EntreLeadership - Build Trust Fast: What Great Leaders Always Do

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Today, we’ll hear about:  A 30-year-old learning to lead a veteran team with humility, service and trust How to design compensation plans that drive results without breaking your business model Dave’s rant on why now is the easiest time to win in business Raising prices with integrity, keeping customers’ trust, and staying profitable through change 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 📖 Order Dave’s new book, Build a Business You Love: https://ter.li/b4kru2 ✅ Sign up to get the Black Friday deals: https://ter.li/xiboh3   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. 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 Entree Leadership, 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've got a question you want to ask on this show, well, you fill out the forum at ontraryleadership.com slash ask or call and leave us a voicemail at 844-944-1070. We'll call you back and make you a caller. That's 844-944-1070. Jacob is in Chicago. Hi, Jacob. How are you?

Hi, Dave. I'm doing well. Blessed to be on the show. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Yeah, so I was calling, and my question is, as a younger leader, how do I step into a role in which I'll be managing those who are much more experienced than I? And how do I do that with a kingdom mindset?

Okay. How old are you? 30 years old. Okay. And the people you'll be leading or how old? They're going to be probably, they're mostly in their mid to late 50s. Yeah, they've been with the company about about 20, 15 to 20 years each. Cool. What do you do? So right now I'm actually over the maintenance department, so I'm manager and our maintenance department. I work for a bridge and railgirder manufacturer. And we have about 240 employees.

and I actually, the owner just recently spoke to me a couple weeks ago and actually brought me aside and told me, hey, our GM is retiring and next year, and I'd like you to train with him and become our next general manager of the whole facility. Wow. Good for you. That's wonderful. What a great promotion. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I think the best person to ask this question of is the old GM. Okay. and then secondly, what I think you would do is I would pick up Pat Lincione's latest book. It's called The Motive. And it basically says, you're not a very good leader if you're in it for what you get out of it. Most of the great leadership minds like John Maxwell and so forth will tell you that the best leaders are leaders that serve. And you say, okay, how can I serve them? how can I do how can I care about them and what they want and how and and and in the

simultaneously obviously get done get the work done right but instead of it being about you it's about them and so what's your what's your focus here your focus is how can I help them do their job better have be better men be better husbands be better have better lives how can I you know be thinking about them, not about me. And that keeps us from, when you're a brand new leader, it's real easy for most people, me included, to step in and go, da-da-da-da, I'm here with all the answers. Because if you look at it through the lens of service,

you ask a lot more questions than make statements. And so I would go on a question answering, asking tour, a question asking to or not answering, and just ask a lot of questions. What do you think the best thing we do around here is? What's some ideas you have to get things to be more efficient and better? What would you like to see out of the new GM? If you could design a new general manager and it was the one you wanted,

not the person, but the way they acted, what kind of behaviors would you want to see out of the new GM? And I tell you, the good news is a crusty old 58-year-old guy who's been working like this, stuff like this, he'll tell you. Probably won't hold back, you think? No, he'll, he's a straight shooter. Yeah, that's good news, because that way you're not got somebody all white-collared up and they're, you know, dancing around trying to be passive-aggressive and play politics with you.

These are the kind of men that won't do that, and I like that. That's good news for you. You may not like what they tell you, but, you know, but they'll get used to that. So, but just ask a lot of questions and continually ask that. And what I tell our leaders around here is if there's someone in a position and they're having a personal problem, you know, their kids sick at home, their wife's got cancer, and you don't know it, you have failed as a leader. You know, you need to be loving your people well. And I don't mean in some kind of weird, sappy way where they're rolling their eyes at you

or something like that. They might do that anyway. but just they need to know that you actually care about what is best for them. It might be that what is best for them is they don't work here anymore, but I actually care what is best for you, you know? And, you know, I've had people that, Dave, I'm overwhelmed with anxiety. I'm having a panic attack. Every time I walk in the building, the pressure of this job is just too much.

I can't do it anymore. And I'm like, well, what's best for you? You know, if I was your dad, if I was your older, brother, I would tell you to quit that job, it's going to kill you. And so it's probably best for you that you and me try to find you something else to do because this place is, you know, the position you've worked yourself into is killing you. And I don't want that for you. And that's an act of love.

That's not just firing somebody because they've got anxiety, right? So anyway, the motive, motive, motive, motive, questions, questions, questions, and then go, okay, my job is to do, to knock down blockers if there's seen anything blocking you guys from doing your job better, safer, more efficiently, faster. If there's anything keeping you guys from doing that, my job is to get that thing removed. And if it means I got to go upstairs and talk to the boss and say, boss, man, we got problems down here on the floor. These guys deserve a better wrench to turn this with.

They deserve a better tool than we're giving them. You know, we're making this too hard. then I'm your guy. I'm your representative, you know, and I'm the guy that knocks down blockers. I'm the guy that says, you know, we're under staff. These guys are all working 16 hour days. We've got to get some more staff in. Whatever it is, your job is to knock down anything, any blocker that is keeping us from being better, bigger, and badder. And that's all an act of service. It's all the way you come at it with a spirit of service. And when you do that, Jacob, and you will do that. I know you will, because, you're the guy that asks this question. The ones that won't do it or the ones that don't ask this question. They've already got all the answers and they don't call and they don't ask a question like you're asking. The humility you showed by asking me this question, when you show that humility to them

with an actual spirit of I actually, I'm not being manipulative, but I actually do care about how this ends up for you. And I want to know what you think. And when they get that off of you and you're not wimpy, you're strong, but you're quite, you know, I'm here to help. I'm here to serve. When they get that off of you and people can smell a fake, then pretty quickly they're going to rally around and be really glad you're there. I would take all of that, listen back to it again on the podcast and listen to it again the first day that you go in and start working with the GM to be mentored and then ask the

GM that you're being mentored with what he thinks of my answer. And if he says I'm full of crap, then I'm following crap and you go with what he says. But I think that stuff will help you. It's how I would approach it. I've seen young leaders inside of Ramsey do this. They go on a listening to her. And it's really a good way to get indoctrinated into a new team and to get people to trust you and believe in you rather than I'm going to come in and start with bugles announcing that the new king is here. The boy king has arrived.

Nobody wants to see the boy king. I promise you. And that's the way a 58-year-old looks at a 30-year-old. by the way, hello. So, now they're rolling their eyes going, I got socks holder in this fart, you know, and it's just, no, you don't want that, a feeling.

And so the way you get by that is you just come in asking, asking, asking, asking, asking. And then you'll, after six months or so, you'll have your feet under, and then you can tell some people some stuff. But you don't even tell anybody anything for a while, because you don't really have anything smart to say for a while. Give yourself a minute to get there.

And, you know, that's when you'll get there. You will, Jacob, because your spirit, the spirit you carried into this call is the exact spirit I'm talking about. So you're going to do great with this. I'm proud of you. I'm glad you got this opportunity. You must have obviously earned it with your work ethic and your character. Congratulations. This is the time of year when things can get crazy for small business owners, or fun, depending on your definition of fun. Strategic planning, personnel decisions, next year's budgets.

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There are a comprehensive payroll company that aims to take the stress out of payroll and makes switching easy, giving you peace of mind as you're heading into the busiest time of the year. Go to payority.com slash entree leadership today for a free consultation. That's payority.com slash entree leadership. Well, Black Friday's almost here, and we're offering deals so good that we won't advertise them publicly. It's a secret. The only way to see these deals is by joining our private Black Friday email list. You know what? That sounds like a trap.

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That's so mysterious. So right now, go to uptreyleadership.com slash Black Friday to join the list and make sure you sign up today so you can be the first to know when our Black Friday email list comes out and it'll give you that offers that no one else will know about because they're a secret. Don't wait. I'm kidding around, but we really are doing this. And you can really get some bargains this way and you really won't learn about them any other way. So go to Entreleadership.com slash Black Friday today or click the link in the show notes. James is with us. James would be in Sacramento. Hey James, what's up? Hey, Dave. Cool to talk to you. I've been listening to you since 2018.

So thank you for the good influence you've had on my life. Well, thank you, sir. How can we help? So I'm a general contractor and owner of an ADU building company. This year, we're doing about three and a half million. Last year, we did one million. And my My question is, how do I properly pay slash setup and outside sales rep? So I've been doing all my sales up until this point. Some quick context. I have been given advice from someone I really respect that says that outside sales should

only be paid a commission when they both generate and close the deal. On the other hand, I'm thinking if the sales team is getting some of the leads that we generate, then the business would make more money. and when I've interviewed a few potential salespeople, they all seem pretty surprised when I explained that. They would need to generate their own sales, so I'm just trying to navigate correctly here. You want them to generate their own leads or their own sales?

From what I understood, the advice I've been given is that they would do both. They would generate it and close the deal as an outside sales, and that's how they would earn their commission. So where do they get their leads? well uh so uh if if did you say wait a minute what kind of construction did you say this is yeah so it's an adu uh construction which is uh it's like a granny flat in the backyard so it's a mini home up to 1200 square feet um and yeah you just built you could build it in your backyard uh it's a secondary home essentially uh now if i mean if i was a salesman trying to

to generate my own leads, I'll be creating networks with local engineers, architects, people that maybe real estate agents, that's where I would go. That's all in theory. I'm really just trying to figure what you... Where did you get your leads to get to $3.5 million? Yeah, so I've been, I've advertised, I've, I just learned and self, you know, some advertising on Google and Facebook. And that's why I generate all my leads. And then a little bit of word of mouth. But you don't have time to work them all anymore. It's getting more difficult.

It's like... You need to be running the business instead of being the sales guy. I agree. 100%. Yeah. Well, that involves someone else has to take over the leads that you were using. Yes. And you weren't generating them. You were getting them off of Facebook.

Yeah. I would create the ad creative and set the ad budget. and, you know, got this far with that. But, yeah, definitely everything. I shouldn't be doing that. I know that for sure in the long run. In a retail B to C setting, you're selling direct to the consumer. You're not selling to another business.

It would be, I like the advice. It would be really nice. But if they could generate their own leads and then close their own leads, that's a much harder hire. To find someone that has, that can do both of those things. Right. It's a much easier hire if you say, here are the leads. You need to go close them.

And your marketing plan generates the leads. And whether you're doing paid social or word buys or whether you're doing, whether it's stuff off of the internet or whether you've got some other methodology. You know, you're running ads in magazines and people are calling in or I don't know what it is. You're doing a direct mailer. I saw somebody the other day and made some money with direct mail. I didn't know that existed anymore hardly. But this guy claimed he was doing $2 million a year off of it.

So, but I don't know what it is, but I think you've got to, you're going to have a much more effective sales force, a higher volume production if you generate the leads. Because here's the thing, you can put together a marketing campaign that lead generates. They can't. Yes, true. And so the volume of leads that you could create would be like, let's just say 100, and maybe they generated 10 in the same period of time. They might have a higher close ratio on those 10 than they do on your 100,

percentage-wise, but total numbers would be up if you're generating the leads. Now, there was part of the way you phrased this at the beginning with the advice that I didn't hear generating the leads. I heard that they took the lead, sold it, and closed it, and until it was completed, they didn't get paid. That part I would do. That part I would do. I would not pay them on a contract that you have received no money on. Sure. I would only pay them when you get money.

Right. Yeah, I suppose if I were to rephrase it in a little bit or a little bit differently, I'm almost looking for the green light to give salespeople leads because that's the way I understood it should work. I think in a B to C relationship, that's more efficient personally. I don't think there's a wrong way or a right way. It's just a matter which one works, right? I think if you got 10 guys out there just knocking doors, so to speak, they're not going to be. they're not going to generate the same volume as if you got 10 guys closing massive numbers of leads that you send them. Yeah, that's a much farther way to go.

Yeah. I agree with that. I think you, but it's, and so you do some campaign marketing that is lead magnets and generates leads. And, you know, I'd be okay with having two commission structures, one when you close our leads, and one when you go talk to the engineers and they start giving you leads and you go get to,

your own leads and I'll pay you more on those than I do on the ones I spoon feed you. That's actually, I wanted to quickly ask about that if we have a second or two. Yeah. Yeah, like a proper percentage, what you would. There's not one. There's not a set percentage. It varies industry. It depends on your margins.

I mean, obviously you can't give up your entire margin in sales commissions. And you've got cost to goods sold. You've got hard costs. you've got cost of this campaign now that they didn't do the work. You had to pay for this marketing that brings them the leads in. And so they're going to get to be a lower percentage on all of that for that reason because I've got to cover my costs, and you're one of my costs. And so I don't know what your margins are and all that.

You've got to figure that out. Here's the thing I would do. I would put in place a commission structure that if you ever had a salesperson that made $500,000 income that year, that you made so much money as a result of that that it makes you really glad to pay him $500K. Agreed. I mean, that would be nice.

Yeah, it's a happy, happy comp plan. You're happy, they're happy. But I have done them a couple of times where they started making a bunch of money and I had structured it wrong and I wasn't wanting, it got to the point I didn't want them to sell more because I was like losing 20 cents a watermelon because I'd put the thing together wrong.

And you don't want to get a bigger truck when you're losing 20 cents of watermelon. So that's the thing. So you've got to be real careful with that. And I think I probably, let me tell you what else I would do on comp plans. I always do it here now because I have done it wrong a couple times. This is how we're going to start the comp plan. If when we get into this a year or two, I'm not going to change the comp plan just because I'm greedy, but I might change it where you make more as I look at it further,

and I might change it where you make less because you might end up making more than me. And I own this place, and that's not going to happen. So I've got to have a little flexibility to look at this thing when we get further into it, because there may be some things I didn't foresee that are in this, and I'll talk to you about it, but I'm not going to rip you off. But I can promise you after a year we are going to revisit these percentages,

and we might have to change them. But we're going to start it off this way, and I'll never change the percentage just because I think you're making too much money. That's not going to be the reason. But we are going to have something that's equitable for both you and me. And if it's not doing that, you're not making enough. I'm going to change it where you make more. Or I'm not making enough.

We're going to change it where I make more. That's pretty well. And I'm going to lay that out ahead of time. That way they don't go, well, as soon as I start making money, they rip me off. You don't want that one, okay? And I did do that a couple times. I didn't rip them off, but that's how they felt because I didn't set the table properly, initially on the way in.

That's the thing. So good question, James. I think you're going to do really well. Feels really, really good. If you've ever looked at your calendar and wondered when you actually get to lead, you're not alone. Most business owners aren't out of ideas. They're out of time. Somewhere along the way, growth turned to grind.

You hired more people, added more meetings, and somehow ended up with less focus than before. That's the growth trap. when success starts slowing you down. So here's the truth. Leadership isn't about doing everything yourself. It's about building systems and trusting people so you can lead strategically, not reactively. That's where Belay comes in.

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not exhaustion. Download Belay's free resource, the ultimate guide to stopping executive burnout today. Just text Entree to 55123. That's E-N-T-R-E to 55-1-2-3. If you've not listened to Entree leadership for a while, you might not have caught the vibe. The vibe is this. I am a capitalist pig. I love capitalism.

capitalism and the free enterprise system is the best system on planet earth and it has always been among the economic systems socialism sucks because eventually you run out of taking other people's money away from them to give it to people who don't do stuff communism sucks because it puts four people in the whole country rich and everybody else poor and it doesn't work i love capitalism At this time in human history, it amazes me the few times that I turn on social media and look that some of these little turds on TikTok are out there saying America is dead, capitalism is awful, we need a universal wage, they've been trained thoroughly by their communist college professor to think that this is a worst time ever in American history.

Now, I'm 65 years old. I'm the old guy says get off my lawn, right? I'm that guy. I'm the grouchy old boomer. I get it. I got no issue with that. I'm very comfortable in my own skin in that regard. I will tell you, though, I've been doing business now since I got out of college at 22.

So, 44 years ago, 43 years ago, I got into the business world. Oh, by the way, I was selling real estate. 60 hours a week while I was in college, beginning at 18 years old. So, you know, I'm in my 50th year of business in America. Five freaking decades. So I have something that some of you little TikTokers don't have. It's called Perspective. And let me tell you, when we started Ramsey,

we were putting our lessons on these things called VHS tapes. and what that meant was I had to pay someone tens of thousands of dollars to go into a studio and bring in friends and family for free and sit them in uncomfortable chairs for four hours while I did a talk and we recorded it and it costs so stinking much money to produce a four-hour lesson tens of thousands of dollars. The cameras that we used were $150,000 to $200,000 cameras. The lights were expensive.

The floor and the paint was expensive. Everything about the process was expensive. And you know what else it was? It was slow. We shot the first set of stuff, and it was six months later before we got it out of the edit base. Oh yeah, we have these huge computers that we downloaded this tape into

and then they would edit it and then they would download it onto more tape. And then we had to send it to another city and they would duplicate the VHS tapes by running one tape to another tape machines all night long over and over and over and over again to get two boxes of them and so they ran them continuously for months on end

until we had enough stock to actually go to market with this product. And I made millions of dollars off of that, even as slow, inefficient, and expensive as it was. Helping people. I helped people. I gave them direction and hoped to change their lives, and it changed their lives. And I made a lot of money. If I was going to do that today, the camera is $2,500.

bucks. The studio is anywhere I want it to be. The editing is done by the time we finish shooting. We'll live switch it and then we'll drop it in an edit bay and before I get up the next morning, they've got the stinking thing edited. And you know what? We don't have to send it to another city to get the tapes duplicated. We pop it on an email and it's in your inbox a day and a half after we shot it, and you get helped, and my cost of goods sold is almost zero, versus massive cost of goods sold, my time to market is almost zero versus months and even years to get to market. And if it's wrong, we'll just change it and do it again tomorrow, versus having to throw five tractor trailer loads of VHS tapes in the dumpster,

because I said something stupid on the tape. And that happened, by the way, not five tractor Trader loads, but one tractor-trader load. This is the best time in America today in the history of the human race to take an idea and decide, I now own a business. I'm going to take this idea, and I'm going to put it out in the marketplace. And you can do it when you're 19 years old, and you can do it when you're 59 years old, and you can do it so freaking fast, so efficiently, and almost no cost of good salt. and you can just deliver it.

And you've got wonderful distribution platforms that are free. And you can put your stuff up on YouTube. It's free. You can put your stuff up on Spotify. It's free. You can put your stuff up on Apple. It's free. You can submit an app that you wrote over the weekend with AI's help.

And to Apple, they approve it. And four days later, it's on their app store, the largest distribution of technology in the history of mankind. and you can do it in moments. This is the best time in the history of man to start and run a business. If you can't start and run a business and make a profit now, there is no time in human history, no system in human history, that you would have been successful.

This is the easiest. It's a hot knife through butter child. Seriously. The last thing you need to do is be dancing around. some bush whining about capitalism right now. What you need to do is get off your assets and go to work and go do something. You need to get up, leave the cave and digitally make something happen instantaneously and deliver a product to someone that helps them and serves them and solves a problem for them and capitalism will kick in and people will send you money for that. For God's sake,

sit around and suck your victim thumb in the corner, crying about how the system is broken while everybody else goes at the best time in the history of human mankind, everybody else goes and lives their best life and becomes prosperous while you whine and declare yourself a victim. Absolutely not. Get up and go do it. Right now is the best time ever. my career as the CEO of Ramsey is coming to a close over the next 15 years. I'll be on the air here doing this, but my career as the CEO running this place, you know, I'm 65. I'm not going to be running it when I'm 85.

That would be dumb. Okay. And so we've got the leadership team here is young, vibrant. And let me tell you, I started from a card table in my living room. I took this to 300 million. if these guys running this in the same period of time don't take it to $3 billion, there's something wrong with them. Because the opportunity is so freaking huge.

And they are smarter than I was. They've got the benefit of learning from all of my 30 years of mistakes. So you'll make some mistakes. You'll do something dumb, but fail forward. And for God's sakes, get out there and experiment. Try something, try something, try something, try something. A hundred percent of the people that don't take the shot don't score. So you might miss, you might not score, but I promise you,

if you're sitting on your mama's couch and your mama's basement whining about capitalism, you ain't scoring on nothing. And that includes you ain't even going to get a date because no girl wants to go out with that loser. So get up and get it done, man. This is the best time ever to be in business right now. Get it, baby. Get it. Get it! That's how it happens. Get it! Now's the time! Don't whine! Get it!

You wouldn't build a house without a blueprint, so why are you trying to scale your business without one? Here's the truth. Without a plan, you're just reacting, not leading. And if you're always reacting, you can't build the momentum your business needs to grow. That's why we're giving you Entree Leadership Elite's strategic planning template for free. This is the same template my team uses every year to plan for the next 12 months of growth. And you'll also get the course that shows you how to use it. In under 30 minutes, you'll know how to build a clear plan to grow your business so you can finally get out of reactive mode.

No more flying by the seat of your pants. Just clear, practical steps that take you from putting out fires to actually growing. Go to Entreleadership.com slash strategy to get the free, strategic planning template today or click the link in the show notes. Trenton is in Pittsburgh. Hey, Trenton, what's up? Hey, Dave, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. My pleasure, sir. How can we help? Yeah, my wife and I, we own a coffee shop and roastery. We have about 10 employees between

part-time and full-time. Last year, we did about $500,000 in revenue. And I don't know if you've been following the news at all, the cost of our green beans has risen significantly, especially this past year. So my question to you is, do you have any advice for me on how to navigate those conversations with customers as we need to adjust our pricing? We want to be fair to our customers, but we also need to be fair to us to keep our business healthy. Well, Trenton, I think we live in an environment where every thing has price increased, right? Yeah, absolutely. So if I walked into a coffee shop and randomly the price had gone up,

I wouldn't be going, oh, Trenton got greedy. I'd be going, man, his costs probably went up, like his labor costs probably went up, which probably has. And your bean costs probably went up. I mean, I don't think, I don't know that you need to communicate it necessarily. I think in asking that I'm thinking more about like our wholesale customers so we provide to restaurants, other coffee shops, and like grocery stores. And so we want to maintain, like, relationships with them.

So it's more so. Yeah, but all of their other suppliers have gone up. Yeah, I agree with that. I think maybe some of my fear is coming through knowing from our end, you know, all of our supplies are going up to. Okay, so when someone increases their price that on a bean, that you're buying, what did they tell you? They didn't tell me anything, and I guess that's kind of where some of my frustration comes in.

If, you know, one of our suppliers has to adjust pricing, I just want them to be up front, say, hey, this is coming down there, I just wanted to give you a heads up so you know I'm not necessarily expecting them to just eat their costs. Yeah, yeah. I just want to be given a heads up and just kind of be a little. up front about rather than just. So if you said, if you said, A, I'm going to give them as much lead time notice as I can, and B, the reason for these increases is not to line my pockets.

It's because my costs have all gone up. Is that enough? I think so. I guess my fear is, you know, some of the customers that, you know, we've recently picked up, they have talked about pricing as kind of like a pain point, so I don't want to Well, listen, if they, if the only way you keep them as a customer is you lose money, then we don't need them as a customer. It doesn't work anymore. Yeah, that's also correct.

If that is required for the relationship that you lose money, then this is not a relationship anymore. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that didn't work. I mean, because here's the other thing. They're not buying coffee from anybody else that didn't go up. Everybody went up. Yeah, absolutely, 100%. Everything in their store has gone up in the last three years.

If you didn't go up, you're the only one that didn't. Really? Don't you think, am I right? Yeah, that's 100% right. So I think that's the environment we're in. If the environment was that the economy was stagnant and prices were not going up and you were the lone guy who jacked your prices 25%, then you would stand out in a negative way.

But you're just, you're passing on your hard costs. Hey, guys, my labor costs have gone up substantially and my price of goods sold has gone up substantially. Okay? And so, you know, in the next 90 days or so, expect to see some price increases or 30 days or so or whatever the number of days is. And I'm just giving you a heads up and it's not to line my pockets. And I'm sorry, I wish I didn't have to do this. I'd like to be the cheapest guy. But I also want to stay in business and this is what I've got to do.

and something that's simple is all I would expect. Yeah, that's fair. And I agree with what you said if someone has, you know, if that's a deal breaker for them, ultimately that's probably not a customer or a relationship that's salvageable anyways. Yeah, I'll give you an example too in our world. All right, we have the exact same thing with books. All right.

2019, the typical hardback book sitting on Amazon selling entree leadership books or building the business you love book would have been $22 or $24. Okay? Okay, yep. Today they're 34. Cost to goods. Paper costs. During the pandemic, paper skyrocketed. It doubled.

And there was a shortage. You couldn't even get it. then the supply chain crap got straightened out and they never went back down on their prices. Paper still real high. And so our cost of goods sold to produce that book went up substantially. And here's what's weird. We were looking at the thing because books are a small percentage of our total gross sales out of the 300 million that we do. So we weren't watching it close enough and we looked up and the publishing was starting to lose money.

I'm like, why was it losing money? Well, the cost of goods went up and we didn't change the prices. Our prices were still down there. And so we did a quick study of the market and we were the only ones that were not $32 and $34 going up from $22 just four or five, six years before, right? But books went more up more in that four or five years period of time than in the history of me doing books in 30 years. And so it's kind of shocking to the system. And we didn't keep up accidentally. and when we moved ours up and were the same price as everybody else in the market, we got not a single complaint. Oh, Dave's trying to rip off everybody because anybody with two brain cells to rub together

can look on Amazon and go, all the books are priced about that price. I mean, there's some small books that aren't that kind of, but I mean, the general trade paperback or trade hardback book, that's the price range for self-improvement books. So if you're reading Simon Seneca or Pat Lynch-eony or Dave Ramsey or Henry Cloud or any of these people, Jim Collins, good to great. You're going to find this about the same pricing on all these books, and we were the only one that was lower. So when we came up, everybody else looked and went, okay. And we did, the reason I was asking you about all this is the communication that we did

to the marketplace was zero. We didn't say a thing. We just raised a price. And nobody complained. Because of the environment that we were in kind of a signal to the customer that obviously our costs had gone up and everyone else had gone up. up. And so it wasn't like we were the only ones at $34 and everyone else was at $22. You see what I'm doing? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's fair. I mean, as far as coffee, like the markets were kind of at a record high in February. Yeah. They're at an even higher point now. And everyone is increasing their prices accordingly in order to keep their doors open.

Yeah. And most of the time a coffee place like yours is not in the price business. anyway, you're in the unique value business. You're not competing based on price. You're competing based on your brand differentiation. Your unique selling proposition, your USP, which is the flavor, the organic, the experience, the brand association. You're not trying to win by being the cheapest coffee. That's some of the big boys.

Yeah. And we all know if we want to drink cheap coffee, we're going to get what we're going to get what we pay for. Yep, that's also true. Yeah, it's like cheap beer. No thank you, right? Yeah, you don't want to be the natty light of coffee, right? And so, definitely not.

Yeah, you're not. You're a craft brewer, right? That's the thing. And so that's where you want to be. You're in that world. And I think you're in good shape, man. But you're concerned about it, and that makes you a good business guy, makes you guy with a good heart.

You're not doing this out of greed. I think your customers are going to feel that off of you and feel that off your brand. And so, yeah, give them a heads up. My labor costs and my hard coffee costs have gone up. And so I've got to raise my prices to stay profitable. You'll be seeing those the next number of days. And they're going to go, of course. We knew that.

We're a little shocked you hadn't done it before. And you're going to be just fine. You've got nothing to worry about. Trent, you're a good man. You're the kind of people that win in business because you care about the customer. You care about the perception of your brand. You want it to be a brand of character. And thank you for that. Thank you for who you are and for what you're doing there.

Folks, 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 joining us on Entree Leadership.