going to let us know this thing's going well or we got stuck and we got another decision.

we've got to make to clear that blocker. But when you get that momentum going of a whole team bought into an entire plan that's been built together, it's been thought through, and it's a compelling vision for the future, that's how you get traction. That's how you execute. That's the magic and scaling a business. But you've got to have the team to do it, right? So I'm going to go back and say, if you don't have a unified team, it doesn't matter how good your plan is. But once you've got that team who's unified, high trust in the team, high confidence that you're going to have my back, then we put a great plan on top of that and we're bulletproof. We know our audience, right?

We're talking to business owners. We're talking to entrepreneurs. And so they're going to listen to this. They're like, okay, I need a plan. I need a plan. They're going to get on the whiteboard. They're going to get with their team. They're going to draft a plan.

And then they're either going to go for a walk, get in the truck, or take a shower, and they're going to have a new plan. And then they're going to wake up in the morning with a new plan. And then after that, they're going to have another new plan. And they're all going to be new businesses that they're going to start. So I think the greatest challenge is not this idea that, like, oh, do I really need a plan? It's how do I stick to the freaking plan? Is that something you all had to develop or is that something you all had to work towards?

Well, before we, I want Sarah to hit on that because absolutely. She's probably got opinions about how I've been that guy. I know she does. She's told me. But, you know, you mentioned that you're going to get a plan and then tell the team. What we believe in Entree leadership is as a leader, you've got to create the environment where the team can sit down together and build the plan together. Because if you go off and come up with the plan,

And then you come in and announce to the team like Moses coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. I've talked to God and this is the plan. You know, you're not going to get the buy-in that you need. And so this has to be a we thing. Now, you can prep and come in with a little bit of, hey, directionally, here's some things I think we should be looking at. But make sure that's a conversation with your inner circle and your top leaders so that you guys are building the plan together because that's the best ideas are going to be there. and if you skip the step of that environment where there's alignment people are buying in, then you're going to leave with the plan and the team's going to watch you walk out the door

with your plan, not their plan, and they're not going to help you go build that. Oh, Lengi only calls it alligator arming. Yes, I'll help you. And you're like, I'm not doing it. I didn't believe in any of this stuff. He just is an idiot and he doesn't realize it. Yeah, what Daniel's saying is it creates clarity. A plan creates clarity.

It gives people focus and it creates alignment. everybody is agreed on what we're going to do. And there is a balance to your guys's question. There's a balance. So you can't say, okay, we wrote this plan 10 years ago and we are not going to change a single thing. We're going to live this plan out. You have to reserve the right to get smarter. So there's a balance between being flexible and getting smarter as you go and this being a living document and also not acting like it's changing every second and giving everybody whiplash. Right. And so that is where agreement on kind of what are we driving towards. How we can get there can change a little bit if we can agree on what we're driving towards. And so I just want to encourage you, like, there is a balance. It's not this thing you put in stone and you never come back to. But it's also not this thing that you can afford to change rapidly or then people get confused. You know, we should talk about the season when I would come in basically every week with a new idea. And I'm handing things to Sarah.

I'm like, okay, we should do this now. And I'm a salesperson. So I'm selling her on like, this is the idea. It all sounded great until I was the only person. And then I'm like, wait. But I'm only one person and I got 10 commitments. What happened? Well, a few weeks in, you know, she's looking at me like, you're killing me. You know, like I can't handle one more bowling ball that you're dropping in my lap.

And it was kind of this light bulb moment for me to realize, oh, wait, if she's going to execute and her team is going to come around all the other ideas we've already committed to, they don't have the space in our resources and our time for one more of, you know, Tarty's crazy ideas that's just swooping in and they, you know, you call it swoop and poop like a sea Have you heard that? And drop your crap on the team and then you're out. Well, for me, it felt great because I was like, all right, I got to share my idea. They're going to do it and I'd move on.

But then I started realizing, man, they're exhausted. I am wearing them out. And then we started talking through this dynamic. And then I felt like, okay, well, what do I do with these ideas? It kind of felt like a buzzkill because I'm like, but I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an idea guy. Where do those ideas go? I was the dream assassin.

That's right. Not having bandwidth doesn't mean these aren't good ideas. So we kind of came up with a way, and we started talking about, okay, how are we going to make sure that my energy and my idea generation thing can continue to, you know, be appropriate and have a way to stay engaged and activated with that, but also not overwhelming the team with things we've already committed to. And so we figured out that we can just have a running idea list. And Sarah got really good at asking me, like, okay, are you just sharing this because you think you may want to do it someday?

or are you expecting us to like hard right turn and do this tomorrow? And oftentimes I realized, oh, I didn't really care when we do this. I just was excited and I want someone else to validate like, yeah, that sounds like a good thing or to shoot some holes in it. Because I just enjoy the process of kicking ideas around. And so a lot of times we realized, oh, okay, he just needed to get it out and we can put that on a list. And maybe we do that next year or never. But that gave me a way to have the conversation. It gave Sarah a way to protect the team and say, we're going to stay focused on the stuff we've already committed to.

And now I turn around and do it to everybody else. I'm just kidding. Poor Ash Harris is out there. He's our product manager. And I'm always like, hey, so weekly report tool, I'd really like a reply feature. And he's like, would you please stop? So I think what's really helped is putting things on paper. And so I think if we say, okay, depending on your resource pool, you can only handle X amount of ideas, typically, depending on the size and the involvement of the ideas.

And so what it allowed me to do is go, man, I love that idea. I'd love to do that. hey, we just committed to these three things. Do you think we should swap one of these out? Do you think we should ask for extra resources and hire extra resources? Or do you think we should put it on the backlog? And why don't we revisit that next quarter? Because these projects are slated to finish this quarter.

And it gives options and pathways for those ideas. And it doesn't just kind of halt them in their tracks where it's kind of like, well, that's lacklester. Now I don't want to come up with new ideas because this isn't even fun anymore. That's a really good action item. You put your plan on paper and then you also have your team members put their plan on paper. Because it's amazing how the minute you actually open the word document, it's like, oh, I'm not actually that passionate about this anymore. Right, right. And that sounded really fun when I wasn't the one who had to figure out how to incorporate this.

And I think having that in front of people gives them focus. And you know, we've done this recently with our team where we have our business unit priorities. And then each person has their top three coming out of that. How am I going to contribute to making that happen and allows them to have good conversations with their leaders when they feel overwhelmed? and they said, okay, you want to add this on here? What do you think is going to give or coach me on how I can make that happen and deliver everything we already committed to? When I helped you have the conversation, you're talking about, you know, tradeoffs, and I don't

like tradeoffs. I want to be able to do all of it all the time. And why would we have any limited resources? Let's just make it all happen, you know? But that's impossible. It's impossible. I know intellectually it's impossible. But what the plan does when Sarah kind of gives me that, like, here's the priorities we

committed to. Do you want to sacrifice one of these? things to activate that idea. It lets me feel like I do have the option of getting to do that thing, but I understand what's at stake and what, you know, I've got daughters. And, you know, I can say to my daughter, Emma Grace, she's nine, she loves American girl stuff and she loves Pokemon right now. And so I can say, okay, Emigrace, you got $50 for your birthday. And you said that you wanted, like a week ago, we were going to go and get you American girl, but you're asking me if I can order you on Amazon some Pokemon cards. I can order you the Pokemon cards. But here's this $50.

And if we spend 40 of it for Pokemon, we're not going to get to do the American girl thing. Do you want to – and it gets her to wrestle with, okay, what do I really value and care about? But it gives her options. And that's what Sarah does to me. She lets me, you know, get to like a nine-year-old girl decide which one I really want to do. No, but it works. And the plan is the thing that gets to be the bad guy, not the person. And the reality is we are super open to changing, you know, if we need to change priorities and work on something else,

because we've agreed that what we want to do, oftentimes in entree, is we exist to help small business owners win. And so what our team cares really strongly about is helping them win. How we do that, we feel flexible on. So based on what is most helpful. And if there's an idea that comes in that's more helpful than what we currently planned, well, let's switch it. Let's do the other thing. But it helps you not be so willy-nilly like, okay, now we're doing 20 things and everybody's stressed out. That's really good. Not that that's ever happened. That's right. Well, and you used the phrase before, and I want us to hit on that real quick. because you use that phrase, I reserve the right to get smarter, and you use that with our team all the time. And I think what that does is that that sets us expectations for us so that when there is a change, it's not like this is coming out of nowhere. It's like, oh, no, we said we might do this. So I think setting expectations. We had to do that actually this morning. So, I mean, you know how fast things are changing right now. We are trying to push things out that would be helpful in this time as quickly as possible. And so our priorities are rapidly. We're like, ship that, ship that, ship that. Okay, switch over to this, do this, do this. So I,

I had a chat with the leaders via teams this morning. This is all new and I'm loving it. And I said, hey, here are the projects that we've decided to move forward on. Thank you. And we're never going off on the side and being like, let's build a restaurant. Like, these are things that we've all been talking about as a team. And I said, I know it feels like these things are shifting quickly. I want you to know that this is because we are continuing to get feedback from the marketplace,

from our clients, and this is an intentional decision to move after these things. I think if you just kind of pretend that it's not, a lot of change, people are going to eventually go crazy. If you let a little bit of the air out of the balloon and acknowledge, I know this is a crazy time. I know that we are working on different projects every single week when normally we have probably a month or multiple months to focus on a project at a time. We don't have the luxury of time right now. Our people are hurting. We're trying to get help in their hands right now. What they need is constantly evolving. People have a lot more grace than they can talk about it instead of pretending the elephant isn't in the room. Yeah, so just call it out

and acknowledge it. Okay, so we did personal purpose, people, plan, and now we jump to product. And I know the way that we come at this as a team is we're not going to tell you how you should be doing HVAC or we're not going to tell you how to plumb the toilet. We're not going to tell you what your marketing firm or your marketing agency should be doing with regard to Facebook ads. But we are going to talk about the differentiator that you can have as a business by how you deliver that product. So can you speak to kind of what our core beliefs around this specific target are, Daniel? Let's define product. Okay.

So this is the output of your organization to your customers. What's the value you provide? So it may be a physical product. It may be a service, maybe a combination of those things. You may be in the business to business space. You may be going direct to consumers. So those are all going to be unique to the type of business you're in, type of industry you're in.

And we think you're probably the expert on that part. But what we figured out is the way that you do, deliver your product, makes all the difference. You know, last year, restaurant business magazine declared Chick-fil-A, I mentioned them earlier, as McDonald's biggest competitor in the fast food space. They're actually slated to beat out Taco Bell, Wendy's, Burger King, Subway, they're about to become the third largest restaurant chain in the next few years in our country. It's not because they have access to better chicken.

In fact, you know, they're closed on Sundays and most of their labor force is teenagers. All these restaurants have the ability to make a sandwich. They didn't find 10 times better, you know, friars to fry the fries in. They didn't find 10 times better point of sale software and cash registers to run people. They, for the most part, have the same stuff as their competitors. But their differentiator is their absolute resolve to serve customers in a way that delights them, that changes the way they come into the store, they're having a bad day, they leave the store, and now they're having a good day.

Why? It's not how the chicken taste. It's how the people interact with them when they're there. And so when we're talking about product, we're really just challenging you to stop and go, how are we serving our customers? Do we delight our customers or do we just provide a good or service? You know, do we do it in a way that actually makes us remarkable? Do we do it in a way where they want to talk about us to their friends and family?

And I would even go as far as say, if it's appropriate, are they our friends? Like, do we actually have real community with our customers in a way where we've got a relationship with them? My wife, she loves shopping with, there's this little boutique store in downtown Franklin close to where we live called Haley Bees. And she loves shopping there. She has cool clothes. It's trendy. It's, you know, whatever. I don't understand that world exactly.

I'm not their target audience. But Haley, the owner of the store, will text my wife and say, oh, my gosh, we just got this shirt in. I could totally see it on you. It's your style. You would love it. Do you want me to pull back one in your size for next time you come in? Well done, Haley. Holy cow.

I'm like, I live down the street from there. Now I've got to go see Haley. Emily's been holding out on me. Okay. Haley and Emily are friends. Okay. And let's call attention to the fact that we are now talking about Haley on this podcast. Like, people are talking about it because she's making a difference.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. And I think sometimes it's tough in business. You get so many customers and you get going and you're just grinding all the time. But the challenge for the business owner is, you know, oftentimes you started on the front line. In fact, you may have literally been in somebody's crawl space installing the ductwork. And then you go back around and knock on their door and Mrs. Johnson opens the door.

And she says, well, hey, if you're done, come on in. I'll pour you a cup of coffee. And before you run, you know, I got some cookies out on the counter. And you had a relationship with Mrs. Johnson. And then you hire somebody who goes out and services Mrs. Johnson's house. And then you hire more people to do the administrative work and the paperwork. And you look up one day and you spend all your time in your office and you're not on the front line. or you're not on the sales phone calls anymore.

And you can quickly become detached from the people that your business actually exist for. And so a lot of being really good at customer service and making sure that your team is as passionate about helping your customers as you would be, is making sure that no matter how big you get, how busy you get, you don't ever lose that interaction with the front lines.

I think about Dave Ramsey. He has this baked in because he's on the phone three hours every day on the radio show talking to real people still. After 30 years of doing this, he still has that one-on-one conversation with somebody who calls in in tears because they're on the verge of bankruptcy and their marriage is falling apart and they're scared and they're asking Dave what to do. You think that doesn't keep his heart and his head really engaged with where our customers are at and how we're serving them as a company? And then he can turn around and make sure that

as his team members, we all connect to that same call that he just had. The head is engaged, but also the heart is engaged. And then that transcends down through the entire organization. Sarah, I was thinking about this specific target and the areas that our team is probably best at this. And I thought instantly about our live events and how we have customers that will come to our events and they'll say, oh, man, the speakers were amazing. But probably more amazing than the speakers was the team of people that I got to interact with. So what are some of the intentional decisions you and our leadership team have made and some of the actions you've taken to equip and empower our team to provide our. customers with such an unbelievable experience. It was really interesting. I guess it was probably a year and a half or two years ago. So when our, let's take our summit event, when our summit event was first

formed, Daniel and Kristen on our team and Joe on the live events team, Kristen was on the live events team at the time. We worked heavily on that event. About a year and a half, two years ago, I realized Kristen now leads that whole event, but there was a new event producer. And I thought, oh, she doesn't necessarily know why we do what we do around the events. And if we don't capture the heart around it, then we run the risk of her just repeating things every year, but losing the heart behind why we're doing it and then losing the effectiveness. And so we sat down about a year and a half, two years ago and started identifying the principles that we believed in. And one of them for our live event side, and really it's all of our sides. It started with identifying it for live events as we said, we will spend money that doesn't necessarily make sense to create an experience, to create a feeling.

And so that was a good call out because I think if you bring in someone to our live events that's only a numbers person, in fact, we had this happen. We had our finance gal come with us to Summit. Because when she saw it all in action, it put a feeling to it. This makes sense now. But when you see it just as a line item, you say, Good Lord, what's in those cookies? Or why are we doing champagne at check-in? Or what do you mean there's a flower wall?

Like, you kind of go, do we really need that? I mean, people are here for the content. But that is the client experience. They can get content free on YouTube. You know what I mean? It's the experience that we're creating and the environment that we're creating it in and the energy, the motivation for them to go out and put this in. and the availability of our team to be able to answer questions in real time, we're creating

this whole experience. And so I think what Daniel was describing is whether you have a service or a product, how your client experiences that is your differentiator. And so to go back to the Chick-fil-A example, you know, if you talk to my mom friends, we don't feel any shame about going Chick-fil-A. In fact, we're like, yes, let's go to Chick-fil-A weekly. so the kids can play on the playground, we feel no shame. Now, if I went to some of their competitors, I would feel like, oh.

Let's just call it out. Let's just say McDonald's, Sarah. Let's just say the name. Okay, so I'll tell you a funny story. My kids were with my parents a couple years ago, and my parents, I guess, were going to go through the McDonald's drive-through. And my kids were like, in awe, they were like, our parents never take us here. And it's because I leave feeling kind of gross, you know? Like, I'm like, oh, how many calories was in that?

It felt greasy. Like, you just don't feel great. But when I leave Chick-fil-A, I feel fine. I kind of feel healthy, which makes no sense at all. Because to Daniel's point, you know, it's not really that different in terms of food, but it feels better. If you cut the french fries to look like waffles, they have less calories. That's pretty sure. Those holes make all the difference, right?

So there's something to the experience as a differentiator. Yeah, Anne, you empower our team with that idea that the experience is the differentiator and therefore we knight you to go create a world-class experience. Can you imagine if every team member at that event felt like they had to check in with me to make it right with a client? Like, let's say a client came in and maybe it's even something that's not our fault. Maybe their room wasn't ready at check-in and it was promised to be ready. I mean, gosh, freaking make it right. And find out that problem while they're on site.

I mean, can you imagine if they go home? We've got a mine for that kind of stuff because if they go home, it's too late. It's harder for me to make that right with them and leave them feeling like. like, hey, we care. This matters. Let's do this right. So, yeah, we definitely, we teach our team to mine for that kind of stuff. And we teach them to like, hey, unless it's unreasonably $2,000, just figure it out. Make it right. We empower the team to just say, look, however you'd want to be treated, if you were that customer, use your judgment, figure it out. I can't stand the, what's our customer service policy thing. Like, if they have to check with a policy, that means they're

not a person. And I don't want them on the team. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If I don't trust you to able to make that decision? Why did I hire you? Like, we should have discussion. There's a deeper root thing here. And that goes into the idea that all the targets we've talked about thus far, and certainly with the last one as well, that if you're lacking in any of the six, you better believe it's going to affect the other five. Like, if you hired the wrong people, it's going to affect your plan. It's going to affect your product. It's going to affect all of it. Okay, so let's jump to number six now, which is profit. And we've got a whole conversation with our CFO, Mark Floyd, where we dive into the tactics behind this target and really get it.

into what it means to know your numbers. What I'd like to hear y'all discuss a little bit is it seems like for the small business owner, there is a risk that this can be a very emotionally laden topic because there can be guilt surrounding it and shame surrounding it and this weird feeling of like, we're not only doing this for the money, but at the same time money kind of matters. How do we come at that whole topic of being in business to make a profit? Well, the first way that we look at profit is to pan back and realize that it is a function of the five things we've already talked about. There's a reason this is number six. In fact, we'll get a visual out to the tribe where you can see this, but it's actually a wheel with these spokes.

And there's a reason the first one is personal, because it starts with you. And if you personally become the kind of leader that your company needs, and then you have a great compelling purpose, a why for this is where we're going. and then you use that Y to build a unified team to rally around that purpose. And then you work with that team to build and develop a plan. And then inside that plan, you have a great way of serving your customers. Guess what? Profits occur. Okay?

So it's almost like a math function where it's like all five of these things above the line, you add them all up and they say the equal sign under the equal sign as profits. And so they're going to be the byproducts of serving people. We say all the time, if you will just help enough people, you're not really going to have to worry about money, okay? Because profit is the applause that your customers give you for doing a good job. And so if you're looking at profit as an evil thing that if I get more profit, somehow I'm stealing from the consumer base out there, I'm evil capitalist that just is all about me, those people exist. But if that's your mindset about profit,

you got to remember there's a couple ways to look at it. One is, it's all about you and your lifestyle and you be in a big shot. But at the end of the day, the other side of this is, if you don't have profit, your business doesn't have oxygen. It's like a car with no gas in the tank. And so if you have a compelling purpose and your purpose is virtuous and it's noble and it's helping people in their lives, it's helping your customers improve the quality of their life. Well, if that's worth doing, then it's worth doing more of that. And to do more of that, you got to put gas in that car. And gas is in the form of profit. And by the first. the way, if you're working your tail off, you should increase your lifestyle a little bit, too. That's

okay. We believe that you should improve your life. You should improve the lives of your team, and you should improve the lives of your customers. All three of those will occur when you grow your bottom line and you don't apologize for it. That's so good. And I think it kind of goes to that idea that Dave always talks about that like when you provide a service of value to someone, they hand you these green certificates that have presidents faces on it. And it's like money doesn't have to be this big deal that we're afraid of anymore. Sarah, you always connect with our team that whole interconnection of we track money and we track revenue here in our business. We've got scoreboards everywhere on our floor, but then you always draw attention back to that. Why?

Can you speak to how you communicate that and the rhythm with which you communicate that to our team? Yeah, I think it's important to keep that purpose in front of us. So it's even as cheesy as in our stand up repeating, we exist to help business owners win. And then we talk about, okay, well, nobody around here, this is not a nonprofit. We all have families that we have to feed, you know, baby needs new shoes, all that good stuff. And so we're taking your kiss to chick-fil-a every week. Yeah, chik-fil-a, every. Listen, it's only the littlest. Oh, my gosh, he's so spoiled. It's only the littlest, and he gets ice cream no matter what.

Let's not even open the can of worms. But, yeah, I think that really. really, I believe that our team should be educated on these things because there's a certain point where I can't run around, and I don't want to run around, and micromanage and make sure that we're making the right decisions, both in our spending and in our kind of driving top line. And so I want all of us to be educated in how a business happens. And it's not just for Dave and the board and myself to make money. It's that I want to be able to continue to pay you guys. I want to be able to fund these new projects. I want to be able to, invest in our team. I have this dream of being able to invest in our team so that every single

person gets to pick a personal development conference every year. You know, that's part of them working here. I want to be able to afford to do that. And so I think when I can paint the vision of what I'm trying to do, we all know we all have our own personal budgets. I mean, the business has got to have a budget too. And it was really fun the other day when we got to sit down with the team and talk through that and kind of say, okay, here's what happens. There's a top line and here's how you make that up. here's the different lines of businesses that we have. And then there's expenses, and here's what goes into that. And it was really neat to get to have that conversation with the team.

It gives them perspective. So when I'm saying, man, I understand we'd like to make that higher. If I make that higher, that means I have to make a choice, okay? We've got these people coming up that I'd like to give pay increases to. It goes back to the idea of tradeoffs. You know what I mean? And so I think the more perspective I can share with the team, and I think you speak to this, because you can tell me if it's been helpful or not.

but the more perspective I can share in how decisions are made around that kind of thing and why it's important and what we can do for our clients. I mean, there's some projects I'd love to do just for fun or just because I think they're needed. That's right. I would really like to have an 800 line, a crisis line for businesses in crisis. Now, that's not going to make us any money. But I really want to be able to be that source for people 24 hours a day. Okay, well, people aren't just going to volunteer to do that for free.

I got to pay somebody to do that. When that makes you passionate about the topic of profit because it's like this gives us the ability so that we can do these things. And I think, I mean, one of the biggest topics of conversation we have with business owners on Mastermind all the time is I just want a team of people that acts like owners. And it's just like, well, people act the way you treat them a lot of the times. And when you treat us as team members as owners that understand the variables and understand the budget and understand the expenses, I start to act more like an owner of this business and of this place. Okay, so we've ran through all six of them, personal purpose, people plan, product, profit. One of the things that I'm so excited about this next season for entree leadership and really the customers that we serve is how tactical we're going to get with this stuff over the course of the next several months and several years because we're going to get really into the nitty gritty of how do you actually make this happen for the stage of business that you are in? But we gave a lot of people a lot of information today.

So what I want to hear from each of you to close out today is what is the immediate next step you hope people take and what is your encouragement for them to do it. Well, the first thing you got to figure out is how am I doing in each of these areas? You know, if these are the six critical areas that it takes to win in business and to go from that treadmill operator to a peak performing business, I got to check in and go, how am I doing right now? And then where are my gaps? You know, Sarah mentioned earlier, there's going to be areas that you're stronger in and areas that you're weaker in. And when we close those gaps and when you as a leader start to intentionally work in each of these six areas and have a plan to grow in these areas, your business is going to rise up. The tide of your business is going to go up to the next level as a result of working on these things. So it starts with an honest assessment of where you are.

And we'll put this in the show notes, a link to it. But our team has built a fabulous quick. It's not long. It's to answer a few questions, but it's an assessment that will guide you through. how are you and your business performing right now against these six areas? It's free. But it just gives you a quick baseline to say, okay, that area is great. That area sucks. That area. That's all right, but it could be better. And then we're going to give you some action steps that are tailored to your assessment. You know, we're going to give you like, all right, based on where you need to grow the most right now,

here's a really good starting point. So my challenge would be hit that link in the show notes, go take the assessment. It'll take you about five minutes. And you will feel so powerful once you your results because you'll know exactly what you need to work on to get to the next level. And that assessment, it's kind of like a look in the leadership mirror. It's like, oh, like, and some of us look in the leadership mirror and like, we're, oh, shoot, we have a lot of work to do. So, Sarah, what is your final word of encouragement that the work is worth it? Yeah.

Well, first of I encourage everybody that it's one step at a time. So I know it can feel stressful like, okay, now I've got to go do all these six things. Just one at a time. Take your reds and make them yellow. And then take your yellows and make them green. that's all you have to do one thing at a time. It's absolutely worth it. I mean, there's a fire that we all have when we're doing what we're wired to do. And there's a reason why you started this business. And so don't you want it to win? Don't you want to fulfill that dream that you had when you

started it? And so this is a really easy, and we've taken this assessment. We have tested and tested it. And like you said, you know, I think some people may be surprised, but a lot of us, it actually might validate what we kind of thought and the give you feel like okay good now i know and i can take that next step it gives you permission to double down in that area totally like okay there's no blind spots i got it well daniel and sarah i hope this is the start of many conversations to come thanks so much for your time today we're excited about this thanks for having us thanks alex i just think the world of daniel tardy and sarah sloy and i think the reason why i think so highly of them is because they absolutely for me in my mind's eye they exemplify what it looks at

like to grow in all of these six areas. Yes, they're my leaders, but also they're my friends. And one of the things that I've seen since I've gotten here is that this is not just a message that they teach and that they share with business owners around the country. This is a message that they've lived, right? And they are actively expanding their lid on what it looks like to grow consistently every single day in all of the six drivers of business growth. It's just so cool to see when someone lives in alignment with the message that they're sharing. And here's the deal. We want that for you, the small business owner. We want you to expand your capacity. We want you to lift your lid in all of the areas that matter most. And that's why we created Entree Leadership Elite. That's where we walk you through a guided path that meets

your specific needs as a business owner. So whether that's group coaching or one-on-one coaching or access to all of the incredible content that our team has created around each of these six drivers, we want to make sure that you are executing on the plan that matters most for your business. So if you want more information and to sign up for Entree Leadership Elite, text Join Elite to 33444. Again, that's Join Elite, all one word, no spaces, to 33444. We cannot wait to help you get real results in the areas that matter most. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. For a chance to win a $25, Amazon gift card,

you can review this episode by clicking the link that's in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, and it was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm Alex Judd, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Rachel Cruz show. Hey guys, it's Rachel Cruz, and I'm so excited to tell you about my podcast. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck. They're in debt. They don't even know where to begin, but they have this need, this want to get in control of their money. And if that's you, you have come to the right

spot. So in each episode, you're going to get a ton of inspiration and practical advice. If not subscribe to the Rachel Cruz Show podcast, make sure you do it today. To hear full episodes, just search Rachel Cruz, wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to ramsysolutions.com slash shows.