EntreLeadership - A Message for Weary Business Owners

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Tune in to hear Daniel Tardy and Jack Galloway respond to some business owners' fears around Coronavirus.   Get access to the EntreLeadership Weekly Report Tool, FREE, for you and your team for 3 months: Text TEAMHEALTH to 33444 or visit entreleadership.com/weekly-report   Follow us on social media to stay plugged in to everything we’re doing to help the small business owner win: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Twitter YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, this is Alex. I think we all know that times are a little bit wild and crazy right now. And I think one of the things that makes it so crazy is that everything is changing so fast. But here's the deal. The last thing you want to do as a leader is keep your eyes glued to CNN and Fox News. I just don't think that's good for your sanity. So we wanted to make sure that we were providing you with the most up-to-date information with regard to how we are handling this whole situation at Ramsey Solutions, but also how we see small business owners around the country winning and leading in this time. So every day, we're committed to bring you action-oriented, practical, positive content that can help you move your business forward. So here's today's bonus episode with Daniel Tarty and operating board member Jack Galloway. Well, hey guys, Daniel Tarty with Ramsey Solutions and Entree leadership team. And I'm here with Jack Galloway, who is our senior executive vice president of our business to business division. It's been with Ramsey Solutions for almost 20 years

and serves on our operating board. Jack's, thank you for being here with us today. Thank you. Good to have you. So, Jack, you and I, a week ago, we're on spring break, and we came home Monday morning and went right into what we've kind of called a war room.

We took our normal operating board meeting and our weekly rhythm and disrupted that and said, let's just jump in with all of our leaders and Dave and start figuring out how we're going to respond to everything that's going on out there. And so I want our listeners and viewers to remember that we also are operating a business just like you guys. And we're trying to figure out how to respond just like you guys are.

We all have new problems now that we're working to solve together. So, Jack, Monday morning, we come in, there's a little bit of energy in the air. What was going through your mind when we came back from spring break and realized, like, we've got a whole new situation on our hands? It was so surreal because we left both. of us left and things were sort of cautious. Like we were waiting to see how things might go. And while we were gone, all of a sudden our building is emptied out. Everybody's working remotely, which we had never done before. We're trying to make sure things are going to work. We're trying to

figure out how do we do business while people are gone. How do we lead remotely, which we had never done? And we come back in and everything is different. And all the plans that we had laid out, we're planners here. All of those plans are put on hold while we stop and go, what's really important right now? So as a business leader, you know, certainly we're trying to lead with confidence, and also it's going through our head. What is worst case scenario? How do we even plan for worst case scenario when we don't really have a precedent for something like this? And of course, we don't want to panic and go to worse, worst case scenario. And we don't want to freak out our team, but we also have to kind of be realistic.

And, you know, how have you seen us appropriately kind of set the level and say, this is potentially how bad it can get and then back out of a plan from that point? One of my favorite quotes I've heard during this time is facts are our friends. And what I've learned is with me and with other seasoned leaders is when you come in, your emotions will tell you that your worst-case scenario is far worse. normally than what your actual worst case scenario is likely to be. And so when we start laying down, what do the facts tell us? What do the numbers of our business tell us if our sales drop by this percent or this

percent or this percent? And what I've found is in my own leadership time is if I will look at on paper what the worst case scenario, the most likely worst case scenario is, and deal with that and get at peace with that, that if everything that could go wrong goes wrong, that's our worst case scenario. And just take a moment as a leader and just breathe and go, I hope that doesn't happen. But that is my worst case scenario. Now I can set it off to the side and go, let's get to work.

Let's get to work making sure that doesn't happen. But I've kind of gotten that out of my head so that that emotion doesn't just hover over me like a cloud while we're trying to work our way through this. When you're putting those ideas on paper and trying to figure out what numbers to use, and there's a scientist who said every model is wrong, but some of them are useful. Yeah. You know, so I think we can't go to like trying to perfect and have a crystal ball, but there's something about plugging in scenarios.

How do you kind of get close enough and move forward with that plan versus like, you know, really trying to get down to the exact percent? I mean, we can't perfectly tell. So how do you balance that tension? Well, here's what we did here. we came up with phases. Hey, phase one is our revenues drop by a few percentage points or less, and it feels like this is a difficult time in our business,

but not catastrophic. And here's what that looks like, and here's what we're going to do about it. Phase two is worse. Our scenario is our revenues are dropping by more. This is happening. This is happening. Maybe the government doesn't let us come back to work. quickly as we thought.

And what does that look like all the way to a third phase, which is, wow, things are far worse. They're closer to that worst case scenario and that we've planned for them. But when we've got them on paper and they will change, they have to be fluid. They're going to change sometimes daily, definitely weekly. But as things are changing, we're able to sort of line up.

This is what the facts are telling us today. These are our scenarios and phases that we laid out. That helps us keep a level. head while we try to work our way through this. I've talked to a lot of business owners in the last few days, and there's two different conversations around a worst case scenario on what you communicate with your team. Some of my friends in the business owner community have said, we're telling our team everything. And there's some who are saying, hey, my phase three includes laying people off. I'm not going to tell them that because I don't want to panic the team. What's your philosophy on how

much to share? It's a balance for me. And here's what I mean by that is. As the leader, I can handle more fearful emotions I feel like as a seasoned leader than my newest leader on the team or somebody that just moved their family across the country to start with us. And so I want to be completely honest with our team. It doesn't mean I tell them every single thing that could possibly keep them up at night. And what I mean by that is I want to be real with my leaders. but real with my leaders is not sobbing uncontrollably out of fear about how afraid I am of this business. I still am the leader and I'm charged with taking this group of people and leading them through a crisis.

But if I'll be authentic and sincere and tell them, guys, I didn't sleep last night either. I'm afraid. I'm dealing with some things I've never dealt with before. Now, let's roll up our sleeves and see how we're going to get through this. Because I believe by looking at the facts and the scenario, and the talent around this table, I believe we're going to get through this. And so it's an opportunity to be sincere, not overshare, but be sincere, be honest, never mislead in any way, and walk people. Sometimes they can only handle a little bit of information

at a time, even though you've got a greater picture in your mind. I love that. That is so true. Jack, I want to talk about how we get our leaders and our team to help us solve these new problems. I've noticed just among some of our leaders in the last few days that there's still a little bit of hesitation on what is my role now? My role two weeks ago was very clear. We talk about it all the time. And now all of this new information is coming down. And we're making quick decisions, moving really fast.

And I think a lot of our team wants to get it right. They want to help, but they also still need us to say, hey, I'm looking at you. Take this ball, run with it. It's not normally even your job, but I just need somebody who I know can be the champion of this thing. What's important to bring our team in terms of communication with them, bring them into the problem so that they have clear lanes to run in? First, I'll say that I've found that our titles right now have less to do with what we're doing day to day than at any other time in the 20 years that I've been here. The CFO might be helping carry out an initiative that has nothing to do with accounting. And that's the same way around our table is whatever needs to be done, whoever's got the talent, the ability, and the bandwidth to be.

move that ball forward might be given that ball, that opportunity to run with for the next 24 to 48 hours while we've moved the thing forward. Here's another thing I've found is when you give people responsibilities and they share in whether or not we weather the storm or not, it gives us more confidence. It gives us more of a sense of control that we have something to do with the outcome. We feel less like a victim, and we feel like we're all working together instead of relying on just the leader or the leader and a few others to get us through this. We're all responsible to do whatever it takes to get through this. Well, these are great tips. You know, we've talked about planning for worst case scenario.

We've talked about the value of getting your plan out of your head and onto paper. We've talked about appropriately sharing and being pretty transparent with your team. also let them know what the problem is and invite them into that so we can work on it as a team. How do we deal with the fact that we're all running about three times harder than we were just a month ago? And we're exhausted. Our team's exhausted. I don't know about you, but I mean, I'm jumping out of bed first thing in the morning. And it's just like this time warp, you know, and I look up and all of a sudden it's nine or 10 o'clock at night and I'm getting off a call. And I love a part of that because I just, I feel like our whole team is coming together and over communicating and working to do. whatever it takes. And I also know, and you do too, that it's not sustainable. So the value of

downtime, the value of taking a break and figuring out, okay, how am I going to pull back from the chaos for a second? How can we give ourselves permission to still do that when everything's on fire? When there is a fire in the business or just in your life, when there's a crisis, adrenaline goes way, way up. And all of a sudden, you've got energy that maybe you didn't have before this crisis. And you are able to work harder, longer hours, make decisions faster. And there's a certain amount of positivity in that, an adrenaline, and energy in that. And we teach people to do the same thing when they're getting out of debt. Hey, take an extra job, throw some pizzas, do whatever it takes. But just as we've learned in getting out of debt, that you can't do that as a long-term plan,

you can't lead 24 hours a day for a long period of time without hitting a wall. And you may not see the wall coming, but your body and your mind have a limit to where that adrenaline is going to run out. And if you don't have a planned break in there to recharge your own batteries, personally, spiritually, physically resting, if you're not taking care of sort of the four walls of who you are as a leader, then you're just going to run out of gas and you're not going to do your team any good. You've got to plan some downtime to recharge spiritually, physically, emotionally, relationally. Jack, you and I have talked about this.

One of what I believe is one of the greatest leaders to ever walk the face of this earth is Jesus Christ. And if you read the Bible like I do, you'll see times where Jesus was healing people and the multitudes were lined up. and then all of a sudden he just went away to be alone. It never says in the scripture, when everybody was healed, then he took a break. I mean, can you imagine this line of people like a greeting line? And he just has to pick and say, hey, I'm sorry, I can't get to you and help you right now because I've got to go be alone and pray and recharge my batteries. And so I often think, you know, if Jesus did that, none of us are him.

That's right. And even as leaders, we want to fix every problem out there. And unfortunately, we're not going to fix every problem, I think, is what. what we're saying. Jack, this has been incredible. Before we jump off, any final thoughts or words of encouragement for leaders right now in kind of the midst of this chaos? Speak to their heart. My final thoughts are this. If you find yourself out of control and there's some forced downtime, a lot of times as business owners, we are so busy working in the business that we're really not able to stop and work on the business. And we complain about that all the time.

there's not enough time to stop and really think strategically about the next 10 years. This is a perfect time for that. This is thinking time. It's also a relationship time. When this storm passes and it will, your team will remember the things you said and did during the storm. Use this as a time to encourage, to inspire, to lift others up when you see them getting tired and weak. use this as a time to build relationships or to mend broken relationships. And when this passes, you will be glad you did.

Jack, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing with our audience. I'm encouraged, and I know they are too, by the wisdom and encouragement that you've had for us today. And we just want to remind you guys, we believe in you. We know that you're fighting. We know that you're pushing to keep everything alive out there. And you can do it. And we believe you can do it. You know, we've said this whole time since all this started that,

At the end of the day, small business owners are problem solvers, leaders by the nature of what we do, we solve problems, and we've all got a big problem to solve right now. And so I want to encourage you, if you're tired, if you're a little bit beat down, continue to push for solving this problem. Because part of the secret for our country to get through this is not just Congress and it's not just the medical team. As much as we need them to help, we also need leaders in the marketplace to step up and figure this out. And that's what you're doing. And as long as you're doing that, we're going to continue to be here for you. And together, we're going to get through to the other side.