EntreLeadership - Advice for Small Businesses

Episode Date: March 31, 2020

Tune in to hear Dave Ramsey, Daniel Tardy, and Ken Coleman 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 Judd. This is a crazy time. And I think that one of the things that makes it so wild is the fact that everything is changing so fast every single week, if not every single day and sometimes even every single hour. And that's why we want to make sure we are providing you with the most up-to-date information, with how we are handling this situation at Ramsey Solutions, but also how we see small business owners around the country leading in this season. And so today, we are handling this situation. And so today, we are we've got a special episode for you. It's taken from the Dave Ramsey show last week where they did a small business theme hour. Dave Ramsey, Daniel Tarty, and Ken Coleman answered questions from small business owners around the country about how to lead during this wild time. So here it is from the Dave Ramsey Show, the small business theme hour. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions broadcasting from the Dollar Car rental studios, it's the Dave Ramsey show. We're debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at AAA 825-5-2-2-25. That's AAA 825-5-2-25. This is an Entree Leadership theme hour.

Daniel Tarty, our Executive Vice President of Entree Leadership, joins us on the air today, along with with Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality and author of the number one bestselling book, The Proximity Principle. We're going to talk to small business people, talk to people about jobs, and answer your questions this hour. Small business has gotten hammered with the coronavirus shutdown, hasn't it, Daniel? Well, Dave, it has. And, you know, the thing I want to tell people is just what you're hearing in the headline, certainly is rough for those that this has affected. And at the same time, I've been talking with dozens of small business owners over the last couple weeks.

And there's really three categories of business right now. There's businesses who are actually trying to figure out how to scale up to this opportunity. You know, my dad's got a water business in West Texas, and they had record sales last week. Why? If you're in a cleaning, well, they have a drinking water that's a tap at the sink and people don't want to go to the store and buy bottle water right now. So for whatever reason, they're going, hey, let's get this installed in our house. He's a Connecticuto dealer, right? It's a coligan water conditioning.

Colleging. Cleaning services, IT services, anything that has to do with working from home, anything that has to do with, I went to my favorite local burger place today, and they said, hey, we're not doing the dining room thing, but our kitchen is slammed, and we got calls, and we're running them out to the car. And we're actually trying to find some cooks right now, some help, because we've got to fulfill the demand. And so there's been a huge disruption, but there are businesses who are actually trying to, they're booming. They're booming and exploding and they're hiring right now. other ones are shut down. And there's all that they're shutting down. The restaurants are down.

And then I'm going to tell you that just in my non-formal survey and talking to my friends and people in our Entry leadership community, there's this group in the middle between booming and shutting down that they're just adapting and responding. They're shifting how they're doing business. You know, I talked to a friend last night whose company, they teach music lessons to students. They have music instructors and kids come into their studio. And they're just doing it virtually now. They're figuring it out.

And what I love about business owners and entrepreneurs is they are problem solvers by nature. And they're not just going to take two weeks off. They're not just going to lay back and say, well, let's just see when this passes and then we'll get back to work. They're figuring out how to continue work, continue communicating with the team as best they can in light of these circumstances. And Ken, when it comes to getting a job, what that spells is opportunity. That's absolutely right. Crisis equals opportunity here. Yeah, you're looking at your priorities right now.

and if you've been laid off or you feel you're going to get laid off, you need to be identifying companies that Daniel's talking about that are ramping up right now because of the increased demand. And you're going to see a lot of opportunities for hourly jobs that can supplement the income, take care of the four walls that you teach during this time of uncertainty. And then as the economy comes back, you know, I had a guy calling my show today. He's in the automobile industry. He said, Ken, I'm going to be laid off tomorrow on Friday. And he said, but I'm pretty assured, my leadership told me it's probably two to three months max i'm coming back two or three months what they said now you know every situation's different but he's going

what do i do in the first in those next two to three months and i said whatever it takes if it's two three jobs you know it's the same type of gazelle intensity when you're trying to get out of debt and what we do right now is we go let's take care of the four walls but there is opportunity heard a story today in nashville guys and gals that are running food trucks that really rely on foot traffic in nashville okay this is a heavy tour tourism city. And they have now gotten themselves into the food delivery business. We're, you know, organizations that are staying open or those that are shut in, if you will, need food. And they have adapted. And so the entrepreneurial spirit is very much alive.

And, you know, I remember talking a long time ago to Bobby Gruenwall, who's a mutual friend of all three of ours, a great innovator. He said, you know, when you have a lack of resources, and those resources right now could be customers actually buying your product. And so things have been shrunk. That's where great innovation happens. because you don't have any choice but to innovate. And so I think as leaders, if we cannot be afraid right now and we can be clear on here's where we stand now, here's what we do know, here's what we don't know, let's communicate to our team, let's communicate to our tribe, and let's roll our sleeves up and figure out a way. Good things will happen. Yeah, and Dave,

what Ken is saying essentially is when you combine capitalism and entrepreneurs in America and you go, the economy is getting suppressed. What happens is like a beach ball that you hold underwater. That beach ball's coming back up. You hold underwater for a week, two weeks, three weeks. Now, if this administration ties it in chains and ties it to a boat anchor, we've got a different problem, right? But we're coming back to work, and what entrepreneurs are doing right now is they're getting ready. They're adapting.

They've got a little free time, so they're catching up on some stuff that was more administrative, getting their documentation updated. They're getting ready to come back and surge back once all this crap kind of moves on and we can get back to business. Yeah. It's, what you said earlier, Daniel, was really important. What business, what small business does by its very nature, the DNA of small business people is their problem solvers.

Yes, right. And some of them have astronomical, intimidating problems in front of them right now. And some of them are, their hearts are breaking because they're having to lay off people that they love. they can't pay the bill. They can't because they don't have the revenue right now. And it just rips the heart out of your chest when you're an employer and you can't keep your folk because someone just said,

okay, we're shutting the whole thing down. What do you mean you're shutting the whole thing down? We're shutting the whole thing down. What about these families that depend on us to eat? What about their kids? You know, that's where we buy their food. That's where they buy their electricity. What about that?

It doesn't matter. we're shutting the whole thing down. And so a lot of entrepreneurs are finding themselves. Small business people are finding themselves in this. So here's some interesting numbers to think through for a second, for those of you out there. 54% of the gross domestic product is produced with goods and services by small businesses and have less than 500 team members, and they are in jeopardy right now. 54% of our entire economy is on the bubble right this second because you just shut them down.

And I understand why you shut them down. I understand about, I understand. I heard there's a thing called the coronavirus. I know this happened, okay? But the unemployment numbers and the job loss has skyrocketed. Now, here's the deal. The GDP of the United States, the gross domestic product of the United States is right around $20 trillion.

Washington just passed a bill to stimulate the economy for $2 trillion. Everybody following this? What percentage of 20 is 2? 10%. So this is like your grown daughter calling you. She's 30 years old and you're 65 and she says, oh no, oh no, I lost my job. And you say, okay, I'm going to pay your bills for one. month. So what's she going to do after that? Yeah, you're squirting a forest fire with a squirt gun.

Yep. Right? I mean, that's not going to be the solution. That wasn't what I said. So it's like peeing on a forest fire. It's about as useful. That doesn't smell as good. It's about as useful. And so, you mean, when you affect a mathematical problem by 10%, you didn't affect the mathematical problem. That's right. That's right. And so people not working is going to cause great pain in America. So we're with you, small business people. We're on your. team, we're one of you. And we're going to talk about it this hour on the Dave Ramsey show. We're talking jobs and small businesses this hour on an Entree Leadership theme hour.

Daniel Tarty, the executive vice president of Entree Leadership, joins us as a guest. Ken Coleman-Ramsay personality and number one bestselling author of the book, The Proximity Principle. The Ken Coleman Show is where he talks about jobs every day and careers. So you jump in if you want to talk about that. The phone numbers, AAA 825-5-2-2-25. Some of the stuff we've been doing this week, we are one of those small businesses that has been pivoting, trying to figure out how we can serve our folks, particularly ones that are quarantined or that are stuck at home with a stay-at-home order or whatever we want to call in these different places. And we've had a lot of things on the financial side, but on the business side and the job side, you guys have managed with your teams to get a couple things up. Daniel, talk about the weekly report tool that's free.

This is the only time we've ever made it free, and it's a massively robust tool. Yeah, well, the story goes back to the early days when you had a team that was really small, and it was just in paper, and you said, hey, every Friday, in a word doc, give me a high point, a low point, tell me about your week a little bit, and throw it on my desk by Friday afternoon. I want to see how things are going. I understand why I'm paying you, and is it working, and are we in sync on what your activity looks like. And in Entree leadership, we teach that the, you know, the oxygen of any business really

is communication, communication with your team. And the more you communicate, the more you connect, the better we make decisions, the more we stay aligned, the more productive we are. The ROI on communication is invaluable. And so what we figured out is that we could do this, this, what had kind of become a dated system because we had 500 sheets of paper coming into Dave's desk every week. And It's just too much in a thousand different formats and some people are making it look pretty and someone's just bullet points. And so we said, let's make a tool that does this. You know, it's a technology we can build.

And so we put together the weekly report tool software essentially for small business owners in our entree leadership community. And you can get this out to your team and everybody can give you a high point, a low point. Here's some metrics this week. Here's kind of a gauge on their morale and the team health. and it's very skimable for the leader. I mean, we've got 900 folks. I can scan through it in about 10 or 15 minutes.

And then if someone's got like a red face on morale or stress, I can click on it and see what their comments are and it'll expand. That's right. If somebody's got all greens, like everything's great, I can click on it and see why things are so great. And that kind of a thing. And certainly every one of our leaders gets a broken down by department section. so they don't get on 900 of them.

So if you've got multiple layers of leadership, you know, it cascades all the way up depending on who's in your downline. This is the tool we've had for some time. We've never made it free just to you guys. Yeah, but you know, there's a lot of teams that are working virtually right now. And we said, hey, we can get this to these teams, and maybe it helps you guys communicate a little bit more if your team's out of the office all of a sudden.

How they get it? You basically just text in. This team health is the code. That's T-E-A-M-H-E-L-T-H-H-4-4-4. 222, 4-4-2-2, keyword team health, and you will be signed up for a 90-day free access to the weekly report tool. That'll get you through this work-at-home time. Yeah, keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on work at home. The other thing we did is over on Ken Coleman's site at Ken Coleman.com. We put up a jobs board today. That's right. Just a few minutes ago. And so,

Ken, what are we doing there? Well, you know, with Daniel Tarty here, he's representing a whole division of our company that trains and coaches business leaders, which means they're running businesses. And we realize that there's a lot of people out there that are losing their jobs. While it might be temporary, it's still a big stressor. So we said, what can we do? And the team came together. Our top technology guys, Daniel Tarty, myself, Damon Gald, my brain manager, we said, what could we do? And so we came up with a great tool that will allow you to quickly go to Ken Coleman.com slash jobs. And in about a minute and a half, you tell us. You tell us. And so we'll us who you are, what industry you're in. It's very, very easy to follow. And what we want to attempt to do

is connect you to people who are looking for people like you. We're in the business. If you think about Autrey Leadership and the Ken Coleman Show, we share a mission, Daniel. You know, we want to connect people who are looking for a great job with a company who's looking for great people. And that's what we're about. And so we're joining together on this mission. So if you go to Ken Coleman.com slash jobs. You can submit your resume and you can tell us the industry you're in. And if you're a business, you're listening right now, you're going, hey, I'm scaling up. I'm in that category that Daniel talked about. I'm scaling up. So you just email us, jobs at kencolman.com. Very simple. Jobs at Ken Coleman.com. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to put the word out.

We're going to do everything we can. There's no promises here. But we're going to try to assist you and get you placed. And if we get you with an entree leadership company, let me tell you something, this coronavirus might be, you look back on this and say, boy, this was the kick out of the nest that I needed because we know these are great men and women running great companies in the Entree Leadership Tribe. The Entree Leadership Tribe are the best leaders in America without a doubt. Yeah. And the most innovative and they treat their people the best.

That's right. So if you're out there and you want to list on this, you can be Entree Leadership or otherwise, but just send us an email, Jobs at King Coleman.com. Then we're going to send you an email back with instructions. on how to post the thing. Yeah, and I'll say, give us some grace. It's a little primitive because we stood up in a lot primitive. It's about five hours old. You remember in college when you had to sell your couch and you took a picture and then like the little tear off on number taps? Yeah, we're not worried about. We're trying to connect people. Listen, it's on my website. We're

not worried about how it looks. This is innovation. We talked about this. By the way, it's free, so don't bitch about it. That's right. That's right. There's that too. Just use it and shut up. We're trying to help you. We're trying to help you. That's right. Oh, man. High expectations out there. So we're trying to help you guys any way we can. All right, let's go to the phones. Brian is with us in North Carolina. Brian, your question for this distinguished panel.

This is awesome that I get all three of you. I'm just sort of privileged to talk with all of you. And I want to just start out by saying, due to my faith in God, and following all of his instructions that he's given us on how to deal with money and being on your plan for the past 14 years. I do have a piece going into this whole next couple months. I own a small business. We are an entertainment company.

We do weddings, proms, corporate events. The first quarter of the year, we lose money because there's not too many events going on. So our team is just always so ready to get in and just kill it in April and May. It's done. I've been playing defense the past few weeks. It's been the hardest few weeks just playing defense on the clients and just trying to postpone all the events rather than just right out canceling. Me too. Yeah, so, but I do have an emergency fund on the personal and business as you teach.

However, you know, my concern right now is keeping my team in place. A lot of my friends around the country have had to furlough their teams and just totally, they're just out. So number one, being unemployment, can they, you know, is that being charged against the companies? But more, I would like that we had one of the most extensive terms. training programs in the Carolinas for our team. So I would like to even just do Zoom calls and keep our team engaged just even at home while we're on this state-at-home order stuff. And I would like to pay them for that and just find some creative ways to keep them working

rather than just say, hey, you're totally out of business, which is going to crush them. I've heard about these SBA loans, but that scares me just being on your plan, the word loan, bad seed, bad seed, right? It's like, I don't know if it, you know, people are saying, but they're going to be forgiven and all that. I don't care. I don't know. They're not going to be forgiven. They're not going to be forgiven.

They're going to, I mean, they're going to be delayed, but you're just kicking the can down the road. So, you just, you just answered my question. I had to stand up with my team here the other day, and I was going over our company finances with them. They're grownups, showing them where we are. Right now, we're fine. but I was showing here's where the lines cross and when the lines cross

we don't borrow money and that means that this thing will have knocked out some jobs for the first time in the history of this company in 30 years we might have to do a layoff at the point those lines cross I don't think they're going to cross right now

I think we're going to be able to turn the corner we're going to get back to work but I just told everybody the truth and the truth is open, honest communication and it's painful but here's the thing And there's not a lot of other places that your team that's trained in that unique industry can go in the next five weeks.

You're going to be able to get them back. That's right. They came to you for a reason. You're going to be able to get them back for those same reasons if you had to cut some of them out. But I would, I got to tell you, before I borrow money, I, they, you know, it's awful. It's awful. But they, they would have to go. And that's what I've already told my team.

And I love my team. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. It's an entree leadership theme hour. this hour on the Dave Ramsey show. Daniel Tarty, the executive vice president of Entree Leadership, joins us. And Ken Coleman of the Ken Coleman Show, Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling author of the book, The Proximity Principle, answering your questions. Becky's in Washington. Hi, Becky.

Your question for this panel. Hi, there. Yes. Thank you, first of all, for taking my call. So I have a small residential cleaning company that I started three and a half years ago. And this could be kind of a question for each one of you on the panel. I started my business three and a half years ago, and I'm in the process of trying to decide if I go the next step and if I grow it. So currently I have two full-time employees.

The business brings in about $130,000 a year. My payroll is about $90. My hard costs are about $30,000 and the business it made about $10,000 last year. So with residential cleaning, it's a pretty high commodity. I know that there's a lot of people that are using it, but it's just knowing whether I go to the next step because it could cost me more money. Right now, I just work out of my home.

So, yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at. Becky, I'm curious, when you think about your ideal role in this business, I imagine right now how personally that you're still doing some of the cleaning. Is that correct? I'm not. You got, okay, so you got full-time team members doing that. So, yep, so I have, so basically my income in the last year was 30,000. So out of the business, I actually brought home 30,000.

So that's basically my time of just scheduling, being in contact with the clients, you know, that type of thing. Well, the good news is you've already, you've already crossed the critical threshold of going from being the doer, to being the knower and the leader. And that's actually the hardest transition. And you're actually getting paid the least that you'll ever get paid on this side of that threshold. So the more that you start to scale and build a system and machine, a way to delegate and get more people doing the work, and then you become the director and the leader, you're now really working on the business and not in it. And so if you want to, I think you go for it. You know, if you want this thing to

grow and your income to grow, you're actually in a great spot. And what would hold you back, other than the fact we're sitting in the middle of an economic weird time, but other than that, what would hold you back from doubling the size of your work staff and the size of your volume of business? Stress. Okay. I mean, I've been doing this for three and a half years, and out of the three and a half years, I've had like 15 employees.

And so it's the actual employees. So stress created by turnover. Okay. What else? Yeah. I think that's the main thing. Really honestly, with this industry, it's just like, it's just really hard work and keeping employees. And I'm very much active in my client.

So, you know, part of the sell of my business is that you're going to have the consistent people in your home. You're not going to have different people shown up and all that. So I really try to. Well, Becky, let me ask you this. Let me ask you a question, because I don't want to diminish how difficult that is in your industry. But I've talked to all the industries, and they all say the same thing. And so my question would be, if you could figure out how to hire great people who are loyal and stay with you and get the stress from that down, it doesn't sound like there's not another reason to go ahead and scale this thing up. Yeah.

Let me add one thing here, Becky, because I think you have a good dose of fear of what does this look like. And I think that what Daniel pointed out is actually in your favor here to do what Dave and Daniel are saying. So let me put it this way. you are now in a position where you are leading and running the company and you are mostly the face to the people that either whether it's an office or a home. So you need to stay in that role. I would tell you that I think you're a fear of, well, they want the same kind of people in their house all the time. I don't know if that's as big a deal as you think. What they want to know is that they can always get a hold of Becky.

And Becky's who they can count on because you're the relationship. You're the face. If something goes wrong, Becky fixes it. and Becky's going to put a good person in my home or in my office and make sure that I get it cleaned. And so I think that you stay in that role. You hire good people. You incentivize them. Give them a ladder.

If they stay, give them a reason to be loyal, number one. Number two, don't worry so much about turnover. I'd worry more about just keeping people in the pipeline. And as long as you are offering a good job, a good culture, and consistent pay, you'll find people and you will attract good people. You really will. The greatest challenge all of us have is staffing. That's right. Yeah.

And they have, I mean, I've had, but that's the thing. I've had amazing employees who I've stayed in contact with. They just can't hack the work. It's just hard work. And so what happens is if I have someone, you know, quit, then all of a sudden I've got like, you know, 20 clients that are ready to be serviced and no one deserves them. Yeah. You've got it. Well, you've got a hiring, training problem.

and it's not an unusual problem, but it is a very real problem. I, you know, we've got like almost a thousand folks here, and I tell when I'm speaking leadership teams all the time, I tell them all the time, my greatest joys in my life come from my team, and my greatest sorrows in my life come from my team. It's right. It is hiring and getting the right people on the team and continually removing the wrong people from the day. It's not, I mean, it's a cost of being in business.

That's always going to be there. Because you want some people to leave. Yep. You know, and you reach a point, they need to leave. It's time for them to leave. And so you go through that, and it's not being mean. It's just a part of the rhythm of life. But so here's the thing.

The better you get at hiring, the less turnover you're going to have. And the less turnover you have, the less stress you're going to have, because that's your main stress point. And you're going to be able to scale this and grow it. And so we're going to help you with that. I'm going to send you a copy of the book. Entree Leadership, where it has our hiring and firing process in it. And Daniel, can we plug her into something like All Access or something? Yeah, you bet.

We'll get you signed up with a complimentary access to our All Access Program. We've got everything that Dave teaches on Entree Leadership and some of our coaching team in there. Jump in there and watch the video on hiring and firing as soon as you get signed up for that. Because it's what we spend an inordinate amount of time hiring. Because when you don't, you get to do it over. Yeah, and you spend 10 times as much on the back end of trying to back-go. And dealing with all the crap of letting donkeys in your building. The good news, Becky, as wild as it is out there, you happen to be in one of these industries that has an opportunity right now in the cleaning space.

So I seize the day. I'd go for it. Big time. Hold on. Zach will pick up. We'll get you signed up for all access and get your copy of the book, Entree leadership. Jonathan is in Tennessee. Hey, Jonathan, your question for this panel.

Thanks for taking my call. It's honor to speak with you all. You too, sir. How can we all? So my question, I've kind of got a two-part question. First of all, I have a question on retained earnings. I have a small business, and I'm just wondering what the best way to handle that, what the best accounts are. And then secondly, do I need to be worried about trying to keep those accounts under the $250K limit for the FDIC insurance? No, I mean, I use several banks. We're considerably

over that. We're in the millions on our retained earnings, but we use several banks. But we're We're over insurance on most of them over the insured amount. We watch the quality of the bank and the safety of it. So we've got some risk there without a doubt. But, you know, I wouldn't have, you know, for $2.5 million, I wouldn't have 10 banks. I'd drive you bananas. You know, so. But, yeah.

And the thing about retained earnings, we try, we teach people to try to get to three to six months of operating expenses, just like a personal emergency fund. And we've never gotten there at Ramsey because we gross have grown so fast over the last 30 years to where we are today that our expenses and our payroll has grown faster than our retained earnings have grown. And so we've never, even though we've got millions and millions of dollars, it's still not six months or three months worth of operating expenses and those kinds of things. Jonathan, do you guys have debt in the business? Any type of debt? We do not. Okay, good. Because that's another place you can sink the debt first, and then that's a type of

retained earnings because everything's paid for. Yeah, you got, but you don't have that issue. So it's just a matter of cash, and we're parking it there, and I don't put any limit on it. I love being in a position that I have no debt and a pile of cash when times like this are going on. It changes your posture with your team. It changes your posture with things. But everyone has an end to their cash at some point. If they keep this thing closed up forever or for many, many more weeks,

I don't know who's going to survive it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Entree Leadership Theem Hour here on the Dave Ramsey Show. We're talking to small businesses with small businesses and putting out things to help small businesses. You are the backbone of the economy if you run a small business. We love you. You're heroes. You get stuff done.

You are where 78% of the job, new jobs, have come from in the last decade. Do you hear that? And yet they're the first ones that are in trouble right now. When we wholesale shut down the economy. Everyone go home and stay home. Small business can't survive that very long. Most of them can't. And there are where all the jobs come from,

which means that all these families, like six million people now have lost jobs because of the corona shutdown. Wow. And listen, I don't want anybody to be sick. I don't want anybody to die. I don't want anybody to lose a job. I don't anybody lose everything they own. I don't even want anyone to lose a business they've worked on for 10 years.

There's a lot of not good choices out there right now. But we're fast approaching where the cure is worse than the cause, fast approaching. When we now have 100 people have lost their jobs per case of corona as of this broadcast right now. And that's something you really have to think about. and balance it out. And so it's not being irresponsible or I know some of you are very, very afraid. I understand that. Just calm down.

You're going to be okay. Don't be mean when you're afraid. It makes you look bad. It reveals who you really are. But some of you just freak out. And so we're here for the small businesses this hour. We've got a couple tools we have put up. Let's talk through them again.

Daniel Tarty, Executive Vice President of Entree leadership. talk about the free weekly report tool. It's never been free like this before, and it is an incredible robust tool. You bet. Well, as all these businesses are adapting right now, a lot of businesses for the first time are working remotely. We're figuring out how to do that. We're doing the Microsoft team stuff and video calls and a tool that we have that is a no-brainer for any company and any time to help you in communication with your whole team is a weekly report tool. And that's a product of our Entree leadership brand.

and you can get that for free right now. And you can have it free of use for the, free of charge to use for the next 90 days. And just text in Team Health to 4-4-222. 4-4-2-2. And that's going to let you stay in touch with your team. They can check in with you. They can let you know what they're working on. Keeping your finger on the pulse of where your team is at right now, it's more important than ever.

Communication, when you have physical distance, communication is at a premium. It always matters. But now you've got to over communicate. Check in with your team. Text them. Get on the FaceTime. Ask them how they're doing. Ask them what they're working on. Ask them what their top three wins are for the day. What are you going to be accountable for today? And then let me check in tomorrow and say, hey, how did that go? They've got new blockers. They've got new fears. If you go silent on your team, they're going to think, well, the leader's not working. So I guess we don't work. You got to amp them up and let them know we're moving forward the best we can. Stay plugged in. And communication is how that happened. So hopefully this still helps you guys. out. We've overdone it to the point in the last week that I think we've, they can't get work done because we're communicating them all down. I mean, it's just, we're just wearing it out. It's a bit of a rodeo. It's a wild time around here. And Ken, we put up a jobs board, primitive, albeit, but it's going to be pretty effective at king coleman.com where people can look for jobs and post jobs. That's it. If you've lost a job or you feel like you're about ready to lose

a job, go to Ken Coleman.com slash jobs. Ken Coleman.com slash jobs. It's so simple. and easy, but here's what we want to try to do. We want to try to get you in front of great companies in the Entree Leadership Tribe, and we want to try to put you in position to step into a new job, probably an even better job, or if you are looking for people, you're looking for great people. Well, we want you to email jobs at Ken Coleman.com. Jobs at Ken Coleman.com, and we will reply to you, and we will try to get applicants to you as they come in, so we're just doing our part here to try to connect.

good people with good companies. And we're not charging for any of this. We're trying to help you guys out. It's all free. All free. It's us pivoting in the middle of a crazy time when a bunch of you are parked at home and you have a lot of fear around your income. Some people have fear around medical situations. Some people have fear around income. Some people have fear around both. Some people have concern around both. But we want to help you with all of this. So check it out. All right. Andrew is with us in Pennsylvania. Hi, Andrew. Your question for this panel at Entree Leadership Theme Hour.

Thanks for having me, Dave. My brother and I run a remodeling business, and we're struggling with the idea, or we're just really wrestling with the idea of working with a business advisor, and it's going to cost a lot of money, and we're trying to figure out if it's worth it or not. What is a business advisor?

Are you talking about a coach? So we're part of the Entree Leadership program. This is a little bit different, though. This guy would be working with us on our business one-to-one, specifically looking at our profit margins on a job-by-job basis to try to bring those up as well as working with us to work on our sales process and coaching us in sales so that we can close more jobs. Are they claiming to have expertise in your space?

Have they done this in your space a lot? I mean, what's their credentials? Yeah, so he works almost exclusively. with contractors and landscapers. I believe a majority of his work is landscapers, so we're slightly outside, but compared to most people in the business coaching space who have no experience with trades for the most part.

Have you talked to three to five people in your space that have hired this guy or his firm, and they can say to you, yep, it was worth every nickel because of the ROI was so strong. Have you verified that? Not yet. is the next step is he's talking with his clients and he's going to get us. So, Andrew, that's, that is the next step. And here's what I want to say on this.

Advice is important. We all need advice. We all need coaching. I need coaching. I get coaching. I get it internally. I get it externally. We recommend reading books. We recommend talking to experts. There's a difference between advice and opinions. Okay. And so if somebody's got the street cred and they've done it. And to Ken's point, people can vouch for him and go, this guy changed our business and his pricing's reasonable and you can try it for a month. I'm not opposed to this. A lot of times in this space, it's slimy. It's people with opinions and they're trying to make a quick buck and they haven't actually done anything. And a lot of the stuff you're talking about is your job as the leader to figure that stuff out. So explore the options. Fine. But go and guard it and be sure that you really

understand the value this guy is going to provide before you sign up for something. But he's a part of Ontario leadership. I feel like I'd rather let our team connect him to somebody who's in that space. Yeah, I mean, you're doing coaching with our leadership team. That's leadership coaching. But I think he's talking about nuance advice to their trade and how to that's right, job cost and that kind of thing. So I'm okay for you to explore it. Just don't take a bath on somebody that's got a big opinion and no track record. I think I'm hearing that he's overpriced. I think I'm hearing you think he's overpriced, Andrew.

And so, like, you cannot imagine in your wildest dreams how this is going to ROI. That's kind of the way you post the question. It was almost between the words. You could hear it. That you were using. So I could be wrong, but I thought I heard that. So in that case, you know, it's just around business stuff, business is not hard. Sometimes it's just paying attention to the different things and learning for a few little things.

in a nuanced area. And so if someone acts like that they have the only sauce, and the sauce is really, really expensive, I always avoid those guys. The other guys I avoid are the ones Daniels talking about, who is, you know, there's a lot of people out there that are life coaches who never had a life. And so, um, well said.

It just is. It's like, I don't have anything to do, so I'm a life coach now. You know, one thing, David, I would recommend to Andrew. is, and I'm not saying it's a sure thing, but I'd try it, but the cost of a lunch or a cup of coffee might yield more. And I'm talking from somebody who's actually been, if you're humble and you're hungry, you go, hey, yours more successful than me. I'm not asking for trade secrets.

Will you give me some practical advice? But, dude, if, you know, if he wants to charge you five grand for a month's worth of coaching and you think it's a $50,000 swing, I'd jump all over that. Yeah. If he wants to charge you $50,000 and you think it's a $60,000 swing, I'll pass. That's what I'm, I mean, I don't know what the numbers are here, but that's, you probably have a feel for this already. Proceed with caution. That's it.

That puts this hour, this entree leadership theme hour of the Dave Ramsey show in the bucks.