EntreLeadership - Am I Taking Advantage of My Employees?

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Today we’ll hear about:  A business owner wondering if he should offer company vehicles to his employees  A man considering if partnership is the right move  A woman looking for advice on how to pay off business debt  A son looking to hire the right team for his business while waiting for his father to sign it over    Next Steps:  📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message: https://ter.li/ask-us  📚 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   📖 Preorder Dave’s new book, Build a Business You Love: https://ter.li/4zfr52    Connect With Our Sponsors:  💼 Go to Belay Solutions or text ENTRE to 55123 for their free resource!  💻 Visit NetSuite today to learn more.  🧾 Visit Payority for a free consultation!  📈 Grab ⁠Sales Gravy's⁠ free resource to help you hire and lead better. 📝 Use code ENTRE15 to get 15% off your first year of Trainual.    Listen to More From Ramsey Network:  🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman  🎙️ The Ramsey Show  💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights  🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show  🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour  💡 The Rachel Cruze Show  💰 George Kamel    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 about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. If you want to submit a question, you can do that at entrell leadership.com slash ask. Leave me a voicemail message. Our team will get back with you and make you a caller if you want to do that at 8449. 4-4-1070. That's 844-9-44-1070. Mike is with us in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hey, Mike.

Hey, thanks for taking my call, Dave. Sure, man. What's up? My wife and I. Good for you. Well done. The question is, do like businesses have their technicians, which we have four of them. we put our technicians drive their own vehicles and then they get on the clock so they get some extra time you know as their company vehicles what's up um the first comment that pops into my head before anything else is um someone that i'm hiring to be a tech does not set my business policy okay he's like well everybody else does which is a really good reason to not do anything you know right so let's just start there being a contrarian now but then let's just think about the business aspect of this, how are you reimbursing them for the wear and tear on their car

and the fuel on their car? We are not directly reimbursing them for that. Just say, for instance. You're just giving them 30 minutes on the clock every day? About, yeah. I guess it's about an hour because it's before and after, right? Yeah, yeah. So what is that?

That ends up being $125 a week, a little bit less than $5,000 a year. And they're supposed to cover their fuel and the loss in value on their car for the extra miles they're putting on it for $5,000 a year. It's probably costing them more than that. Okay. Do we have any idea how many miles? Wow. No. You never track.

No. No. Yeah. Because that's the actual thing. If it's two miles a day, that's one thing. If it's 100 miles a day, it's another thing, right? Yeah. Let's think about it.

If I'm using my car and I'm putting extra miles on it and that miles are substantial, it is causing the value of the car to go down, agreed? That is correct. If it's just the equivalent of having driven it to work and it's not much miles at all, then it's a break-even. Then they're actually putting money in their pocket if $5,000 buys enough gas to do the deal, which it should. So if they're not running many miles, it might be okay.

If they're running a lot of miles, you're probably costing the employee money. Okay. Does that make sense? It does. It does. And then based on that, I'm going to look at it, and I'm either going to increase what I'm paying them. And then I've got to compare that. So let's say right now you're $5,000 a year out of pocket on this, and let's say you doubled that and you were $10,000 a year out of pocket. You buy a used van to put their gear in for 20 grand.

In five years, it's worth $5,000 from the miles you put on it. and you've got a company sign on the side of it, and you've got repairs and mileage on it, and you've got gas going into it. Is that going to cost you more than $10,000 a year? Probably not much more than that. That's probably about what it is. So you could kind of run the numbers out and say,

okay, if we bought a van and we run at this, and you know, you kind of take some educated guesses at the actual miles, and you say, all right, we're going to buy a used van. We're going to have a nice one, but used, and we're going to put a company logo on the side of it, like the competitors do, right? Mm-hmm. And so I've got a rolling billboard.

That's helpful, but not really going to make you much money. But then, okay, but it's $10,000 out of pocket. Now the employee is not being inconvenienced. Now, the employee might like to be inconvenienced if they're getting more money in than it's costing them. Mm-hmm. So I think you've got to figure out are you really cost them money. You got to do a little bit more analysis than you and I did here on the phone.

but I mean, you're in Cincinnati, Ohio, so they're pretty well all over the greater Cincinnati area, I assume. Yes. I kind of think you're costing them money. A liability. I know you're not a lawyer, but... No, no, thank God. And, see, you and I are going to like each other yet.

But anyway, anyway, yeah, I don't think you're liable. They're using their car. it's their liability. Their insurance and their liability. You know, there's been some stuff pop up in the old days, like if people are doing Uber or they're delivering Domino's pizzas, some of their personal insurance policies won't cover them while doing that. Yeah.

And so if they were doing company business, or if they were doing commercial activity with a normal personal policy, not a business policy, some of those insurance companies who have denied claims if you're delivering pizza or doing Uber and had a wreck, because you're making money, you're doing a commercial endeavor, and you don't have a commercial insurance policy. So there's been some of that happen out there.

I've seen some case studies I've read on that kind of stuff. I've not heard of it being widespread in a long time, but I have heard about that. So obviously if you put your truck on the road, yeah, you're liable. But your LLC that owns your company probably would own the truck. So that keeps your personal assets sheltered, which is why you have an LLC on your company. But I don't know about liability

with the employees driving their own. I'm more concerned that the guy mentioning it coming in, he doesn't set policy. We said that. But he might be doing a little math and going, okay, I took this job, I got a raise, but I'm also going to lose a little money over here, but I still wanted the job anyway.

and he kind of did the analysis that you and I just did possibly. And so I don't want it to be costing you talent. And I kind of like your tools, all the tool costs you have being in your truck. Because tools, they grow legs, as you know. And they might grow more legs if they were in someone's personal vehicle than if they were in my truck. So that's a consideration as well. What's the tool budget on these things? And does that change if you shift to company vans?

So I don't know. It doesn't sound like it's egregious either way, but I think I would do, since you're asking about it, I think I'd get down in the weeds a little bit. Let's do a little bit of actual math and try to estimate what we're really costing the employee. If they're driving a $20,000 car and they put an extra 10,000 miles a year on the car, what does that devalue the car, what's their gas bill on that, what's their oil change on that, throw a few dollars in there for some extra repairs that they wouldn't have without the extra miles and then let's see if that's

5,000 bucks. I got a feeling it's more than that. So I got a feeling they're not making money on this. They're probably losing money on it. Sometimes people driving Uber, by the way, are losing money while they're driving Uber because they're taking a $52,000 car and running miles up on it and thought about what they're doing to the value of that car

while they give somebody a $37.46 ride. This is the Entree podcast. Hey, business owners, today is the last day to grab more than $350 in bonuses when you pre-order, because the last day of pre-order, for the new book, Build a Business you love. In this book, we teach you out a master the five stages of business. Business is hard, and we're going to give you the clear path to work through the five stages. And the six drivers that will help you move through the five stages. This is kind of your baby steps for small businesses.

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Chris is in Huntsville. Hey, Chris, welcome to the Entree podcast. Well, it's shaken, Dave. How you doing, man? Pushing it through, brother. How can we help? Well, I'm a general manager at an HVAC service company. We currently have 17 employees, and we did 4.3 million last year.

Wow. And I want to know what is the typical process for buying into or becoming a partner of the company that I currently manage but don't own? Well, I mean, there's a bazillion ways to do it. There's a lot of reasons not to do it. I often say the only ship that won't sales a partnership. I will tell you, managing and leading and teaching small business folks for the last 20 years, the number of small business partnerships that survive a decade.

decade is I can count them on one hand. They just don't happen for a lot of different reasons, a bazillion different reasons. But the only exception of that are like medical, a bunch of docs build a do a partnership. That's a standard thing. It's a different type of deal or a bunch of lawyers do a thing. But the situations like you're in. The problem, Chris, is unless you buy or get somehow, 51% ownership, you have put money into something you have absolutely no control over. Right. If you have 26%, we call that a minority interest. The other person that owns the other thing can do whatever they want, and you just have to accept it.

So they could not work much, run the thing into the dirt, borrow a bunch of money, buy a huge piece of equipment that you know as the general manager is a bad idea, but they want to buy it anyway. And all of that affects profitability. It all affects the value of what you now own. And if you paid money to be a minority partner and you don't have a vote, and all of a sudden that money is worth nothing because they screw up the deal. They screw up running the business and people do that pretty regularly. So a minority partnership is a very, very dangerous investment. Because you can't get out of it.

There's nobody to sell it to. Nobody wants it. And the other party could choose to misbehave. Or let me tell you the other thing that happens. They could die. And now you work with their spouse. And the spouse chooses to do stuff. The old boy you did the deal with was fine,

but he's married to a crazy woman. and she comes in and decides she's going to run the thing in the dirt. I've seen that like a bunch of times, or vice versa. The gal you did the deal with was she was solid, and her husband's a dufus, and she dies, and he comes in and takes it over. Or they go through a divorce. Now they both own 26 percent, and you own 26 percent, and now they're fighting all the time in there,

and you can't run the business because these idiots are in there. And, you know, you get into all that kind of stuff. Can you tell I've seen it before? I can't. It's really clear, yes, sir. Yeah, I'm trying to dissuade you from wanting to do it. So is the owner offering you this? Yes, he has, and he's kind of left an open table discussion,

and I really love working with this. I've worked with him for almost 14 years now. Where does this lead 10 years from now? Do you end up owning the whole thing later? No, he has made it clear that he would never give up, like, a majority ownership. Yeah, so you're going to be a minority position no matter what you do. Yep, exactly. So the reason for you buying into this is to participate in profits mainly.

Right, yep, that's true. And he actually offered me something this year in lieu of, like, me buying in or being given shares or earning shares. He's offered me a profit sharing program where I would get essentially the benefits of ownership without buying into the company. That's the one I want. I want that one. That's okay.

Yeah. He just starts paying you off the bottom line as if you're a partner. So my operating board that operates Ramsey, I move them into that role. And that functions like, we call it, it's like a law firm, like you made partner. And if I make you an operating board member, you are now paid a percentage of profits of Ramsey solutions off of the same bottom line that I get paid off of. you don't pay anything for that option or that right. You're not a legal partner, but you are paid a percentage of what this place makes

as your compensation. And as a matter of fact, with our operating board, I'm probably not the case in your thing, and it probably shouldn't be in your thing. But with our operating board, it's the only money they make. They don't have a salary. The only money they make is whatever our profits are that month,

we have a percentage each person gets, and a percentage I get, and we just divvy up the profits from the closing of the books the month before, and that's how they get paid. And so they treat this place like an owner, which is what he's trying to create here. He wants you to be vested. He wants you to be bought in,

which would be very concerned about expenses and revenue, which is exactly what I want with those operating board members. And they're not only run their area, but they're looking at the whole place like a partner would because they want the whole place to make money, because that's where they get paid. And I love that model. And if he's offering you,

I think that's a deal for you. I mean, it sounded like kind of a sweetheart thing to me, but again, I'm really ignorant in this arena. Yeah. But yeah. I think it's a great deal. And my guess is he's probably offering you your salary plus a small percentage of profits to participate off that bottom line.

And so all this is is a raise, and it's him saying I value you being my general manager. You're my right-hand guy. you and me are doing this together. And so I'm going to treat you like you're a partner, but you don't have to pay for it. And if we break up, it's not messy. You know, it's funny.

He almost said that verbatim. Good. No joke. Okay. Yeah, I think this is a good guy. He's not the one I worry about. It's when things go sideways and you end up having the deal with somebody else that I get worried.

But see, if one of my operating board members leaves, they don't get anything. They don't own anything. They just quit. quit their job. And that's the same with you here. So if you decide you wanted to go out on your own or you wanted to go work for somebody else or he fires you for misbehavior of some kind, you don't have to untangle the ownership. So it's really nice. It's really clean. Chris, that's what you should do. That's the direction you should go right there. I'd sit back down

with him and say, I get what you're trying to do. I want to be emotionally invested in this as if I was an owner. You pay me something off the bottom line to make me smile, and I will make you smile by leaning into this as if you and I are actual legal partners, even though we're not, but I'm still sharing off the bottom line. I love that. You get to eat what you kill. It's a good thing. This is the Entree podcast.

This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey. Thanks for being with us. If you're looking for theory, you're in the wrong place. This is stuff I do every day. I run a business with about 1,100 team members, about 300 million in revenue, and I grew it from a card table in my living room in the last 30-plus years. So, I mean, our team here is incredible. We have incredible leadership team.

We deal with the same hiring and firing stuff you guys deal with. We deal with the same enemies that come at us like you do. We deal with the same scrappy, scrappy, scrappy, I got to make something happen every day attitude that you guys do. This is not a professor who's never made payroll. I made payroll last Friday, baby. So this is how this works. We're here to help you understand that. This is practical hands-on stuff.

That's what the Entree Leadership Podcast is. If you want to discuss leadership theory, you need to go somewhere else because I can't help you with that. I can help you with that, but I don't want to. It's not what I do. So the phone number, if you want to participate, is 844-9-4-1070. 8-44-9-4-10-70.

Jenna is in Atlanta. Hi, Jenna. Welcome to the Entree podcast. Hi, Dave. A crane repair company. We have about seven employees, and we're bringing in a little under a million a year. However, we've been struggling with cash flow

because we have around $200,000 in vendor debt, what would that be the best way to attack this while keeping the business running? Train repair, as in locomotives? No, like construction cranes. Oh, crane. Crain, yes. I'm a little deaf, I'm sorry.

Okay, crane repair. Okay, but people aren't paying you on time. You said you have a cash flow problem. Why? We're, it's going through the winter months and everything, it's definitely slowed down. And... That's different than somebody not paying you on time. Correct.

Businesses down. Yes, and it's businesses down. And then we've branched off and started doing business for the government. And they're definitely, their net terms are a little bit, you know, long. What's long? Tell me how long? 45 days. Okay.

That's not too bad. Typically with us, we are due upon receipts. Yeah, but I mean, if you get your money 45 days later and you paid your vendor for that job within that 45 days, they're not pissed. Correct. And this is also the vendor that they have is from 2023. When my master technician, he had an accident and fell from a car. crane. So that, you know, hit the business really hard. And why does that create, that's a horrible thing, but why does that create vendor debt? I don't understand. Because of all of the vendor bills

that I had that I was on net 30 terms with them, I have not been able to, you know, I was able to pay those vendors back in a timely manner. And now I am. Okay. So you have one technician and so all revenue stopped? I mean, pretty close to it, yes. I mean, we went from making 60 to 80,000 a month to about 15 to 20. Okay, because this one guy was your, he was your cash cow and got hurt. Yes. I mean, because we also, we only have two technicians that actually go out and work. And that's still the case? That is still the case. Okay. And, but this, this 200, $100,000 is old debt. It is old debt, correct.

Okay, if you use a vendor service today, you would pay them within 30 or 45 days, right? We pay them immediately now. Yeah. Well, I mean, not on the government jobs because you don't have the money. Correct, that is true. So within 45 days on the government jobs and immediately otherwise. Correct.

Okay. So you don't really have a cash flow problem. You have an old debt that's hovering from an accident that happened and cut cash flow down. temporarily two years ago. Okay, yes. Is that correct? That is correct.

Okay, I'm trying to make sure I got a full picture here. Okay, so are you still using any of the vendors that you owe 200K to? A couple of them, yes. Okay. Okay. I think I'm going to take the 200,000 and put it into two different buckets. Okay. Bucket one is vendors I still work with.

Bucket two is vendors I don't work with anymore. Okay. For whatever reason. The ones I don't work with anymore, what portion of the $200,000 would you say that is? I would say that's probably a good $60,000 worth. Okay. So $140,000 you're still working with 60s old debt that you don't have relationship with much anymore. Correct.

Okay. All right. I'm going to handle them differently because I need to keep doing business with the $140. I don't have to with the $60. Agreed? Agreed. Okay. So with the 60, how many different bills are there? Are those all, is it $6, $10,000 bills? Are they all $500 bills? What's that look like? I've got one at $28,000, another one at $26,000.

Oh, so two of them are most of it? Yes. Okay, that's good. I like that. All right. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put, do you have $10,000? Yes. Okay. I'm going to call one of the $26, $28,000 guys and go, guys, it's been two years. We're still trying to recover. That guy fell off that crane. It threw everything off. You know the story. I don't have the money to pay you right now. And I'm trying to clear out from under a total of $200,000. You're 26 of it. Tell them the truth. Okay. And if I'm on the other side of that, if you're on the other side of that and you're hearing this and you go, I haven't gotten my money in two years. And this lady's backed into a corner here. and she's calling me and being honest and telling me. This is what I'm thinking if somebody calls me with this. Isn't what you would think? Yes, it would be.

Yeah, and I want you to offer them $10,000 to settle that $28. Okay. Would you take $10,000 to make this go away? If you can, I can do that today. I can't do the 28 today, but if you want to settle it for $10,000, I can do that right now, and you and I'll call it a day, and I'm really sorry, I hate that this happened this way. And if they go, if they go screw you, I want my 28, you say,

okay, I understand. it's going to be a little while before I can get back to you on that. I'm going to have to take my $10,000 over to the other guy, and I'm going to make the same phone call to him. Right, okay. And just let them sit if they don't take the deal. But if they take the deal and you can clean up the $60 for $20, $2.10, I'm doing that. And now I've got it all the way down to $140.

Does that make sense? You know what to do there, right? Yeah, that definitely makes sense. Now get it in writing. Okay. That they're willing to accept $10,000. It can be an email. It doesn't have to be anything super formal.

But hey, just to close the conversation is, yes, I'll do that. Great. Here's my email address if you didn't already have it. I want you just send me an email that says that, and I'll have our accountant and wire the money over to you. It says that you will accept $10,000 of settlement in full on this debt and that I don't owe you anything when I send you $10,000. If you send me an email says that, I'll send you $10,000 by wire this afternoon

from my accountant. Okay? Okay. Now you keep that file, you keep that email, print it out, keep a hard copy in case digital fails you and you keep the digital file as well forever in case somebody over at that other place forgets the deal right okay and now we got the 60 cleared if we can pull that off it might take a couple phone calls it might be a little gyration they might have to vent and tell you how ugly you are or something but that's okay it's okay we'll just have the conversation and then we're

going to try to do a deal now the 140 uh how many different vendors are there there's probably I'd take least 10. Okay. All right. They're all little ones. And what's, so they're all five, ten thousand bucks? Correct. Okay.

All right. That's good. I'm going to, and you're already, you're continuing to do business with every one of those? Correct, yes. Okay. All I'm going to do there is every time I do something with them right now, I'm going to add 25% to it to be applied to the bill. Okay. And so if you get a new bill for $10,000 from them on a current thing that you did last week,

I'm going to pay $10,000 and I'm also going to send them another $2,500. I'm making that number up. It could be 10%, it could be 25%, it can be 35%. I don't care. But add something to it, two separate checks. Check one is for our current deal that I owe you today, and check two is to the past deal. Okay. Now, again, I'm trying to walk a mile.

and the other guys' moccasins, because if I think about how business ethics tells me how I want to be treated if I switch sides. Right. Treat other people like you'd want to be treated, right? The Golden Rule, Jesus said, okay? So if I'm on the other side of this, and I've got 15,000 bucks out with you,

but you're still doing business with me, and I start seeing a check come in ever so often towards that, I'm going to have a ton of patience. Okay, yeah. But if I see nothing for two years, I'm going to start wondering about Jenna. I'm thinking I might need to call her and work something out. And I'd rather that Jenna just start sending me some money.

And you're going to pay those guys a hundred cents on the dollar. There's no deal here. But we're just going to pay them a little bit at a time, not all at once. Okay. Because you don't have 140 laying around out of a million, I'm sure. No. I've actually even thought about even did I need to do like a, you know, a HELOC loan on the house? No, nope, nope, nope, nope.

Vender debt's better than Heelot. like that. Okay. Because if you get in trouble, you can always call them up and do the same thing with them and try to give them pennies on the dollar. But I hate to do that on an existing ongoing relationship, don't you? Exactly. That's been my biggest thing is I, you know, I purchased those parts. I've used those parts. I made money off those parts. They are due to this money. Yeah. Well, everybody's do the money and the whole thing. Nobody ripped you off. It was just you had a bad situation. And so now we're trying to clear it up. Right.

So I've got people that owe me money from 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, they call me up and offer me anything I'd take it. Makes sense. You know? You would too. It's old, it's found money because I don't think it's coming. Exactly. And that's bucket one for you.

Bucket two is you're just going to start plinking at it, and they're going to be smiling because Jenna's trying. Okay. And I definitely makes a lot more sense now. Yeah. And so I think it's probably going to, you know, You clear up the $60,000 with $2,000, $10,000 checks. Let's hope we do that, you know, within three or four months.

And then you just think, okay, I got 140. I'm going to plink at it. That's probably two years it takes to clear that. Okay. That's $70 a year in addition to the other business you're doing. I think you can handle that. Okay. But at least we're doing something.

We're moving that way. Everybody's patient and everybody gets paid eventually. And eventually they go, well, it took her a while, but she made me whole. Right. And that's where you want to be reputation-wise. You want to have done the right thing. And if they call you and say, hey, thanks for this. We appreciate it.

You say, I'm going to keep doing this. If you'd rather do some kind of deal and give me a discount, I'll try to scratch up the cash and knock the whole thing out if you give me a discount. I'd offer them that. But I wouldn't push that on the ongoing relationship bucket. The one where there's no ongoing relationship, I'm going to push the discount and try to get that deal done. So, hey, good question.

I love where your heart is. I love that you're fighting and scrapping your way through this. You're the kind of people that give people jobs in America. You're the backbone of this country. You're a hero. I appreciate you calling in. This is the Entree podcast. Hey, you can always submit your questions here at Entreeleadership.com slash ask.

Call the phone number and we'll work it out for you to be on the show. You can do that too at 844-944. 1070. Dustin is with us in San Antonio, Texas. Hey, Dustin, welcome to the Entree podcast. Hey, Dave, how are you today, sir? Better than I deserve. What's up? Hey, man, right now I'm currently in the process of taking over in our oil field service company for my dad. We've been in business for 25 years or so. Revenues down to about 100,000 a month, roughly about a million a year. I have about 12 employees that I'm keeping currently. We're in a high stress environment where we're 24 hours a day, seven days we, you know, 365 days a year where we're running services. And my dilemma is, is the workforce

and how to hire, you know, the right type of people that can do that type of work without right now running into insurance costs and, you know, a lot of safety issues and we're having to work around and doesn't seem to be a lot of blue collar hands out there these days. So I'm trying to scale up and take over this company from old, you know, 20-year-old ways and bring it into, you know, modern times. And I just figured I'd reach out to y'all and see if I could get some advice. Okay. So we're solving for hiring people to do the job?

How can I best serve you? What I am is I'm changing over. Right now, the main dilemma I have is I'm leading the company that it's been handed over to me without any of the paperwork and all the corporate. We're sub-S and we're, you know, all that stuff has to be changed over for me to have any real control over the company. When is that going to happen? That's the same. My dad is 74. How old are you?

I am 44. Okay. So he has said that's what's occurring. Is he working day to day in the business anymore? No, he hasn't. And for COVID is whenever we changed over. It's such a downfall. We had a decision, you know.

And I've decided to take the company and pick it back up and run with it. Okay. So why is the paperwork not done? Um, probably familiar. You know, family, uh, there's wives, stepmothers, had brothers. Do they own stock? No, nobody does. My dad is 100% owner. So why is your dad not signed the paperwork over to you? Everybody else is telling him not to? Uh, no. So what's the stepbrothers and mothers and all those people got to do with it? He, you know, relinquishing. You know, I know, I know he,

He trusts that, I guess in a sense, it's a, you know, that's a good question. It's no, there really isn't a. Yeah, I think you go to coffee with him this week. I drink coffee with him every morning. Good. Dad, I love you. And I think what you built here is incredible. I am losing patience with the paperwork.

We needed to be done this month. Yeah. If you're going to turn this over to me and you said you are, and you've given me all the responsibility. I need the paperwork done and the corporate and the checking account and all that put into my name this month. Yeah, I mean, all that, you know, I'm able to sign on the account. He needs to put it in your name this month, Dustin.

Yes, sir. That's what everybody's told me before I end up in a bad situation. Yeah, he's going to die and you're going to be screwed. Yeah, exactly. That's what everybody dies, and if you don't have this handed over before everybody dies, you're going to be in a mess. And all it is, all it is, All it is is he has this one last little thing of he doesn't want to relinquish the power.

He has enjoyed running the business and he has enjoyed owning the business in general. And he's going to kill it and he's going to do harm to his own son who he loves. And he's going to kill the business that he loves by not doing business well. And he needs to turn this over now. Yeah, before it's too late. Summer is too late. Now. I agree.

Okay. So that's the first thing. Now the paperwork is now in your name. Now, what's the next thing we need to work on? You need to work on hiring because blue collar, there's a shortage of people that want to work like. Work that, dadgum, hard. Right, right. I mean, we work tough and we're dirty and there's not a lot of, I mean, it's hard work.

What's a guy doing this kind of work make when they work for you? My top pay is 28 an hour with an average. of 60 to 100 hours a week. Is that enough? I would, because of it, ebbs and flows, you know, I would like it to be more of a salary, but no, it's not. It really isn't. Those guys deserve to make way lot more.

I mean, is that enough to attract people? Yes. To a hard job that you work 60 hours a week in the dirt. I don't know if that's enough to attract people to do that, is it? Well, yeah, certain types. and I'm in a rural, you know, I'm in rural area in South Texas. Okay. I don't know the answer.

I'm asking. I'm not, I'm not. I've got, you know, I've gotten my eye out on the right types, you know, but for the most part, it's the ups and downs of the industry we're in that that doesn't attract people because of the turnover. You know, every six months, seems like, or every five years, I would say, the oil field is going through a down. turn and people lose it and then you got to rehire back and retrain some green, you know. And then what I run into is my most veteran people, they have so much, you know, control and knowledge, I guess you'd say, that you end up wanting to turnover more than, and it ends up

affecting profits. And I guess that's overall where I'm at is my salaries are too high compared to what I'm able to charge. and the profit margins, profit margins where they used to be 30, 40 percent are now 5 to 10 percent if we can squeeze them out. Yeah, but does that change if things heat back up in the oil field, no pun intended? I think that's why I'm calling is because I anticipate it to start heating back down now. I mean, if Trump says drill baby drill and they actually do, does that not affect you? I'm hoping it doesn't volume. Now, they all still, the payroll.

rate is about $200 in hours what I'm running into. And I need it to be about $300 or $350. And I have a customer base that I'm afraid to raise pricing on because I have my bread and butter, you know. And that's an issue I'm running into, too, is being able to price accordingly to the hands that I need to hire. How many customers do you have in the customer base? Oh, I'm on probably a thousand master service agreements, but there's like 50 rigs, 50 oil companies, I would say, operating in our area, in our immediate work area. And what I'm trying to do is expand into, like, West Texas. But I mean, how many do you have?

Roughly out of the 50, I'm probably doing 20% of the companies that are out there. So, you know, say there's 10 companies. Yeah, exactly. I'm probably working consistently for about 10 companies, yes. I'd pick two of them and go up on my price. Okay. Okay. The two that if you lost them, you really wouldn't cry a lot.

Okay, okay, yeah. And let's start inching our way into this. And then I'm going to start trying to figure out a way to pay the guys so that I can attract them. I don't know anything about that world other than looking in from the outside and, you know, lies that I've seen on movies, which mean nothing, right? So I don't know what I'm talking about. But I do know it's hard work and it's dangerous work. and it takes a certain kind of a certain breed to get out there in the cold and the heat and do this stuff so i get that and i admire that kind of hard work that work ethic it's a good thing

so i think i would practice making these guys the heroes in the story i agree i'd remind them pretty regularly that they're that they're manly men that they're a rare breed that they get stuff done that nobody else in america knows how to do and that is willing to do and um occasionally just just roll a food truck up and feed them and their kids at the ballpark or something. I occasionally buy them tickets to the San Antonio basketball team. And see, you know, let's do some stuff like that and just celebrate the men and their families a little bit for being the real frontier out there. And that's not money, but it says you have dignity.

It says we appreciate you. It says, we think you're cool. And when you do that kind of stuff, some of that's better than money. The reason I was asking if you were paying enough is I had a shortage of tech people here on the digital side at one point. And I was making the statement incorrectly for a while several years ago that there's a shortage. It's hard to find good people in this tech ex world, this certain position I was trying to fill. And what I figured out was it's not hard to find them at all if you pay them. They line up.

And so we weren't paying is why we couldn't find them. And I didn't realize that at the time. I didn't know it, but it was an easy solution for me. Once we figured that out, we went, okay, if we pay them X, we can't make money on them, so we need to quit whining about not getting them because we can't pay them X. We don't have the money. Or we need to pay them X and shut up and get them in here and get the work done, one of the two. And you could be facing the same thing.

I don't know. That's why I brought that up. Are you paying enough? But that's what I would do. So I'd get the business, get into your name, as soon as possible. I'd raise prices on two of my 10 clients to begin the gradual process of adjusting prices to the modern world because they hadn't been raised in years in your situation. And I'd start celebrating the heroes that work for you in ways other than in addition to

their paycheck. And that's my three suggestions for your situation. I hope some of that helps you. Good stuff, guy. Well done, man. I love it. very cool. Hey folks, remember better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high-quality leaders. Take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Entree Leadership Podcast.