EntreLeadership - How to Build a Business and Have Fun Doing It with Rob Dyrdek

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Take a minute to think about how you felt when you started your business. Were you excited? Maybe you felt a little nervous. Then the day-to-day grind of being an entrepreneur may have gotten to you and now running your business isn't as fun as it used to be. On this episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast, we sit down with serial entrepreneur Rob Dyrdek. He walks us through his journey as an entrepreneur and how systematizing your business can lead you back to a place of excitement. Then, in our second segment, George Kamel sits down with Ramsey Events Senior Vice President Pete Young to talk about other creative ways that you can insert fun back into your business.   The EntreLeadership Podcast Rob Dyrdek's website Dyrdek Machine's website The DC Video that evolved into the MTV show Rob and Big Learn more about EntreLeadership Summit or Master Series Download 43 Easy Ways to Recognize Your Team Schedule a call with Tim, our producer.   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit | EntreLeadership Master Series   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite | Advisory Groups | Executive Coaching | Workshops | Weekly Report Tool   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership Partners: BELAY | Gravy | Hite Digital | NetSuite Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all know that entrepreneurship can be a grind. It can be stressful, challenging, and just plain hard. Some days, it feels like the business owns you instead of you owning it. So how do you regain control of your business so that you have the margin to actually enjoy it? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and in today's episode, we're talking about why having fun in business is part of what keeps you in business,

which connects to our business driver of plan. Our first guest today is Rob Deerdeck. He's an entrepreneur, actor, producer, reality TV personality, and former professional skateboarder. He's the founder of Deerdeck Machine, a venture creation studio that, quote, manufactures amazing companies by systematically fusing art, science, and magic. We talk about how he's managed to keep the joy in business while being one of the busiest, most productive entrepreneurs out there.

In our second conversation, I sit down. with Ramsey leader Pete Young, and we talk about how we intentionally use fun to build our team culture here at Ramsey. So let's get to it. As a former skateboarder myself, 10-year-old George is high-fiving 32-year-old George for getting to talk to the legendary Rob Deirdek.

Here's our conversation. Rob, it's so good to have you on the podcast. I grew up in the skateboard world, and it's just an honor to talk with you today. Yes, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So you have a storied resume. I mean, just trying to Google all the things Rob Deereyck is doing is a tiring, tiring game. But you are, among other things, an entrepreneur, actor, producer, TV personality, former pro skater, venture capitalist.

I mean, you're doing a lot, and it's very impressive. And we're talking about the joy of creation today, which is something you embody as a person. You're just fun to watch and you bring a sense of fun to everything you do. So tell me the story of where this all started. I mean, take us back to little Rob, maybe 10,000, 11 years old, what were you doing? Did you see this in your future? You can't predict this wild of an existence, you know, even even at a ripe young age of 10 or 12 when your ambitions were to be a pro skateboarder, you know, especially in Ohio, you know, where you grew up in sort of a fixed mindset

community. You went to a fixed mindset school. You had fixed mindset parents who told you when you said, I'm going to be a pro skateboarder. They said, no, you're going to have to get a job or go to college like the rest of us type of mentality but but i think it was what happened to me to really young age is i began to take risks inside my universe and they would work you know when i i wanted to skate a ramp for the first time when i was 11 so i cold called the skate shop and said if i you know get 10 people to pay would you let me skate for free because i didn't have any money and they thought it was so ridiculous that they said why don't you just come down and skate and so there that bold move created this opportunity i went and skated i skated the ramp so well that they

said you have a lot of potential i didn't even know what that meant but they sponsored me at that point right and then that shop was owned by a 19 year old serial entrepreneur so that embedded in me that like man i'm going to be a pro skateboarder and i'm going to build businesses just like my guy jimmy so that's the unusual foundation that i was raised on so did you always have have this kind of entrepreneurial spirit, this bug inside of you, even as you started your skateboard career where you went, I'm going to own something one day, I'm going to run a business. I mean, look, I painted a self-portrait of myself, my junior year of high school, where I had a matching hat and footwear with a skateboard with piles of money and an art easel, right?

And it really became the fruition of like where I would eventually become and create this extraordinary wealth with like a matching hat and footwear in the history of the skateboard. But, you know, I think the unusual upbringing I had was everyone around me was starting companies. So it wasn't even like a thing to me that that was what I was supposed to do too. So as I watched the Jimmy George, who owned the skate shop that I was sponsored by start company after company, and then he along with the guys that I was sponsored with moved back to date in Ohio and started the Alien Workshop and I was in the process of creating the name and watching that get built. I just knew I needed, the first thing I needed to do when I moved to California was start a

company. And the very first thing I did was connect with tracker trucks, you know, a big manufacturer out there and created Orion Aluminum, my very first company that I created from the idea stage. And that was at, you know, 17 years old. Yeah, it was one of many companies that you founded, worked with. As you started getting into business, you also were kind of ramping up in your professional skateboard career. Where was the kind of culmination where you went, you know what, the skateboard thing's amazing, but I love this business thing. Was there ever a decision you had to make to go a certain way? You know, I think like the beauty of skateboarding and being the professional skateboarder with the platform inside what I'd considered a sort of

isolated market, right? So I had control of the media that would amplify. ideas. I had relationships with distribution, which at the time was just skate shops, right? So anything that I started in that era would always work. So it gave me this false understanding of that I was an amazing business guy because I would create something and it automatically become profitable and successful. When really I had this unfair advantage was I had a high profile and a singular industry, had expertise in how to innovate in it, and then had actually, to the entire ecosystem of customers, media, and distribution. But in my mind, I just thought I was a really smart business guy, right?

So despite doing all of that business building inside of skateboarding, every time I would try, you know, I did record labels and skate shops and these other sort of businesses outside of skateboarding that wouldn't work, that would confuse me pretty significantly. So I was always a little gun shy on really understanding what was I best at and where was my real opportunity to create something special, which had me dabbling for years and all different types of stuff. Yeah.

So you went pro at 16 years old, pro-scape order, and as your career shifted, you became more of a personality, which obviously led to multiple TV shows, Robin Big, Fantasy Factory, Ridiculousness. So what was that transition period like, or did you feel like there was one, from pro-scape order to entrepreneur to now TV personality? Yeah, you know,

I would say the through line almost through it all is like it was entrepreneur and like athlete entertainer, right? Because I was still capitalizing on the opportunities that I had in the skateboard world. And really television was a product of that, right? So the DC video, I decided to write a skit for the video of like, what would be funny is if we did a skit of I bring a security guard to deal with security guards, right? And the skit blows up, becomes a really big deal. you know, Ruben Fleischer recognizes it. Me and Big Black, we're doing a car race across Europe together. He shares it with Jeff Tremaine.

Jeff Tremaine, who created Jackass. He's like, you guys should make a show around this. And, you know, we thought nothing of it. Yeah, let's give it a shot. But then when it became real, I repositioned my opportunity, right, of where I could find growth with this platform. And mainly from watching what had happened with Bammar. Marjera's board sales and signature shoe sales from being on jackass.

So I renegotiated my DC deal, my board deals, all my deals into higher royalty, less upfront money, betting that when I got on TV, they would explode and they did just that. You know, and I reap the rewards by having sort of that entrepreneurial preset sort of vision of how I could potentially create more value out of the opportunity on television. Vision and Fantasy Factory is that times a thousand, right? So then I was like, okay, I'll do a new show for you now that I'm like this big star on the network, but I want to own my integration rights. I want to be able to use it as a platform around my businesses. And then I use basically their platform to do massive deals with Chevy and Microsoft and Monster and DC and all these

corporate deals and use it as a platform to launch my businesses like Street. and wild grinders and all these different deals that I was doing because I was always walking that entrepreneurial and athlete then now entertainment line all the way through. Yeah, I mean, you're clearly a brilliant businessman, and that's always been in you, and it has led you to the Deer Deck machine, which is kind of this business incubator. You're starting, launching, selling giant businesses now. Tell us about that and the heart behind it. Yeah, you know, really what.

The Dyrdick machine is a culmination of all of my experience through all of these years, right? And it's a more focus towards my passion, which is really creating businesses, right? And for me, I still need business from the score perspective. And the score perspective as it relates to being a business builder, especially on the venture side, will always be ROI and IRR. right so for me when i look at like my personal mastery it was like i want to be able to master curating ideas entrepreneurs and markets in systematically build highly profitable sustainable acquireable businesses and how do i get better and better at doing that over and over and over again right essentially building a process that i can automate and then optimize over time to be able to

you know, not play the venture game where you just need one or two winners out of 50, but get to a point where you never lose, right? Which most people in venture will be like, oh, it's not even possible, you know. And for me, it also serves this need that I have to create. So if it's at the idea stage, like let's talk about the idea, then our process is let's go through the discovery process and do an immersion and validate the idea, shape the idea, then go through the diligence phase and model out the idea. put together sort of the capital staging and how big do we think we can make it and how much are we

going to sell it for and when are we going to do it and then if we all believe in it and think that that's going to be the journey then we commit we cut the first check then we're first money in we control all the capital stages and then you go through the valley of death the moment that thing launches to fight to find consumers to understand pricing strategy to understand where you may need to pivot until, God willing, you find product market fit and then we double down investing in it so that we have a much more significant stake by the time we help drive it to acquisition, where at the end of the day, we will always judge ourselves off of our ROI, right? And for me, it's my own personal capital, right?

Like, I own the company 100%. It's all my money. There's no LPs, there's no traditional venture structure. And I co-find everything with my partners. So it's a hybrid of pure entrepreneurialism that I was raised and born on and passionate about with sort of venture capital that is more sort of a financial asset allocation structure in most cases that I've blended together along with my personal mastery. That is sort of my life and legacy of work.

I want to create beyond television that I've been as an entertainer before, you know. Yeah, that's incredible. It really is a machine. I mean, the way you're able to do this at scale with so many amazing, fun companies, and that's a thread that I found through each company is that they're fun. It's something that you're drawn into and connected to. So I want you to talk about this idea of the Deer Deck machine being fueled by the joy of creation. What does that mean? You know, I think for me, it's, we were tooling with, like, how do we represent what it means to just love and have fun in business, right? Because it's one of these things that's incredibly elusive and not something that exists in the space, right?

And it starts first with like the best parts of the process of building a company, right? It is like deciding to do it. It's like, whoa, like let's do, oh man, we could do this. Let's do that, right? Then it's like you commit to it and then you do research and then like you come up with the name. It's like, oh, then like you see. see the product for the first time, it's just like, ah, you know, then people are finally buying it. It's like what.

And then in the world of all worlds, it scales beyond what you could have even imagined. All these crazy things happens. And then somebody buys it and there's this huge liquidity event. The whole process is extraordinary. Now, when you launch the business and it doesn't work and you can't find customers and you can't sell, you don't know what to do. And now it's burning money and you got to get people to own. It's not one. It is a nightmare.

Boy, it's a nightmare, right? And so I like to say that being an entrepreneur and creating a business is the most thrilling, amazing thing in the world unless it doesn't work. Then it's painful. It is like soul-wrenching. It is like worst decision you ever made in your life.

And there is like doubt and pain and all these. And 10 years later it works, right? Which can happen for a lot of people. Five years later, you make one small pivot, one lucky thing happens and it works before you decided to quit up. Your uncle gave you one last $50,000 to like keep the dream alive to make one pivot.

And for me, I love creating. That's why we co-find everything that we do. And then ultimately, like creating, basically failing early in the development and process of creating and then getting to market when you're ready and there's clear path of revenue and success and targeting all of your potential weaknesses or things that may be detrimental to this opportunity ahead of time gives you an accelerated path to success, which becomes way more fun and exciting as being an entrepreneur. So when you're super intentional on the front end as you launch this business, then you can reap the reward on the back end?

100%. But you also reap the reward in energy and effort, right? When you're working the plan and optimizing the plan, there's so much more energy, there's so much more attraction of opportunity, there's so many more things that are happening versus grinding to a stop and not knowing what direction to go or completely missing the mark on who you thought the consumer was and now you're pivoting the brand in a completely different direction, but you named it something so specific it doesn't even fit with where you're trying to go, right? There's all of these different aspects of developing a business and sort of the cycle that you go through in the launch to product market fit, valley of death, as they call it, that the more you can

sort out before you ever get to market and test and fail and all of this will just accelerate that path towards the success that you ultimately have envisioned that you're going to have. And understand that in any goal you ever set, any big idea, you know, that is an infinite goal, as the great Simon Sinek will say, where you're just continually evolving that goal as you go. You expand into it. And in business and in big goals, they sort of reveal themselves over time. And at a certain point, you learn everything that you actually need to learn and know and plan for this business to be successful. And you either quit there, or now you double down and now grow into building a business that can find product market

fit, you know. Yeah, and there's a lot of small business owners listening to this podcast. They might be mom and pop shops. They're in the manufacturing field, healthcare industries. They may have had a tough 18 months, and it's hard to find the joy in business some days for some of these leaders. What encouragement would you give to them as they fight another day to try to lead their teams and lead their businesses? I think more than anything, when the market turns on you, it is the great thing that's out of your control, right? And I think that the truth of what you're trying to achieve outside of when some sort of financial burden that is basically almost insurmountable, the amount of energy that that sucks out of your life, it's something you don't control and you have no chance but for it to pull it out of you.

Right. And to me, I always lean in to like trying to build and encourage balanced happy people, you know, in trying to add balance to a culture of a business so that like when things are tougher, you have a better understanding that like, hey, we got to sacrifice for a little bit of time, but it's a patience thing because we also have the clarity of where we're headed and how we can recover to kind of get there. right so and look it's an extraordinarily difficult thing because how can you say that to a small restaurant in covid like you're basically like fighting for like survival and then you don't even know if you want to survive now that how painful it is you're you know a manufacturer and now

you can't even like execute work because people can't even come in and do it or god forbid the product that you make is now no longer necessary inside this environment right for whatever reason. These are things that are the market turns on you. Your resolve and your grit is what you got to lean into. But it's constantly trying to create clarity and momentum towards a pathway out, I think is the only opportunity. Because at the end of the day, your energy and ability to continue to believe and push forward will only happen when you're making progress towards the outcome that will resolve whatever the burden is, whatever the goal is, whatever it may be. It's when you can't figure out a way to make that progress is when everybody will begin to lose belief and motivation

and ultimately is the seed of giving up, you know. Yeah, and it comes down to that resilience and knowing you're having that big Y front and center and having that belief among the team, which can be hard to do for a leader to go, hey guys, we've got this. Let's keep our eye on the prize. As you've led to your team, how big is your team now at Deerdick Machine? Right now we have 17 people, right? And again, it's almost like a flat organization, if you can imagine, where me and the CEO kind of co-manage all the departments, then it's 10 core departments that each have leaders that report to us directly, right? So it allows for us to be extraordinarily efficient

in ideation and integration through the company, because it essentially is, a family office hybrid type of company, but still relatively small because we don't operate any businesses. We then build every company to where they operate by themselves. Yeah. So how have you created a culture of fun at Derrick Machine where people are working there and they're going, wow, this is an incredible environment. We feel like it truly is fueled by the joy of creation. Yeah, I mean, look, I think it starts first for me is highly organized, you know, like really knowing what everybody's supposed to be doing and how it all works together is where efficiency and really quality of work happens, right? And then culturally,

everybody is sort of lives in the same growth mindset, right? Like how are we getting better as a company, getting better as individuals, and ultimately getting better at creating businesses and amplifying businesses and telling that story? I think that's like sort of that synergy. And then it's led by fun. You know what I mean? It's led by someone that absolutely loves every single meeting we have and every single project we're doing. And every part of it is like this exciting, thrilling moment

and that same joy that we get from creating companies and watching them come alive and the process, we just keep doing it over and over. So the entire company essentially gets to experience the same passion and drive and fun that I have together because they're basically an extension of me and the vision that is the machine, you know. That's incredible.

We talk a lot about fun and joy, but you've got to have the margin to be able to do that as a business owner. What are some of the ways that you have been able to build that margin as busy as you are? I've heard you're doing 300 episodes of ridiculousness this year while doing the podcast, while doing your business, while doing a thousand other things,

and being a dad and a hundred, husband, how do you manage it all? How have you found a way to create that margin? I'm a big believer in if you want to live a high quality life that you've got to create systems that you can optimize that manage as much as you can. Because you want to be able to create an effortless life that produces high quality energy. And for me, it starts with designing your life. So on the super extreme, highly optimized version of this, right, where I track everything I do, every single day. I have an 80-page document called The Rhythm of Existence, basically the operating system for my life. And I've designed a life and a rhythm in my life that keeps me 100% balanced,

right? So I track everything I do every day and tag it and it pumps into these beautiful dashboards, right? And if you see my time allocation for the entire year, I shot 250 episodes of television. I'll shoot like 50 podcasts, launch two companies and built four companies this year, on top of working on a book, on top of continuing to do all these press and podcasts associated with this, but I only did it with exactly 30% of my time. I have ridiculousness so automated and optimized that I shoot 250 episodes. It's 4% of my total time. I do not compromise my health and spending 10% on brain training, being in the gym, and meditating every single day, I do not compromise the time with my family or my wife, right, or my friends.

So this entire output, this scale of what I'm operating at, is done within the construct that keeps me balanced in living a completely high quality life by design. because inside that system, I managed time, energy, and above all capacity. I understood when I was at capacity and I have two choices at capacity, either automate, optimize, or hire. And every time I got to that edge, then I would hire or create a new system in place that allowed me to continue to live balanced and this very extreme high-quality life that at the end of the day, I'm just happy.

You know what I mean? I'm just happy, living life, and I enjoy every single thing that I do every single day by design. And I got better and better at living balanced once I chose to live that balance and design that life over the years, you know. That is incredible. I feel super unproductive now. Anytime I think I'm having a busy day,

I'm just going to think, Rob Deere next side, he's having a crazier day, but you do it with the systems that you've put in place. So I've got to go back to this 80-page manual. This is fascinating. The rhythm of existence. That's correct. How do you even start to write down the operating manual for your life?

Man, it's interesting. Like when I eventually a consultant from a consultant group called Arrive out of Seattle, the great Chris Smith, I hired him to help me learn business and my system for the machine, how I wanted to build systems. And as we were building the system for venture creation, I realized like, man, I should apply this to my life. And so we really set off after we built the machine system and then built this entire system. And the beauty of it is is it became the baseline for the rhythm of my life and how it worked. And then I just loaded it with systems, right?

I have how all my executives intertwine into it and the hot sheets that connect to it. Living documents with my chief of staff like how I communicate with my wife, how I communicate with everybody involved in managing our house, how I manage, how I manage all of my money, literally every single aspect of my existence has been funneled through this document and then another system has been created to basically have this deep harmony and balance and constant flow that gives me more energy just to live life because so many things are automated, you know. But you got to grow into it. You know, I implore everybody to just put a system to their life and then get better and better at it over time because you just got to

start somewhere. I was extreme. I paid a group to like really design the entire thing and went full bore. Wow. So when you say create a system for your life, is this your daily routines? Is it how you're managing your calendar? What are the kind of the tactical aspects of a system? For me, it's first designing time. You know, like I look at, you know, it was from based off of we building a rhythm of company that a lot of companies have because there's just sort of these these aspects of a year that never change. All the holidays are the same. Your birthday's the same.

Like all these things, there's these sort of anchors in a rhythm to the year. Then you take that rhythm of the year. Then you break it down into like, okay, what's the rhythm of the quarter? Then the rhythm of the month, the rhythm of the week, the rhythm of the day, right?

And I think if you look at it like that, you know the cadence you live on. And then you begin to break down like these sort of constants. If you do these every day, you know you will, and stay committed to, this that you're going to have a higher quality, more efficient, better version of you,

the best version of you. And you've got to decide that commit to it until it goes from a struggle and a sacrifice to try to do it to where it eventually with consistency creates less effort to where it eventually turns into a habit becomes effortless and becomes a lifestyle, right? And it starts with sort of what I'd consider health in the structure of your days, right? And for me, it's uncompromising up at 430, meditate, brain train, in the gym. I send my wife an email every day of everything that I'm doing that day with a love quote. And all of that before I wake my kids up at seven and take them to school, right? Like, so that I can create a base of my day.

And I know if I eat clean, don't drink, do all those other core four things that I will have a higher quality of life. And okay, so how do I know that? Since 2015, I used qualitative data to determine the quality of my life. So for years, I've just rated how I feel every day, zero to ten, about my life, work, and health. And what happens when you do that, in a simple way of looking at it, how I rated is you're either hopeful, you're either hopeless or you're neutral, right? So when you look at the world half empty, you wish you would have never gotten into podcast. You wish you would have never got that gene jack. When you're half empty, you can pick apart every decision you've ever did.

When you're hopeful, you can do what you can take on the world. It doesn't matter what bad happens to you. But what I found in there was in that qualitative data became quantitative things I could change. The same people kept bringing me down. The same issues kept bringing me down. And I eventually cleared all of those out. So now at a certain point, I became so optimized. I had no more what I'd call institutional stress or triggers that would bring me down.

and then I realize, wow, it's like eating clean, sleeping, getting up early, meditating, brain training, getting in the gym and not drinking. If you do that consistently, that drives your numbers up even higher. So then I gamified my discipline. I track every day if I do that core six. And I could show you by the numbers that I have done all six of those for 90% of the entire year. And the result is this really high quality of life from the qualitative day. to what it is in 2021 compared to even what it was in 2020 when I was less consistent before I gamified the discipline in miles above what I was like when I started doing it in

2015. Really technical work here. Really technical work. But it is what happens when I started as a system and that's a system now, a life system optimized at extraordinarily deep levels because your goal was just to become the ideal version of yourself, you know. Who knew personal growth was so nerdy, man? That's just so fascinating how much you can use data to really.

What you've done is your professional success sounds like it's stemmed from your personal habits. Oh, without a doubt. But I think it goes deeper, right? It's self-belief, it's motivation, its desire, ambition, like confidence. Like when you can, you know, begin to build systems and set goals and get better and better at achieving, you begin to control everything around you. And all that does is make life more exciting, more fun, more predictable, but above all, more enjoyable, right? And at the end of the

day, that discipline and commitment to automation and optimization and systems is why I get up every single day, energized, ready to take on the day and go from thing to thing to thing that I love doing that gives me energy, doesn't take energy from me. And I basically, live in a state where there's almost no negative thought. Here's where negative thoughts drift. You either dwell and you wish things happening, so you dwell or you wish and hope on the spectrum. But problem solve, experiencing and creating is where life is lived, right? And when you can be so optimized that you're basically doing all of those simultaneously, that is where you can live in this elevated state that I don't believe is possible to get to without having a ton of systems to

to keep you anchored. Wow. This is Nirvana for the business owner listening who's like, wait, are you telling me that's a thing I can get there? I don't have to be reactive and have the day own me. I can own the day. That's super encouraging. And it sounds like it has taken a lot of work. This is not something that you can phone in. You can't just download one app and go, all right, I did it. This is intentionality and discipline consistently over many, many years. That's what I'm saying, but really it's five years, right? Because I discovered the systems and then began to apply them in 2016 at this scale, right? Like, and to me, I refer to it as like systematic evolution, you know, because you're inside these frameworks that you can see yourself getting better and better, clearer and clearer, stronger and stronger, smarter, right? And that to me is where you get energized and get further motivation and ambition. And I tell a lot of people, like, I am living proof that you can actually love every single minute of your day. And the difference is, as you know, you could sit down and be like, if my life was exactly like this, I know I would love every day.

And that's what I did. And then you get better and better at doing it. It's just like anything else, it's a muscle. Like you've got to grow into it. Like you said, you can't get the app. You know, you can't go and read a book and then go run on fire. and now you're going to go do it, you've got to be committed to growing into the ideal version

of yourself living in the ideal life that you want to live. That has to be your why, a motivation that has an anchor to it, being the best version of yourself, living the highest quality life that you can imagine for yourself, should be everyone's forever why. Yeah, I can see how all of those systems have led you to this path to joy in doing what you love to do every single day.

And I think a lot of business owners listening are inspired by that today. So as we wrap here, just a quick lightning round, what's grinding your gears right now? What's kind of making you angry, things that you're seeing, something you're frustrated by? Oh, that's funny.

You know, after all that, to me, I would almost say that, like, when I think about things that frustrate me personally, is there's this fundamental idea of overthinking the results or the goal, right? And it's never about letting go of the goal, but it's about not worrying about the deadline of the goal being hit or the timeline and focusing on the process, right? Like, I think a lot of the big things that I got going that I want to happen and move more efficiently and faster because I want to see them come alive or see these deals get closed or these different

sort of aspects. Like recently, I really locked in on this idea of avoid being overly concerned with the final output and focus on the process that will ultimately get you there. Focus on the process. On the flip side, what's something that you're really excited about right now? Maybe it's something you're working on, a new venture, a new idea. What's getting you pumped every day? I've really been enjoying these conversations that I've been having, sharing my sort of philosophy of this systematic approach to life. And the reason I have been going so hard talking about is because I've been building out the book that I want to share with people on how they can actually begin to create their own systems and this philosophy that I've created and ultimately

life that it's allowed me to grow into and being able to share that with people that they could begin to build their own and apply it. So really a lot of my excitement and energy is around creating this book that I'm going to be able to share this philosophy that hopefully people can apply to their life and get the joy that I've received. I love that. Sign me up for a pre-order. Any details on when that might be hitting streets? In the way that I work, you know, I found the ultimate writer and financed obviously this entire thing myself. I'm going to do a film around the philosophy as well. So to explain it a little bit more in detail of how it's applicable to you.

Then here's the book. Then here's all the tools from the book that you can actually use to be able to help you begin to develop this, all the stuff that I've sort of created. So it's more of this ongoing project. I would akin more to Ray Dalio and principles, you know, where he really not only put together sort of principles, but then the app and how he ultimately was helping people learn how they could apply principles to their own lives. And then now he built the entire personality assessment program and principles us and principles you, which is an extension of his philosophy and what it is. Like, I really am on a mission to create something that I call the machine. mindset inside sort of the same framework that he created principles behind.

So I don't have a timeline right now of when I'm going to get all this done, but hopefully within the next couple years, you know. That's awesome. Well, I'm sure in true Rob Deerick fashion, it's going to have a big splash and be wildly successful and help a lot of people. So I'm pumped for that. As we end here, Rob, what encouragement would you give to that small business owner who maybe isn't enjoying their business right now?

And they don't have that joy of creation. and they want to get that spark back. How can they start today? I think at the core of everything is always stopping and taking stock of what you are grateful for is the beginning of like the step forward into making progress towards finding what will relief and be the first step and bringing peace to you. You know, I think it's rather than getting stuck dwelling on what you wish would happen or being hammered by the pain of being angry of a decision you made a year ago that could have prevented this and all these things,

if you just focus on doing everything you can to create the plan to get you to a place of peace, I think you get a lot of energy from it. You'll begin to rebuild belief in what's possible and a little bit of progression towards that. Well, be will, you'll start to find that joy again. but do everything you can to not wish or dwell because there's literally nothing inside either of those that's going to bring you any joy. Well, Rob, thank you so much for bringing so much wisdom

to our listeners today on the Entry Leadership podcast. It was an honor talking with you and so excited for all the things you have going on. We're cheering for you. Appreciate you. Thank you for having me. Huge thanks to Rob Deerdeck for taking the time out of his very busy schedule to hang out with us here on the Entree Leadership podcast.

As you can tell, the joy of creation and having fun is a huge part of Rob's life. So how can you have more fun at work and make it a part of your team culture? We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, in our second conversation, I talk with Pete Young. He's the senior vice president of Ramsey Events, and we talk about how to build culture through fun team events. Pete, it's so good to have you on the podcast.

Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. First time? First time. Long time listener, first time. Long time, first time. I love it. you are the SVP of Ramsey events and when I think of fun events I think Pete your personality type is fun you love to create experiences for our team for our fans that really revolve around creating a memory

and creating culture and we do that really well here at Ramsey it's one of the things we're known for and one of our core values is work hard play hard it's ingrained into this place and when you started here you really leaned into the the work hard part you weren't always Mr. Fun tell me about that journey. Yeah, I came from an athletic background, and my approach to having fun was pretty warped, and I think a lot of leaders might have that same approach that I had, which was that fun was the result of winning. Man, like fun comes when you crush it. Work is fun, man. It was just always based around winning and performing, and it's a pretty toxic view of trying to incorporate fun into the workplace. That's kind of what I came to Ramsey with nine years ago. So it wasn't just a

one thing that started to kind of shift my mindset towards that, it was me experiencing the culture of fun that Ramsey had established over the years, and it was in small, subtle ways. I remember seeing Brian Mayfield, executive vice president just popping out of his office and hitting golf balls with his team on some Friday afternoon. It was the way that Dave would respond to an email in a joking, lighthearted way in the midst of really intense hard work. this place finding time to have fun to not take themselves too seriously really started to shift my mindset on how we did our events and how I led my team and so over time I've started to see just the value of fun being a major part in doing your work and doing great work yeah I've seen that time

and time again and a lot of the business owners out there are going all right this sounds nice but fun it can feel cheesy it can feel weird to do this with your team why do we spend so much money, energy into creating these experiences for our team? Because we love our team. It's not a sneaky way to increase productivity or to increase profits. If that's the reason you're trying to do this, those reasons are the wrong reasons your team will feel it. And it will actually have a really major negative effect. We do it because we care about the quality of life of the team who we work with.

and we know that a great team culture increases the overall quality of that team, so of this place and their life. So it starts with a care for our team, and that's why we do it at Ramsey. And the byproduct of that is trust goes up. Obviously, like productivity and all of that, that's going to go up. That's a byproduct. That's not why we do it. That's the really cool benefit that you get.

But it starts with just a care and a love for the team. So for the leader who's going, all right, I'm going to do bingo night, but it has to R.O.I. next month. We better see this in the numbers. That's not the case. No, and your team is going to see that and feel it. You're better off not doing any of that. There's nothing worse than forced fun.

Being told that we are going to go have a real, like, that's a surefire way to really piss everybody off and have no fun at all. So it's got to feel natural. And you have to already kind of have hired people who care and who like each other. I mean, that's part of it. If you hate where you work and you hate the people you work with, then yes, bingo night is going to be miserable. But when we do it,

I'm excited about it because I get to hang out with all my friends and we're having a great time. Yeah, and because it's a part of the already established tone of this place, it's a tone that trust each other. It's a tone that says, hey, it is okay to have fun, that permission has been given. It fits into the overall ethos of this place. So it's got to be something that's done consistently over time that's part of the framework of the business. It can't just be something you do twice a year.

And you go, well, hold on, we checked off the box. We had fun. Why isn't culture being created? Right. It doesn't work like. And it has to be specific to your team. Again, going back to that love and care, that means you're going to know what fun looks like for your team. Just because you see something that we do as a team, as a company or some other businessmen, just copying that just to do it.

It's another surefire way to create the negative result from this. Would be that your team doesn't trust you, your team doesn't feel known. It's no fun at all. So knowing your team is a key to knowing what your team will find is actually fun. And that stuff happens in the one-on-ones and the in the convales. conversations you have with your team, which is super important. So there's a lot of wrong ways to do it. How do we use fun at Ramsey to really create and build culture? Events are a part of that, but it's not just in those big company events. It's that tone that I'm talking about. And just last week,

our entire company comes together on Monday mornings. We do staff meeting with updates. It's got a big stage in this room. It's kind of a big event, but it's a meeting. Our VP of Publishing, Preston, he uses intro music to come to the stage to walk up and it gets a laugh and he'll make some jokes around it and then dave made a few jokes about the song that he picked and they had some fun up there and then preston gives a fantastic business update on what he's working on and then he gets off the stage we have the rest of the staff meeting and then our sound guy plays a song that's a callback to the jokes that they were making on stage earlier and then all 1,000 of us in the audience audience, we all have a good laugh because we see the tie-in. And so as we're walking up to our desks

to start our week, we're doing so, having a laugh, being given permission. I mean, this is a fun place to work. We work hard and we play hard. And that's just an example of kind of how we do that on a regular basis, not just with a massive event like a Christmas party or battle the bands or something that's on the calendar, but that tone. Yeah. And it's something that, you know, you see every week that's this little tiny thing, but that done consistently over time coupled with a thousand other pieces creates that culture. It's not just one event that does that. So take us back to some of the earlier days. We weren't spending, you know, six figures on team events. We were doing, you know, a catered lunch for the team. What were some of the examples that things that we did on a

tighter budget? Yeah. You know, we did a lot of the same things on just a much smaller scale. Battle the Bands, right? Like Battle of the Bands is a big production now. We've got like in our amphitheater, we've got a huge stage with LED walls. Like, we did Battle the Bands back when it was, just bring your own lunch. We'll set up instruments in the corner of the office with some really bad fluorescent lighting, and we had Battle of the Bands. The budget on that was probably nothing. Dave's always had Christmas parties.

It doesn't take a massive budget to do a lunch together and to play some family feud-style games. These are stuff that we've done in the past. A lot of what we do right now is a company just scaled over time. It's a lot of the things we did in the early days, but just as we grow as a company, that's scaled up a bit. So it doesn't take a lot of budget, but it does take intentionality. You can't just wing it and phone it in and go, hey, hopefully culture is made because we bought pizza. It's not that simple.

No, it's work. It's work. It takes the front-end work of knowing your team and knowing what matters to them and listening to them. events are hard, not just in the money, but the time that's spent on it, the opportunity cost of saying we're going to have to pause this because we're going to invest in our team and our culture. It definitely cost you something. The reward is worth it. We've discovered that over the years, but this is not something that you can just assume you can fit into your normal flow of doing things without actually acknowledging that it's going to cost you something. But the reward is going to be worth it. And we've become well known for our internal events. It's part of even the recruiting.

You know, when you want to work here, they're talking about the Battle of the Bands and the Christmas party and how epic these things are and the intentionality that we put into it. And it really is the best parties I've ever been to are Ramsey parties. We know how to party and your team does a great job. So I appreciate that. Your team has the task of pulling off these play hard events. And I got to tell you, our team, we have high standards because we're always trying to one up it. Do you feel this element of you need to keep on making it even better than last time? there's that element of always wanting to improve, to stay excellent in everything we do.

So not just in our team culture events, but the events that we do for our fans and reaching people, that standard of excellence, it's always there. What we're careful of is not allowing events to become something that they're expected or they're deserved or there's this kind of entitlement approach to it. A lot of that goes back to, again, the heart of why we do this, has that been communicated to the team? I think a good example of having to face this conversation was in 2020, our Christmas party is typically done. We've grown it to a spot where we'll go to massive venues and it's a big deal. But in 2020, we weren't able to go offsite to a big venue.

It was really scaled back. And we just got together as a team here in this building and we did some cool stuff with the space that we've got in the building that we were still under construction in. And what we saw was that the team loves connecting together, sharing experience, having fun, having a meal together. Those are the things that are the core of why these things matter. And I think if you get too far away from the core of just coming together with a team that enjoys themselves, I think if it starts to become too much about whatever the thing is, that's when you can start to get off track. Yeah. Because it's really about connecting with the team and usually there's food involved and maybe there's a little prize.

I mean, it could be a $10 gift card. There's a level of competitiveness among the team that's just fun to watch, regardless of the prize. So what are the threads that you've seen in what makes a great event that actually builds culture that builds that fun? Whether it's a $100 event or $100,000 event, what are the keys that you need in your event? It's going to be different. I know what it's been for us, but it really is going to be different for each team. So you've got leaders who are listening. It really comes down to you knowing your team.

Like Ramsey has the elements that we love to include in events. But I would start with just asking your team what they value. We do a lot of that around here. Well, we'll do an event. And then we'll survey our team. We'll say, what did you like? What didn't you like? So we're actually listening to what matters to the team.

Some basic elements around events that make events great are some element of surprise. Something that's unexpected is always a really cool part of an event. But the tone of being inclusive, of every. Everyone feeling welcome, everyone feeling like they belong, people not taking themselves too seriously. These are some just elements that like when those are a part of bringing people together, that event is usually going to deliver that building culture and trust and overall team cohesiveness. Yeah. And what I've found over the years, Pete, as we've grown, is that teams have created their own internal culture,

which is really cool to see these pockets where teams are having their own celebrations, their own traditions. And so at Entree Leadership, we like to ring a better. A big old fight bell. Anytime there's a big sailmate or something to celebrate, we served a fan well. And some other teams, you know, they like confetti cannons. They hit a gong. There's all kinds of things that teams do to celebrate within their own crew. Yeah, if I brought confetti cannons to my team, they look at me like I was crazy.

They're going, who's going to clean this up, Pete? It's us. We're the events team. I love it. So how do you measure the ROI? We talked about they're not being this direct, hey, there's going to be money on, you know, more money next. months coming in because we did this event. But how do you measure if this event or if this thing that we did was actually effective? Yeah. Yeah, it's qualitative, not quantitative. If we're looking for like

a one-to-one increase in productivity, profits through team culture, like we're missing that. You've got to listen to your team. It's almost as basic as it was that fun. Did we enjoy that? Was that something that y'all valued? But there's balance in that too, because there's some things that battle the bands will be a fine example not everyone at Ramsey thinks that's the greatest event ever for some folks it's whatever it's great but there should be an overall

consensus that the work that you're doing to create fun and culture with your team an overall consensus was yeah man we had a really good time we came together I felt like I was closer to my team I built some trust like measuring the impact that way kind of that qualitative data

from your team is a really good way to see if that's going to be building your culture or having some negative effect on it. And then just looking at it as well as, do you have strong team trust? Does your team genuinely enjoy working together? Is there a tone of fun? That's kind of like the larger way to judge culture with your team. Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, we do things like surveys, but sometimes the better indicator is, are people talking about it a week later? Are they harkening back to the inside joke or the thing that happened where it's creating that conversation and that rapport with the team? So I love those ways to make.

it instead of saying, well, the revenue was up, the productivity was up because we did this thing. So as we wrap here, what would you recommend to a small business owner who they want to start adding a little fun to the culture, but it feels like too big a task and they're not the fun person? How do you start to implement this? What is one thing they can do? Yeah, right off the bat, and I think I might have said it a few times, but right at the you've got to start by asking yourself, do you love and care for your team? It's got to start there. Anything past that, if you can't answer that question, yes, anything that you start to add will actually have a negative effect on your team coaches. Just start there. I would say go to lunch with

your team. If you can't afford to pay for it, pay for the team. Surprise them with lunch one day. That's a really easy way to do. And don't use that lunch as an opportunity to coach them up or to just turn it into a meeting. Actually, just go and get to know your team and have some fun and learn about what they value. And that's a great way to start to find out what other things you can do with your team that's fun. And then do something surprising. Deliver ice cream. one afternoon. It's ice cream 30 one afternoon and you guys just stop. And if you've never done anything like this, your team is probably going to be a little bit skeptical or look at you funny. And you're going to have to just start to get into that flow of changing that tone. But that's just a way to

start. But again, it starts with do you love and you care for your team. Yeah. There's childlike joy when the ice cream truck rolls up unexpectedly to the office and it's all on the leader. And they go, hey, anything I want? Oh my gosh. I love seeing adults turn into children. That's when you know you're winning when it comes to an event. So Pete, I love the way that you have led our team, the way that you carry these events, both internally for our team, but externally for our fans, the ones that the listeners have maybe experienced at Entree Leadership Summit or Entree Leadership Master's Series. And I love that you care so deeply about creating these experiences that help build culture that helps create impact. So thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thanks, me too. Appreciate it.

As Rob and Pete talked about in today's episode, having fun at work is crucial to engaging your team and building a great culture. And if you need some ideas to get started, you can download Entree Leadership's 43 easy ways to recognize your team. And don't worry, you don't have to read all 43 ways. If you jump down to numbers 24 through 27, we've got some easy and fun event ideas that you can do with your team. To get this free download, just click the link in the show notes.

Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And we want to hear what you think of this show, what you like, what you don't like, and what we could do better. You can give us your feedback by clicking the link in the show notes to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison and Bob Orquez, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening.

Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, Like the Dr. John Deloney show. Mental health challenges and hurting relationships happen to everyone, but they don't have to define you. I'm Dr. John Deloney and I help people navigate through the messy things in their lives on the Dr. John Deloney show. I'll walk alongside you as you face parenting, marriage, and other relationship challenges. And I'll walk alongside you as you try to connect with people as you face depression, overcome anxiety, and learn how to change your life. Listen, I want you to be well.

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