EntreLeadership - Am I Going to Fail the Family Business?

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Today we’ll hear about:  A son concerned he will let down his family and their business  An owner who is content with no growth in his business  Dave discussing what decision caused his business to experience rapid growth  A son weighing the consequences of returning to his father’s struggling company    Next Steps  📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message: https://ter.li/ask-us  Speak with our team about the show: https://ter.li/q31gmx 📖 FREE Strategic Planning Guide: https://ter.li/gjwuzn 📚Learn about the EntreLeadership System: https://ter.li/system-p  💻 Get EntreLeadership Elite for your business: https://ter.li/elite-p  ✉️Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/enl  🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/summit   🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/masterseries     Offers From Today's Sponsors  NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/Ramsey  BELAY: https://www.belaysolutions.com/entreleadership  Payority: https://www.payority.com/entreleadership  Trainual: https://trainual.com/entre  Found: https://found.com/entre    Listen to More From Ramsey Network  🎙️ The Ramsey Show    💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights  🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show  🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour  💡 The Rachel Cruze Show  💰 George Kamel  💼 The Ken Coleman Show    Learn More About Your Ad Choices   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you in any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, with over 30, 35 years in the trenches. Shovelin, shoveling, shoveling, just like you. Yeah, every day. Matter of fact, just before I turned on the microphone, I was actually running a business, go figure. So this is not about think tanks or professors that have never made payroll with Ethereum. I'm actually a guy that freaking does this stuff. So if you want to talk, I'm here to help you with your small business.

I love small business people. I am one. Always have been at the core of who I am. If you've got a question you want to ask, you can fill out the form at entreleadership.com slash ask, or you can call here at 844-944-1070. Operators are standing by. 844-9-4-4-10-4-7.

70. Tyler starts us off in Lexington, Kentucky. Hi, Tyler. How are you? I'm good, Dave. How are you, man? Better than I deserve. What's up? I work for a craft bourbon company. I am the tasting room manager. My department has five employees currently and our 2023 revenue was 378,000. My question for you is, I'm the manager at this company. This is a family-run business that my brother works in and my mom is the CFO of the company. My tasting room opened to the public in 2022. And in our first year, we had about 1,500 guests and we're looking at about 13,000 this year. We're currently building a new $5 million facility and we will need to go from around

five staff members to looking at 15 people and our revenues will need to double from the looks of it to stay profitable. What's your advice to deal with some of the pressures that come along with that. I'm 25 years old, so I'm feeling a little bit of the pressure regarding this. Well, the way you explained it was very thorough. You sound like someone that's got control of what's going on today. Yeah, I do feel like I have control of what's going on today. I'm just worried about moving to this new place of just making that work and not letting down my family in the process is just kind of how I'm feeling. Well, I mean, there's always the risk that something will go wrong at the new place,

but basically what you're describing to me is that you've been successful at this level, growing it percentage-wise astronomically, and now we're going to do it again. You'll be leading more people. That's probably your biggest area of concern. but the actual, you know, the place really doesn't matter. I mean, the fact that it's a new building, that's all on them. That's not you. You're just going to go in there and serve the customer bourbon

and have a team that does a good job doing that and create the customer experience. So, yeah, the pressure would be if you were incompetent, if you didn't have the strength to lift the weight that they're giving you to carry. but I think you've got the strength. You've described someone that all you're being asked to do is more of what you are already doing and they're giving you the resources to do it.

Right? Yeah. I mean, to me, the same amount of emotional expenditure to serve 1,300 guests with five team members if we went to 10 team members, then obviously we could do 5 or 10,000 guess, and the only difference is maybe a few logistical things. Okay. But it's still the same exact exercise.

We're just doing more of it. And so I think you've got what it takes. I don't think there's any issue. So as a young leader, what I'm always wanting our leaders to do and what we always teach in Autrey Leadership is, leadership is a service position. Your job is to knock down blockers,

anything that's in the way of your team doing their job. And that includes incompetent team members, getting them out of there, or bad people inside the mix, boiling the barrel of apples. We got to get them out of there. Your job is to help, I assume, hire, and get the good ones into the mix.

So we don't get in such a hurry hiring that we hire a bunch of things. donkeys and then wonder why we can't win the Kentucky Derby, especially since we're in Lexington. So, you know, you got to do that right. And so your job is to build a bunch of thoroughbreds into a team and point them at customer service to create this unique, fun, bourbon experience in the heart of bourbon country. Sounds kind of exciting. I think it's very doable. But your job is just to serve them. How can I, you know, what have I got to do to do to me? make their job work as smooth and as quick as possible. They've got to be able to bring you ideas

and problems, and then you've got to help them solve them. You may send them back to solve them. You may actually solve them. You may have to take them to the CFO, which happens to be your mother, and say, I need some, you know, we need some funding over here. We're, you know, we're running through glasses, we're running through Karen's way too fast. And I need some more cases of that. I got to have two dishwashers instead of one in this thing. Y'all planned it wrong. get to be able to get the stuff back up on the counter and keep everybody moving and keep the customer happy and you know and we've got to look at staffing through these certain peak hours at a different level and we can staff down during some of the doldrum hours or and or seasons.

I'm sure this has something to do with fall break and spring break and summer and so on. So those are the kinds of things you're looking for and I'll give you a recommendation. my good friend that spoke at the Ontario Leadership Summit last year, Will Godera did a wonderful book called Unreasonable Hospitality. And we will actually send you a copy of that as my gift to you. I want you to read that book. It'll blow your mind because he ran one of the, he ran the number one restaurant in the world. And talk about creating an experience. That's what they did.

They created an experience, unreasonable hospitality. And if you can get your team to read that book with you, and we all commit to creating an unreasonable hospitality experience in this Kraft Bourbon brand new facility, man, there's nothing going to stop you. But your job is to serve your team so that they can serve the customer, so that the employer is happy with both of you.

And if you can do that, you've been a great young leader or old leader for that matter. My job as the CEO of Ramsey, one of my biggest things is I've got to go around here and say, all right, there's a thing that only I can knock down. No one else can knock that down, and it's holding my team back, so I got to knock it down. I got to take that problem away from my team so they can go and get their job done. And I'm just the man to do it, you know, because I'm a leader, and that's my team. job. So that's what you're looking for, Tyler. And so hang on and we'll pick up. We'll get you

copy of that book sent out to you. It's a great book. Great read for all of you out there. We might even need to get old Will on here as a guest one of these days. He's just phenomenal. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Are you done waiting for things to improve on their own? Your business won't grow faster or become healthier if all you do is listen to leadership podcasts. You have to actually do the stuff we talk about. The Entry Leadership System is the roadmap that will help you do exactly that. You'll finally scale your processes, unify your team, and build a business you love to run. This system is how I built Ramsey, and it's how I've seen thousands of small business owners transform their lives. But now it's your turn to drive your business forward

with the Entree Leadership system. Go to Entreeleadership.com slash get started. to download our free Getting Started Guide. It's got to walk you step by step through the practical steps we use to build, Ramsey. Entreeleadership.com slash get started to download our, did I mention it's free? Getting Started Guide. Michael's with us in Washington, D.C. Hey, Michael, welcome to the Entree podcast. What's up?

Hey, thanks, Dave. Thanks for all you do for small businesses. My honor, sir. How can we help? Okay, so 724 consulting is a structural engineering firm that I started in 2017. We have six engineers, including myself and one part-time admin, which is she's in charge when I'm not there because she's my wife and I'm a smart man. And so we do between $1.5 and $1.8 million annually. and so when I take your on-tray leadership assessment, it defines me as a pathfinder, which I don't disagree with, but I also have traits of the Trailblazer, Peak Performer, and Legacy Builder, which also includes

a 15-year plan that I started this past year since I turned 50. And so, but the one thing, the question that I had for you is, quite often, I really love hopping back on the trade. and getting projects done. I'm aneogram type three, so I love, you know, working on a project, getting it done, moving on to the next project. And so I wanted to know if I don't have a desire to grow my business. I think it's a sweet spot for the type of work that we do. And so what I was wondering is, do you have any cautionary advice for me for, you know,

kind of taking a certain percentage of my days, weeks, and months, and hopping on that treadmill to work on projects, generate revenue, and doing all those good types of things that I enjoy. I would disagree that you're hopping on a treadmill. I think you're just helping with production. I'm sitting here doing a podcast. I'm not on the treadmill. Okay? I didn't give up my CEO role, and I didn't regress from the legacy stage, legacy

builder stage all the way back to treadmill just because I sat down and did a podcast or I step on stage and teach a lesson. But the difference is can the place exist if I'm not doing that? And the answer is yes, it can. And the answer in your case is yes, it can. So you're not regressing to the treadmill stage when you do some production. If you don't want to grow the team, that doesn't mean that you don't still go through some of these stages of business. It's not about team. You're size. It's not about revenue top line to go through the stages of business. It's about the characteristics of the business. And you do not want to run a treadmill business in perpetuation. It's the hardest stage. Everything counts on you. And if you don't create revenue and you don't

do production, the place shuts down around you. And that's not your company. Your company's not at that stage. That's not what you told me. You truly are Pathfinder, Slash, trailblazer. You're having right there in the middle, and you're working your way through those things. So what you want is you want a business that runs and serves the customer with beauty and everything else without you being there, and you can still step in and do a project if you want to. You know, because the team is mature and competent and confident. And so you're delicate. the business. The business operates fine without Michael and his wife there. And so, but you don't have to be, there's no requirement you move to 70 people or 700 people to move through a stage.

The stages are the characteristics. Are you able to delegate? Are you doing time management? Are you actually doing strategic planning and thinking out in the future? You're doing every bit of that. You told me that. And so you're working through the stages without changing your employee number and maybe even without changing your revenue number. I think you'll see your revenue number continue to grow some just because as the business matures and everybody becomes so much stronger and more competent in their situation.

But no, I encourage you to continue to do some of the projects that you love. That's why I'm sitting here right now. I love doing this. So I don't have to, though, for the place to exist. That's the trick, and that's the designation and the difference maker. So interesting question. It sounds like you're probably doing a whole lot better than you're giving yourself credit for. But you're not in all five stages at once, just because you have a characteristic of one or two of the stages.

That doesn't mean you're in that stage. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. He brings up an interesting question. What does it take to level up? at the trailblazer stage? Well, the primary problem in the trailblazer stage is that you lack the leaders and a plan to scale your business.

And again, scaling your business does not necessarily mean more revenue and more people. It can, but it could mean products. It could mean you build out product lines that are scalable without much more effort. And you could do all kinds of different things there. But when I hit this level, we were probably, let me think here, I got a back end of this, probably 200 people.

And we were making a lot of money, and we had like 9 million different things going on in the business. It was like all these chaotic silos all over the place. But buddy, we were getting it done. It was a fun time. And, you know, we're trying to move through. level up from Pathfinder to Trailblazers, is what it amounts to. And we're stepping into some sweet spot on the income. We've got a lot of very competent people around,

but it was pretty much chaos. We're like hurting cats. And a lady that was one of our top executives at the time, and still a close personal friend, came to me and said, hey, you're going to see an expense item hit my P&L, and I don't want you to freak out. I want to tell you about it ahead of time.

I've hired a guy to come in and run a stratop for us. And I went, okay, there's a whole lot of things in that sentence I don't like and I don't understand. What the flip are you talking about? And she said, I hired a guy to come in and lead a stradop for us. You hired someone from the outside to show us how to run a business that's already successful. Well, that's money wasted. That was dumb.

No, I hired a guy to come in and lead a stradop for us. for us. What's a Stratop? A strategic operations planning meeting. You hired a guy to run a meeting? No, he's going to walk us through our strategic thought. Why don't you just work? If you would work, instead of sitting around trying to come up with letters that go together, like Stratop, and give other people our money, you wouldn't have to worry about any of this. why don't you just go work? Working out good. There's no substitute for activity.

Go get your dadgum work done. This is the exact argument I had with her. And she's secure enough in my trust of her and secure enough in her own executive ability to stand toe to toe and argue with me, which was perfectly fine. I was inviting that, but I was pushing back, can you tell? Because this idea of strategic thought

to an entrepreneur's entrepreneur like me that's scrappy and has dirt under my fingernails because I'm always clawing my butt out of a hole I made. The idea that we're going to stop and plan was, yeah, that was not fun to me. Can you tell? Well, I backed off. It was only, it was not that a lot.

It wasn't a lot of money and it was only one day, so I'll let her do it. Well, they came out of that thing and over the next six months, their stinking productivity and revenue went through the roof. And so she comes back to me and said, nah, nana, nah. I love it when you're wrong and you get more money. This is how we negotiate things at Ramsey.

Okay, so she said, and I'm doing another one now, and I said, I think I want you to do another one. I liked what happened. I'm not real sure what you people are doing over there, but you could spread this match. She said, I'm going to get some of the other departments to do it. And I said, no, let's not get carried away here. But that was the beginning of strategic planning at Ramsey. Because prior to that, we just left the cave, killed it home,

and kept trying to cut it up as fast as we drug it into the cave. You know, have we got a big enough meat processing plant because we got a bunch of hunter-gatherers here? And that's all we were doing, man. We were getting it. We were getting it, scrappy and getting it. And that's good because some people don't work enough to get, to have any problems, right? So you've got to go get your work done.

But most of you that are small business people, you can relate to me. And hard work is not your problem. You don't have any problem with hard work. Chaos, however, is your problem. And inefficiency and lack of productivity because we're not operating on a blueprint, it's like we're making, we're going to build a house, but we're going to make it up as we go. Well, that's two rednecks leaning over the hood of a truck with a yellow pad drawing a sketch for the carpenter. What you're going to build there is a freaking pretzel.

Okay? That ain't going to work out well. But if instead you started with an actual blueprint, which has all the mechanicals in it, the electrical, the heating and air, the plumbing schematics are all in it, it has a full carpentry layout, it has a full roofing layout, all you. roof angles and everything is laid out, then the carpenter's not building something that the plumber didn't expect. So when he gets ready to run the drain pipe,

there's actually a chase in there. Okay, because we had like a plan and stuff before we started. And in business, we don't do good blueprints. Small business people aren't good at blueprinting. And that can get you stuck and keep you from moving into the trailblazer stage. You can get stuck in Pathfinder.

and not get out. One of the keys that helps you level up is having a blueprint instead of two rednecks with a yellow pad on the hood of the truck, which is how I was running it, baby. I was just running it out of my hip pocket, pulling miracles out of my ear every time I needed to and other places too, just to get things done, right? So I'm going to recommend now that you not be as thick-headed as I was, that instead you sit down and say, I'm going to make an effective, detailed, strategic plan. Now, I just finished building a world-class home

with a world-class custom builder. We had a detailed blueprint before we turned one clot of dirt. We had a detailed schedule. before we turned one clod of dirt. We knew that nine and a half months after we break ground that the trim carpenter would be there. And oh, by the way, the trim carpenter put us on his schedule for that month.

He didn't accidentally take another job and go, oh, we're going to hold up your project now. No, we went ahead and lined all the subs and all the subs. suppliers up on this schedule, and then we pushed the dominoes, and a 14-month project was done in 12-5 months. A massive, beautiful, detailed custom home. You know what? The other thing we did? We did a budget to match the blueprint and match the schedule and a cash flow plan so that I had the cash to never have the builder be 30 seconds waiting on money. None of the subs, therefore, were 30 seconds or the suppliers waiting on their money,

so they finished the freaking job on time, and any of them that stubbed their toe and acted like they weren't going to knew we were going to replace them post-haste, don't get in the way of my strategic plan. I'm executing this puppy. That's how you run a business, boys and girls. You put a budget in place. You put a blueprint, the tactical steps you've got to take,

you put a schedule in place, and you say, over the next three years, this company is going from here to there, and here are the 43,000 steps it takes to get from here to there. We're going to take every one of those steps. And by the way, in March, here's where we'll be. In February, here's where we'll be. In September, here's where we'll be.

And you lay it all the way out. It's an effective strategic plan. And out of that, you're writing out your desired future dashboard, which we will show you how to do. And you're going to see the enjoyment of running your business come way up because your profits, your productivity, you're going to go way up, and this freaking hurting of cats trying to nail jello to a tree every day

called anxiety goes way down. This is going to give you joy to your business, but it is taking you to a different level of sophistication that I thought, and I was wrong, and so I'm going to encourage you to not take a job, as long as I did to do it, because that is the fourth personal home I have built. Each time I have built a home, we have built it lower, below budget, and faster every time. Because every time I do it, now I get better because I'm really good at putting the blueprint,

the schedule, and the budget in place, and motivating everyone to get through that process. That is a strategic plan. Do that. It fires you up, it energizes your team. everybody can see where they're going. You know what demoralizes your team when they don't know what the heck is going on? When everybody's wandering around lost,

I don't know, what are we doing next? I don't know. What do you do today? I don't have any idea, but I'm tired. You know, that's a demoralized team because there's no planning. You lay out your desired future, you lay out your details, you lay out your defining objectives,

If you lay six defining objectives in place and every one of those are green, the natural byproduct of that should be that the desired futures is knocked over. If you knock out all your defining objectives and you didn't hit your desired future, you had the wrong defining objectives. You lay out the six key areas that have to happen

and if those happen, automatically we're going to hit our desired future where we want to be. Then you start backing into the detail of what it takes for each of those six or eight defining objectives. and then everybody gets an owner, you get a single ringable freaking neck on those defining objectives where I'm looking at someone going, hello, you're red over there. We want to see a little green.

What do we got to do? How can I help you get there? Because you're going to get there or I'm going to get there without you. What are we going to do? Let's get this done. And the subs show up on time. In this case, the project teams line up, and they start knocking this stuff down.

So what must be true to reach our desired future? That's your defining objectives. And your desired future, you're backing into from strategic thought. Strategic thought is we're looking down from the airplane and we can see the entire garden and how to walk straight through it. You're not down in the weeds. You ever heard the phrase, lost as a ball in tall weeds,

that's what you are when you're the ball in the tall weeds. You're lost. You got to get above it and get a freaking weed eater. Okay? And that is your strategic thought. That's sitting down having a strategic thing. So we're going to help you to create a desired future that fires up your team and keeps you moving forward. Click the link in the show notes to get your free strategic planning course.

and template. See, we didn't even hire somebody to do it. We gave it to you free. And if you want even more support in planning for 2025, you can join Elite by December 15th to participate in our live strategic planning workshop led by our expert coaches. The guy that had that original argument

that was living in my body that did not want strategic thought, just read this. Live strategic planning workshop led by our expert coaches. That's how much we now believe in this. Because I learned something new, because if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting. That's the definition of insanity, continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. if you don't do something to straighten the cats out and get them to walk straight, if you don't do something to get the jello to stick to the tree, you're just nailing jello to a tree and herding cats.

And your chaos is going to continue, baby. And you guys that are doing this, you know exactly what I'm freaking talking about because I'm reading your mail right now. So live strategic planning workshop led by our expert coaches. If you join Elite by December 15th, be sure you check all that out. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Hey, guys, we appreciate your help around here, and we could use it right now because you're my only marketing plan. If you follow this show, click the follow button, the subscribe button, you leave a nice review.

You share it by clicking the share button or clicking or cutting the link and sending to a friend saying, listen to Ramsey on Entree Leadership. I would consider that a personal favor. Thank you very much. And I know a bunch of you are because our numbers are up considerably and continuously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. If you want to be part of this program, call and leave a voicemail, and the team will set you up to be the caller. The phone number. Are you ready, boys and girls? 844-944-1070. Walker is in Minnesota. Hi, Walker. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Yeah. So I own two businesses. I design and inspect residential and commercial septic systems in the summertime. And in the wintertime here, I shovel snow and remove ice dams from roofs. My top line between the two last year was about $250,000. And up until two weeks ago, my business was just me. I recently just hired a part-time administrative support person to assist with a $250,000. some of the paperwork that I don't have much time for. So I worked for my family excavation business that my dad started for about eight years before I started my companies. The plan was that my parents would pass the business down to me and my younger brother.

As I gained more responsibility with his company and it became evident to me that my dad and I weren't on the same page with a lot of things. And so, and things weren't very good at the company. financially. So I left the business about five years ago, and since then, my dad has asked me to come back and work for him many times. Each time, I've denied his request. But he recently approached me about buying out my company and coming back at the part owner and asked me to run the business so that he could focus on being at the job site, be more of a foreman, because he wants to step down. Through a lot of discussion, I countered him with taking over 100% of the company now as

the full owner, and then since I'd be running the company, and then we put him on like a lifetime or a lifelong salary upon his retirement in exchange for the company. He likes that idea, wants to move forward. My question to you is this. I have a laundry list of things that need to improve at the company. Company morale is a really big one of them. I'm starting kind of at a negative with company morale, and I'm wondering what advice you'd have for me to avoid coming in and overwhelming people by making a bunch of changes without disrespecting my dad and what he's built and also possibly making morale worse of the company. Wow.

How many team members there? Eight, not including my dad. And what do they do? So they do excavation, all sorts of anything to do with heavy equipment. All eight of them run dozers? No, no, no. That's what I'm asking. Yeah, they have four truck drivers.

two main operators and then the rest are just, you know, laborers. No office staff? No, none. How is the operational things, the administrative things getting done? So my dad and my mom kind of tag team it as they have time for it. But that's the biggest hole in the company right now is that none of that's managed well. and so their finances and their organization is just a mess. And that's what they're looking for help with at this point.

What's the top line of this company? They did 1.4 last year. Okay, let me back through a couple of things. I've got to clean my head out before I go back to your original question, all right? Because I kind of am afraid I see another conflict coming with you and your dad. At some point, as soon as you start some of these things, he's going to walk back in as if he's the owner again and start telling you what to do that he doesn't like the fact that you made that guy that you, this worked for him for 10 years mad. How are we going to prevent that? Yeah.

Your dad's going to intentionally undermine anything you do to try to change anything. Right. That was my concern for many, many years, and that's why I chose to leave. because he wasn't willing to make any changes. But when he approached me a couple of weeks ago, he told me, he said, I'm exhausted and tired of doing what I'm not good at for this business, because what I'm good at is the actual physical work. He said, I can't run a business.

I'm no good at it. And he said, I would trust that you would do a better job at this. So I want you to take over. So I think you guys need to sit down and ride out. a personal agreement between the two of you that says that. He needs to write that down. Or you can type it up and let him sign it. Sure.

It says that. So that, because, and then I would just look at him and say, because, Dad, when I start making some of these changes, it's going to be painful for you, and it's going to be hard for you to stay on the dozer. And I don't want us to end up in conflict. Yeah. And I'm not going to choose this.

business above my father. I love my father. And I'm not going to get, I'm not going to enter into a thing here where you and I end up at odds. Right. So we've got to have very clear. And if you don't write it down while he's feeling that way, later on when he's not feeling that way, he'll forget it. Not because he's a bad guy, but because he's a, he's a doer. He's a, he's a, he's a founder. He began this thing. And then you can just, that way you can pay him honor and he can pay you honor. And so when some of the old guys run to him and say, well, you know, Walker's screwing this up, he can say, you know what? I turned it over to Walker. It's his. So if you've got a problem with Walker, you need to go talk to Walker. Yeah. So it's like when my daughter, the first daughter of mine

to get married was Rachel Cruz, who's a Ramsey personality now. And Rachel is a high-energy drama person who's very smart and very talented. And I told her husband to be that I was going to tell her this, and I did tell her this. I said, Rachel, I love you, and I'll always be your dad. But the first time that you come to me after you're married telling me something that's wrong with Winston, I'm going to tell you to go talk to your husband. Yeah. And that's what I need your dad to do, okay?

because that's going to come up. It's part of being married. It's part of being young married. I knew it was going to come up. And her dad's a big personality. Rachel says, I know him. And he's got issues. And I knew she would run to him if we didn't set this up.

You follow me? And I know your dad. And I kind of like your dad. I think your dad's a good dude. And the humility that he's showing to make this move is, man, that's hard. That's a big, that's a big, that's a, that is something to pay on or two. Absolutely, yep.

So, all right, now, now how are we going to make these changes? So there's a story in the Bible of Nehemiah, and the walls around the city in the Old Testament of Jerusalem had been torn down by the Babylonians and by everybody else, for that matter. And when the walls of a city in the ancient world were torn down, the city was vulnerable to every thief or robber or pirate that wanted to just walk in there and take stuff and it wasn't safe for the inhabitants of the city. It was impossible to do commerce.

It was impossible to raise a family and have a good civilization until the walls are back up. You follow me? Yep. So Nehemiah got permission from the king of Babylon to rebuild the walls. And so you've gotten permission to come in and make changes. you're now the guy. Now, Nehemiah was appointed. He was given letters from the king

that gave him authority to come in and do what needed to be done to get the walls back up, and it was Nehemiah's desire to get the walls back up. He did not come in and start appointing people to build the wall. He walked around the city on a listening tour.

And he would talk to the soldiers and the soldiers would say, you know what, Nehemiah, things are bad here. And Nehemiah would say, well, I think the walls are down. They say, yeah, you know, the walls are down. And that means all of the things I said earlier. When the walls are down, it's bad. And then he would talk to the aristocrats

and they would say, and the nobleman, and they would say, you know, things are bad. He goes, yeah, I think the walls are down. You know, the walls are down. And he kept walking around and saying this over and over and over again until then when he walked up to them, he said, you know, what do you think we ought to do, guys? he said, well, the walls are down. We've got to get the walls up. He made it their idea by listening

and talking. So I think you start meeting with each of the people and say, okay, if you were running this business, what do you think our biggest problems are and how would you fix them? Or your number one problem, and how would you fix it? And don't make any comments. Just listen and write it down. Just nod like a therapist with a patient on the couch. Just go, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, and write it down, write it down, write it down, and gather and listen and listen and listen, listen, because they're going to tell you, Walker, the things that you're already wanting to do.

Yep. But now it's their idea. And you get together with everybody then, you go, you know, I talk to three, I talked to all eight of you, three of you said we ought to do this. What do you guys think about that? And they go, yeah, that's a great, let's do that. I think that this is a problem in the side of our company. And I think almost every single thing you do, you either can plant into their heads and make it their idea or they already have the idea and they're going to bring it up. And all you've got to do is activate it. That, well, that's pulling the team rather than pushing

the team. Leaders pull bosses push. You can walk in there with muddy boots and tell everybody, by God, what to do because you're in charge, and they'll do it, and three of them will quit. Right. Because it was your idea. But if you'll pull a drawstring on this and listen and listen and and listen and pull and pull, you'll probably only lose one of the eight. Sure. But if you walk in there and start crying, cracking the whip with a cattle prod to get the herd moving, you're going to lose a bunch of them. And you're going to have trouble with morale. Because they're going to say stuff like morale's bad.

You told me that, right? Yep, yep. I think they know that, don't you? I think that they do, yep. And when they say that, you go, okay, why is morale bad? And then they'll tell you. Okay, what do you think we need to do to fix it? And then they'll tell you.

And they may or may not be wrong, or they may or may not be wrong. or they may or may not be right. I don't know. But you can just make that judgment later, but you can take pieces of those conversations and come back in and go, and they'll go, this Walker guy's different. He just kind of walks around

and does what we tell him to do. Sure. Because Nehemiah made it the leaders and the soldiers and the public's idea to rebuild the walls. But he came there with a mission to do it. And so once it was their idea, then everybody put their back into it and the walls were up in no time. But he spent two weeks on a listening to her before he even, he went, you know what,

all you guys said the walls are down. Maybe we ought to put the walls up. And they went, yeah, let's put the walls up. You know, and so, and that's kind of what I'm asking you do. I think it'll work for you. And we've had leaders inside of our organization move into areas after we moved a different leader out that wasn't working and the area was struggling. And if that leader will walk in there and just shut up and listen, the team will gather together. The team already knows what the flip to do. Most of the time people, it's kind of obvious. I think you're going to be just fine. I think you're an amazing young guy. And I think you've set some excellent terms. You've put together the only way I would recommend you go back into this at 100%. And so you and your dad have

come to good terms. Let's make sure you maintain a quality relationship where you're able to honor him at all times to the team. You don't ever say an unkind thing about him to your team ever. Ever. You say it to your wife when you get home, but you don't say it about him anything unkind. You have to pay the old guy honor. It's the only way this works. And then he has to promise to not undercut you in the field. When you start doing something, something, he has to say, ah, you know, you need to talk to Walker. Yeah, got to talk to Walker. Walker's in charge now. If that's the best he can do, or he can say, you know, I trust Walker. That'd be even better, right? And I've turned it over to Walker because I trust him, and I think he's,

I think he's going to be able to do this. Why don't you guys give him a shot? He can back you, but at a minimum, he just got to kind of say nothing and go talk to Walker. He can't be rolling his eyes and undercutting you and, you know, be a listening ear for a whiny gossip. He can't be any of those things in this work. And you guys need to say all of that out loud. Dad, I'm not going to do anything but honor you in front of the team ever as long as I breathe. Period. Even after you're gone, I will always speak highly of you in their presence.

They will never hear me say, if there's anything you and I disagree about, it'll be between you and me and it'll be behind closed doors. I will not say anything in front of them, and I'm asking the same in return. That's our agreement. And that'll work, dude. And that's fair. That's fair. But sometimes if you say it out loud, it keeps that crap from happening. It's like around here we say, we have a no-gossip policy. What's that? It's handing negatives anywhere but up. Hand your negatives up. Everybody's got negatives. There's 1100 people in this building. There's 1100 people to be pissed off at of one way or another. A lot of reasons for conflict, right? Hand your negatives up. If you hand them sideways or down, that's just whining and complaining and bitching and moaning. We'll warn you once,

and then we'll fire you because we don't want a bunch of dadgum backstabbing whiny gossips in the building. Life's too freaking short to work with those kind of people. And you know what? Our team, when you survey our team, they really like that. They don't have a tolerance for gossips either. It's not just top down. It's bottom up as well. And that's called building a culture. And that's what you're laying out to do here. You're really changing the culture, changing the look on what we're doing and how we're doing it.

Very well done, sir. You're a quality young man. Looking forward to meeting you someday and continuing to help you any way we can. Remember better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high-quality leaders. So take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Entree Leadership Podcast.