EntreLeadership - How to Go From Team Member to CEO

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Today we’ll hear about:  A son looking for advice on how to stay humble while taking over his dad’s business   A business owner wondering if he needs to have a replacement ready before firing someone   A veterinarian unsure if she needs to offer a sign-on bonus to compete with corporate America   An entrepreneur who wants to prevent team members from stealing her clients     Next Steps  📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message:  https://bit.ly/3HUgAgi    🏅 Help us make the show better! Please fill out the quick survey form: https://ramsey.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_01hjJ6UN8mnQPNI  👣 Find out what stage of business you’re in: https://ter.li/axd39b  ✉️ Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/y8qdo7     🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/fcazl2     🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/wcjhpu     ☎️ Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: https://ter.li/ycznhl    💵 Learn more about SmartDollar: https://ter.li/4imot0       Offers From Today's Sponsors  NetSuite: https://ter.li/x1t20q   BELAY: https://ter.li/yohiu6  Payority: https://ter.li/fh2oau  Trainual: https://ter.li/a8zexl  Found: https://ter.li/ggwmrv    Listen to More From Ramsey Network  🎙️ The Ramsey Show    🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour  💡 The Rachel Cruze Show  💰 George Kamel  💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights  🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show  💼 The Ken Coleman Show    Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy  https://www.ramseysolutions.com/compa…      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, and we've got 30 years plus of experience in the trenches actually doing this stuff. So this is not a think tank of theory. This is actual people actually doing this stuff. Ph.D. and D-U-M-B. That's my degree. So done it all wrong. Did some of it right, enough of it right to make a profit and stay open.

And so we're here to try to help you do just exactly the same. We'd love to have you be part of the program if you're running a business and it's doing well and you want it to do better and you've got questions about your ongoing concern, your team, maybe you've got a team of 30 or 40 or 50 people or 10 people or 100 people and you're trying to figure out what to do with them. You've got questions about all that. Hey, make a phone call. The phone numbers 844-9-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4.

for 1070. Maybe you've got good revenues. Maybe your revenues are running 2 million, 5 million, 100 million, and you want them to go better. Let's talk about it. I'll help you. It's what we do here. So again, just go to entreleadership.com slash ask or call 844-944-1070. You can be part of this show. And we need you to help us make the show better. Please take our two-minute survey so we can better serve you. just click the link in the show notes and tell us what you like, what you don't like, and we'll try to do a little bit better. Nick is with us. Nick is in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hi, Nick. Welcome to the Entry Leadership Podcast. Hey, Dave. Thanks for having me. How's it going? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? Hey, so I am currently a project manager slash in the sales position for my father's landscape company.

he started way back in 1983. And so we've been very blessed the past couple of years gone from about $6 million in revenue three years ago to 8.4, two years ago. And then last year we were just shy of $12 million. Good. That's fun. A lot of fun. So I've been here a couple of years.

It's kind of always been the plan between my dad and I to go through succession. and buy the company from him. So I just want to make sure, you know, we go about that the right way and curious your thoughts on that. And I know listen to other episodes and I know you're, you know, I love your idea of paying honor

and being humble through it all. So specifically, how do I balance that kind of attitude with also the desire to try to make changes and implement new ideas when I don't have ownership quite yet. We don't plan to go through this for the next couple of years. How many team members? We're about 51 team members.

And you're a project manager, and your dad is the owner and I guess the CEO. Yes, sir. Who is in leadership between you and your dad? We've got two other project managers, and this is in the construction division, which is about 90% of the revenue, and about 10% in maintenance too as another manager. But we're all pretty even. Oh, so the three project managers are four report directly to your dad,

and that's your org chart. Yes, sir. We're all kind of evenly, you know, divide and conquer. We get a new project, and someone takes it on, and we all kind of work with each other and work with my dad. He did have a VP who retired about a year ago, that you guys are all reported to? Essentially, yes, we kind of all were project managers,

and he was kind of the scheduler piecing all the different pieces together of the different projects. Okay, all right. If I was coaching you and your dad in the same room on this, what I would tell you to do is the model that we used, and it has worked here as well. And we've done it with a lot of other entree leadership companies, is the next stage for you all before the full transition is to move, move you between you and your dad, to move you right up next to your dad.

We could call it C-O-O, we could call it president, a VP, we can call it whatever you want to call it, I don't care. But these project managers start to report to you, and you are looking over the entire company helping him to run the entire company. Okay. We can give that title, whatever title I want it to be. But right now, you have project managers that are your peers, and you don't really mess with their projects, you run your projects.

Right. And so I need you to get up over the top of them and mess with their projects. Or not really, but let them report to you. And then as long as they're running, you let them run. That's what your dad does. He doesn't interfere with them. He's got good guys. He delegates and lets it run, right?

Right. And you would do the same. And then as far as changes go, So when you move into that role, I would say you've got six months of doing no changes. Your job when you move into that role is to learn everything you can about every person that's going to be key to the future. So you go on a listening tour with these key project managers and learn from them things you didn't already know about the company, about their struggles.

And because a good leader basically, regardless of whether it's family business transition involved or not, a good leader's job is not necessarily to do the work. It's to knock the blockers down that are keeping people from doing the work. If somebody that reports to me has something he can't knock down by himself or she can't knock down by themselves, it's my job to knock it down so they can get their work done. Right. And so that's leadership serving the rest of the team then. I serve the team by making sure that things that are blocking them get removed so they're able to get their stuff done more efficiently and operationally.

Now, if you do a change that causes that to happen, then that's a change you could institute. But that's a change where you're serving someone, not something where you go, I've been wanting to fix this for a while. that kind of stuff you've got to put on the back burner because you need to be in the seat a little while and earn respect from the team for you start doing stuff I want to fix that for a while you probably just let that one lay a while

would those changes would it make sense to make those changes and kind of because I have a lot of desire and push that I want to push for growth because I kind of see it as mine in the future and I've grown up around it so does it make sense to try to implement those changes before ownership.

Yeah, it's okay if you're doing that, but you're doing that hand in glove with your dad and with the team. Right. Everyone's involved in this decision. It's not the new kid comes in pistols of blaring. Yeah. Right? You just keep your stinking pistol on the holster and let over the people come up with this idea.

As a matter of fact, if you can keep talking about it until someone else takes the idea and makes it theirs instead of it being your idea, that's when you reach genius status. Right. My wife has made that genius status. She makes a lot of stuff my idea that she wants to do. And that just, man, you get all kinds of credit that way, right? So, yeah, that's, I really, that's where I want you to move towards.

And that, like you opened up with, that's a type of humility. And it's a type of holding back instead of like blowing the bugles, like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. New sheriff in town. Calvary's on the way. We're going to fix this mess that the old man, no, no, no, man. That's going to cause you nothing but trouble

before and after becoming the owner. Right. You just don't blow the bugle of salvation. You know, let somebody else come in and figure, you know, you lead the team and let them come to some of these conclusions. That's what the listening tour is for. Because when people are heard, they will step into this. Yeah, that's how I want you to do it.

Okay. is working with my dad, like you said, the hand and glove, is that so that I have his backing to kind of help enforce too? Exactly. Okay. Exactly. Like Daniel and I, my son is our president right now, we're working that way right this second. And so some stuff I'm taking care of, and it's stuff he wants to implement, but I'm putting it on me. So that he's got a clear path with the team to go on to the next thing.

and he's got a lot of growth stuff. He's wanting to implement. Very similar to what you're talking about. But he and I doing it together is going to have a lot more insurance that it actually gets done than if he does just swagger's in the room as the new kid and then tries to talk everybody into doing that.

No, he's like, me and him sit down and we go, oh, that's a good idea. And then we sit down with the rest of the leadership team. We go, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Let's all work on that. And you get buy-in from everybody rather than just going, I'm doing this in spite of the old man

or I'm doing this in spite of the incompetent team and that kind of stuff. That's what you don't want to set up is this adversarial kind of feel in the leadership team. We want everything to be very in sync and very orchestrated. And that's just just open communication

and your dad has to be open to trying some new things. I'm open to doing some stuff Daniel wants to do that I probably haven't thought of and I think it's a good idea. I'm willing to do it, but I hadn't thought of it as his idea. but yeah, let's go dry that. Okay.

And some stuff he's wanting to do, I'm like, nah, let's wait on that one. Let me sit on that one a little bit. Let's let that cook a little. And some things we talk to the leadership team, they go, no, I think we ought to go ahead. Okay, well, maybe we do. So we do a lot of stuff by consensus

within the leadership team. We sit and talk it through, argue it through, kind of fight and scrap like brothers and sisters a little bit, and what played a call to win the Super Bowl. That's what we argue about. We're not arguing about making, fun of somebody or picking on somebody or cutting somebody down or putting them in their place or corporate politics. But we do argue about which play to call to win the Super Bowl. And that's a good

natured argument. You know, that's a everybody's trying to do the same thing. We're all trying to win. That's simple. Good stuff, man. You've got the right kind of heart. You're going to be just fine. You're going to be running a $20 million business not long from now instead of a $12 million. And this will all be in the rearview mirror and you do it gradually, carefully, lots of communication lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of communication. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Are you waiting on things to improve on their own? Nothing improves on its own.

On its own, things deteriorate. That's why I have to take a shower every day. Left to my own, it stinks, right? So you don't wait on it to improve on its own. Come on. No, your business is not going to grow faster or become healthier if all you do is listen to Leadership Podcasts. You've got to actually do stuff.

And the Entry Leadership System is your roadmap that will help you do exactly that. You'll finally scale your processes, unify your team, build a business you love to run. This system's how we built Ramsey. And it's how we've helped thousands of small business owners transform theirs. And right now it's your turn. to drive your business forward. It's not going to approve on its own. It's up to you.

You got to smack it. You got to knock it in the head. You got to do it. Get up, leave the cave, kill something, drag it home. So go to entreleadership.com slash get started. And you can download our free getting started guide. It's free. And then you'll read it.

And then you actually got to do it. That's it. There we go. This guide will walk you step by step through the practical steps we took to Bill Ramsey from a card table in my living room to a $300 million business. That's entreleadership.com slash get started. And you could download the free getting started guide. And then you will have to get started.

That's how that works. Caleb is with us in Toledo, Ohio. Hi, Caleb. How are you? I'm doing great, Dave. Thanks so much for taking my call. It's an absolute honor. Wow.

Honor to speak to you, sir. How can we help? Well, like I said, my name is Caleb, and I own a small lawn company in Toledo, Ohio. We have two crew members, and I'm the third. Our revenue is just under $400,000 a year. And I'm having a problem because I think it's because we're so small. But earlier this year, I had to let a member. or go without a lot of notice because he called off on a Monday without any notice.

And I looked at over his past, over the past couple of weeks, it was his first 30 days. And he had been coming in late multiple days. And so I just made the call to let him go. but that left us in such a lurch that I was working until 10 o'clock each night. I'm looking for a little bit of insight to know what you do when you know that a member is not right, but you can't backfill for them as you let them go. Do you keep them on? No, you're firing.

No, you're firing. It's a disease in the culture of your organization. If you tolerate this, you're giving a signal to everyone else that this is okay. That's why I made that call. Yeah, you made the right call. You made the right call. The problem is when you have three people and you fire someone, you fired 33% of your labor force.

Yeah. That's the problem, is the ratio. Like you said, it's because you're so small, you feel it. If you got 10 people, you fire someone, you lost 10% of your productivity, hypothetically. Now, you did not lose 33% of your productivity. because this joker don't even show up for work. So he wasn't doing much to start with.

So we might have lost 20% of our productivity, but we didn't lose one-third of it because he wasn't carrying one-third of the wood. Agreed? Agreed. Yeah, we got it done, but it took us, you know, 20 years. The trick here is hiring, and they were in their first 30 days,

and so what you discovered was that you made a bad hire. Yes. Yeah, we have a probation period when they come on, when phone one comes on at Ramsey for 90 days. In the first 90 days, we have a low obligation to you. And you have a low obligation to us. You don't have to give us two-week notice. We've had people that just sent an email

and didn't come back the next week. That's fine. In the first 90 days, it's kind of tacky, but it's, you know, whatever. In the first 90 days, that's fine. I'd rather know then than I invest in you for a year and a half or two years, and then you screw off like that. So no. I mean, in the first 30 days like that, you discovered the guy,

he don't want to work much. You heard a lazy guy. Yeah, or an uncommitted at feel... Well, at a minimum, a party animal who's hung over and don't get out of bed in the morning to come work. I mean, I don't know what it is, but you got a bad dude, so you cut him loose. You did exactly the right thing.

The problem is it's just hard because, you know, now you've got to go back, Phil, and hiring when you're that small is you have to take time off from work to actually interview. That's true, and I don't have a lot of time too, and I... Yeah, and so you can make the mistake of being too rushed and hire another doofus because you're too rushed in the interview process. Yeah, I don't...

How do I avoid being desperate in the interview process when I'm meeting them before work and I'm staying out until 10 o'clock at night? You make an emotional decision that in spite of the strain, you're not going to be desperate. because it's kind of the grandma's thing, anything worth doing is worth doing right? Because if you don't do it right, you get to do it again. And you're going to do this. If you hire improperly, you're going to do it over and over and over again, right?

So it's easier to slow down. Let's say you take twice as much time to interview, and that's super inconvenient. But you get a good person. Or you spend half the time, and you go through four of them before you get a good one. Well, it's easier to get a good one. it right the first time and take extra time. So we spend an inordinate amount of time interviewing,

re-interviewing, talking more, thinking about it, talking about it in different settings. I mean, I swear, it's easier to get on with the FBI than it is at Ramsey. Because we put folk through the ringer, man, because we don't want crazy in the building. And crazy's hard to deal with. They're expensive. And so, you know, it takes up extra time. You got to fool with it. And oh, God, man. But in the first 90 days, I have a low obligation. They have a low obligation. You should adopt that. And you need to slow down.

You need to take more time. I'm sorry, Caleb. I wish there was a magic wand. But you're at a very tough stage of business right now at this treadmill stage where you are everything so dependent on you. The revenue production, the actual service production, all of that is so dependent upon you. You've not gotten big enough yet to where you are working on your business instead of in your business. You're still working in it all the time.

And you've got to get some folks on this team. You've got to get your revenues up a little bit more so that you can get some breathing room so that every time someone leaves, it's not a crisis. And, you know, we've got about 1,100 folk here. And it's sad for me when someone leaves that's been here a long time. But we backfill that and backfill that work in about 38 seconds. And so we just keep rolling. Because we have to, and it's really, we don't notice.

But I remember when I had 10 people and I fired one. Oh, man, shook the whole place up. I remember when I had five people and somebody quit. I cried. I'm like, oh, God, I've got to go do all this work. No. I remember that. It's no fun.

So it's a much easier thing to move on up through the stages of business and get enough team doing production and enough production going on that you can afford that, that you're able to work on the business, not just in it, as Gerber says in the book, E-Mith. So be sure and check that book out by the way. That's a good thing to think about. That's what we're facing here. There we go.

Wow. If you want to participate in this show, we'd love to have you. 844-944-1070. Give me a call. We'll help you out. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Thanks for joining us, America. This is hands-on practical advice from hands-on practical people.

Not much theory here. Just business acumen and hard, dead-gum work. And we'll show you how to do that. That's what we're here for. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. You can join us by calling or leaving a message at entreleadership.com slash ask or give us a call at 844-944-1070.

and we'll be happy to walk with you through your business issues. Tracy is with us in Tampa, Florida. Hi, Tracy. How are you? Well, thanks, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Well, I own a veterinary practice. We do about $2.1 million in revenues, and I'm currently, I had a doctor that I worked with for 26 years, and then he had the audacity to retire at 75.

I can't believe he would do that to you. Yeah, me too. After that many years, you. caught me off guard because it was kind of all of a sudden. And so, you know, I hired another veterinarian who was really difficult, you know, not nice to my rest of my employees, you know, and very, not great with my clients either. So he ended up costing us business and then we ended up, you know, terminating his employee meant about two months ago. Good. And now we're in search of another veterinarian and there's a veterinary shortage. So there's a lot of the veterinary hospitals in our area are been purchased by corporations.

And so there's a lot of difficulty in trying to hire another veterinarian because they're offering sign-on bonuses, and some of them are offering $250,000 for a five-year commitment. And it's not that I couldn't provide that. It's just I want to know up front that I'm going to get something out of my money. And I talked to a recruiter, and he was talking about doing a retention bonus as opposed to a sign-on bonus after a year's employment. And I didn't know what the thoughts were on doing something like that.

It's a possible move. Here's the thing. I try to avoid competing with corporate America for team members. Corporate America sucks. They don't treat their people well. At the first sign of trouble, they cut them loose and drop them in the street on their head. The environment that you have to work in

is politically correct bull crap where you can't get any work done and you can't even talk to humans. And so I think small business people like you and me have an advantage because I think people that are real people that want to work for more than just money, they want reasonable pay.

They want to be paid rate. But if they're just, just trying to cash a check. They're just looking for a J-O-B and return to a transaction here. That's not who I want on my team. So someone who's motivated by a $250,000 signing bonus

to work for crappy companies versus working for a family-owned and operated thing that has a soul and actually cares about the customer and cares about their team and actually treats them right, they're not someone I want on my team anyway, if the 250 bonus is what gets them.

So you're not going to get who you want. Who you want is the guy that retired. You want his heart and soul. You want some in a younger body, right? Absolutely. And that guy would have never worked for those companies you're talking about. Right. And it wasn't really an option until the last, you know, maybe eight, ten years.

Oh, I know. I know. It's gone very corporate. Dental has done the same thing. The dentist world is very similar. And it's just, but it's, and, you know, other things have to. I mean, we face it in the tech world. Some people are paying tech people, you know, 50,000 bucks to jump ship and go over there.

And some of our guys are like, we need to pay 50,000 bucks to keep them. And I'm like, I don't want to keep them if that's who they are. I want them to leave. Good riddance. Because if you're only here working for a check only. Now, I want to pay you fairly. I want you to make good money. I don't even mind paying you above market,

but if your only motivation is how much you can get, a nickel an hour or more, go work somewhere else, then go work somewhere else. You're not going to fit in around here. You're not one of us because we're crusaders. And I think that working in your clinic would be a completely different experience culturally. I think the airs would be different in your clinic

than it would be in corporate clinic, agreed? And I think that's your brand differentiator. And I think if you have a recruiter that's telling you the only way you're going to get people's pay $250 up front, then I think you've got the wrong recruiter. Now, if you want to do some comp plans that are creative where you're sharing some of the profits of the clinic with the person in addition to their salary,

and that is their incentive to they feel like an owner, I do that. But that's because I want people to feel like owners. And the only people that I've had honestly interviewing, they're all from Canada, it seems, because they can't afford to live and work in Canada specifically. And, you know, I guess I'm having difficulty like, well, I'm not getting, you know, local U.S. vets to even apply.

And I find, you know, even with doing it through the American Veterinary Medical Association. So I don't, you know, I've done Indeed. And the last guy we terminated trashed us on Indeed. So, you know, it gives the corporate culture gets a negative vibe. You can post an answer on Indeed and go, we fired the guy. That's why he's trashing us. See, they said not to get into that tip for tat. I wouldn't get in tip for tat, but I would go, he's a liar.

I fired him. That's why he's trashing me. I'd do that. If you think that's keeping you from getting hires. Well, it said something that one person found it helpful. And I had somebody I spoke to that was from North Carolina. And then she, I just didn't hear from her after that. And I don't know if the time frame corresponded with what he had said.

I don't have any idea. Doesn't matter. Yeah. I don't matter. I mean, and again, if you're going to not come to work for me because of something you read on the internet, you're too dumb to work here. You know, I'm perfectly okay with that. Because if you believe stuff on the internet, you're dumb. I mean, glass door, there is, you don't even, you can't even prove that the person that said that worked there.

Same thing with Indeed. They have no proof of that the review of, that the reviewer. the negative review is an actual employee. So people just go on their makeup crap. They've done it to us. They do it to people all over the place. In the restaurant business, they've run into it everywhere

because they cut each other's throat in the restaurant. So the restaurant across the street will post a bunch of negatives about the guy across the street. And it's not even a real employee. It's a competitor posting it. And so if you're so dumb, you don't know that, then I don't really want you working here.

I mean, if you believe everything you read about me, the stuff Dave Ramsey has done on the internet is amazing that I never did, by the way. You know, I mean, so the same stuff with you. I mean, it's the same thing. So now, yeah, if you want to post an answer there, you can post it. I wouldn't get into a big, long thing, because you're not going to solve it. But once again, if you go, all right, I didn't go to work for Dave Ramsey or I didn't go to work for Tracy because of what's on glass door or on indeed, good, you're too dumb to work here. You're not the kind of people I want.

I want people with more wisdom than that. I mean, everything on the Internet's true. Abraham Lincoln said that. So, you know, I don't know where you find them, though. I don't know anything about Canadian vets versus U.S. vets and all that. But my suspicion is this. We, for instance, in the tech world,

there's a shortage there too, of a high-end, you know, dev-3 level and above programmers, people working on platform stuff, okay? And these are six-figure-plus positions, like you're hiring. And we have found that a large number of those programmers are coming to us because they're sick of the way they've been treated in corporate America.

The number of hours they're asked to work, the way they're treated like a number, they're treated like a unit of production, not a human. No one cares anything about their personal, about them being as a person. You have all of that as a brand advantage. So if you can get the word out somehow to some of the poor docs that took those jobs

in those corporate environments, they probably would love to escape. Because that's what I've heard from some of the doctors who had to pay the sign-on bonus back when they didn't stay for the five years or whatever the commitment was. Yeah, that's part of the deal. deal. And so, yeah, and that would be fair. You know, it's just right now I'm running with

relief sets, you know, three days a week, just trying to, and those are. You know what? If I found a guy and he was $250,000 out and he's $150,000 has to be paid back, and that's what you did. You paid the $150 there and you, you know, you had a solid contract, but you've got a person that you think is gold because they've learned their lesson and they're not doing it for the signing bonus. You're just helping them escape. Now that I might do. You mean help them out with that? Yeah, I help them cover that. And, you know, maybe they're, I don't know, down to 100,000, whatever instead of, but just paying someone off the street with a signing bonus is bad medicine as far as I'm concerned. It's kind of like walking up to someone whose house is not for sale and knocking on the door and going, is your house for

sale? No, but it could be. If you want to pay me a stupid butt price, it could be. That's not how you get a bargain in real estate, right? It's the same kind of a thing when you're recruiting out there in the marketplace. Oh, are you looking for a job? No, but I could be. For 250K up front, I might. You know, well, now you're just dislodging somebody that the next person comes along is going to dislodge with the exact same motivation. So you don't want to get in that game. But I, but I, But setting a slave free, I might set some slaves free if they're appreciative. And they tell the story 16 years later about how Tracy set them free. And it's the best move they ever made because they got to participate in the profits.

And maybe they worked that $100K or $150K back off somehow in the deal. Comp plan you put together with them. I would do that kind of thing. But just buying somebody at your house for sale, sure, for a bright price. You want to change jobs? Sure, for the right price. I don't want that person. No thanks. And we've made that mistake about four times, and four out of four times it sucked. So I'm not doing it anymore. We told all of our recruiting teams stop that. You know, if you want to come work at a place that has a soul and that cares about you and that pays fairly and treats you like a human and the first time things get bad isn't going to pee on you, then you got the right place.

but if you're just coming somewhere for the money, you've got the wrong place. And you don't want to set up a narrative where people are coming just for the money because they'll leave you just for the money. Same thing. And they're motivated by the wrong things to create a good culture inside your organization.

And that's what you run into. It's a problem, problem, problem, problem, problem. And yeah, yeah, but it's frustrating as crap right now because you're running short on staff, and so you're working like crazy because you've got the one guy that you fired, was a dufus. You got the guy that retired. And so now I'm too short. And Canada's my only answer. Oh, man. Wow. In Tampa, Florida, I'm recruiting from Canada. I mean, this is not like you're in

Detroit recruiting from Canada. Wow. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Thanks for joining us, America. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. We coach tens of thousands of businesses over the years in the range of five to 500 employees. Almost all of the folks in Entree Leadership Elite and that attend our events are five to 200 employees. And they're, you know, running 2 million to 100 million in revs, that kind of thing. And that's what we're here for. If you're in corporate America, you're going to get mad at me because I make fun of corporate America all the time. A corporate America, by the way, is a mindset. It is not a large company. large there are good large companies that don't pee on their people that aren't mean to their people

that aren't nasty that aren't ridiculous in their agendas and so forth there are good ones it's not about size corporate america but it's a mindset of people don't matter the employees don't matter the customers don't matter i'm here it's a self-centered mindset and they'll cut you know they'll cut payroll and they mistreat folk in a heartbeat just to be just for profit and it's very mercenary and it just doesn't have a soul and that's my definition of corporate America when I'm making fun of corporate America so it's not about size if you work for a big company that does a great job then fine I'm not going to issue with that but you and I see them in the news every day that laid off 7,000 employees just to increase Q1 stock price they do it every week and it has

There's nothing to do with anything except Q1 stock price. Well, if you didn't need the people, you shouldn't have hired them. And if you hired them, you should be so concerned about them that you're not worried about Q1 stock price. Instead, we drive to ROI, the payroll, and create a revenue spike, which drives stock price. That's how you properly run a business, not cut expenses, not a race to the bottom. So that's the kind of stuff we're talking about around here.

And if you want to be part of the show, 844-944-1070 is the place to do that. Morgan is in Denver. Hey, Morgan, how are you? It's an honor to chat with you. Thanks for taking my time. My pleasure. How can we help? So I'm the CEO of a Denver-based service-based business here called Your Home Meal.

It's a personal chef company. Our revenue is about 450K a year growth with 17 members. and here's my question. So I keep hiring, doing sales, building the book of business, and then the team member does stupid math, as you call it, takes a book, does their own thing. So I'm basically building my competition. My family truly jokes that I'm a serial entrepreneur

because I've basically started five personal chef gigs in our eight years. So rather than just solving the symptoms, right, it's so much bigger than that. So basically I was trying to get your experience during like what you call the treadmill phase, right? And I know I'm not alone. There's cleaning companies, for example, they go through the same thing. So how do I build a business without just building my competition and just doing it and keeping the rat on the wheel, as they say? Well, there's two elements that we need to separate.

the non-compete is going away in federal law. Okay, regulations are coming down on that, all right? And so you're not going to be able to keep some, you're not going to be able to have someone sign a non-compete, but they can sign a contract that they state in the contract that the customers that you are sending them to are owned by you. Yep. And to do business with that customer is not a non-compete issue.

that's stealing my customer. That's different than non-compete. Okay? For instance, in the investment world, if you go to a smart investor pro that we recommend people to do investments, those guys, gals build a book of business, and they'll have sometimes a junior staffer

working with Joe Smith, helping them do their investing, but that junior staffer does not own that client, the owner of the business owns that client. That's a book of business. And that book of business actually has a market value. And when someone gets ready to retire in that world, they'll sell that book of business for billions of dollars.

But you can't just be a junior on the flagpole and run out and take those people you've been working with that your boss gave you to work. That's illegal in that world. Okay. And it'll get you sued. and you can set that up here as well, okay? And so we have business coaches in Entree leadership, and those Entree leadership clients are mine.

They're not theirs. I own those clients. And if they come back and try to steal those clients after they leave to go be a business coach on their own, what you're describing, I will put them out of business, okay? And because it's stealing. It's not because I'm vindictive.

It's stealing. I paid the money. I did the marketing to create that client. They didn't. They merely coached them. Your person didn't do anything except cook. That's all they did. They didn't run the business.

They didn't come up with a client base. And so it's not their customer. And you can contractually in any state, except possibly California where you can't do anything. But you can contractually in Colorado, keep them from stealing your customer as a part of their employment agreement, and if they do, you can shut them down with a lawsuit,

and I would. That tough. And make that part of the hiring understanding. Be very, very clear when you're hiring them. This is my customer, you the chef, me the owner. You cook, I do business. You work for me. This is my customer, not yours.

I don't care if they like you. As a matter of fact, it's good that they like you. That's part of your job. You're in their freaking home. But that doesn't mean you own them. I own the customer. And you're going to have to talk about that, apparently, very directly and very clearly, because stealing customers in your world seems to be a regular event, right?

Yes, it is. And now we're doing the non- solicitation because we learned the hard way. Yeah, yeah. But, no, it's super common. It happens to all sorts of. of everyone. Yeah, it does. But I'm going to be the one that doesn't allow it if I'm you. Yeah. And that's part of the onboarding when I hire a chef. You need to be real, I need to be real clear with you. I'm going to be good to you. I'm going to pay you.

But if you take one of my customers, I'm going to grind you to powder. Okay. You need to, I'm going to be real tough in the onboarding. This is not happening. Okay? And so, yeah, you've got, because I'm not going to pick a fight. I'm not trying to pick a fight. I'm not trying to cause a problem. I'm trying to avoid one by heading it off at the past.

So, yeah, I'm going to do that in the onboarding, and I'm going to do that if I smell a rat, because these people, they're in their homes, they're artists, their chefs. Everybody loves them, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And we feel like we're going steady. and so I can just quit Morgan and I'll go take to her customers. No, not going to allow that.

So anyway, that's one thing you can do. And obviously I've dealt with that and I will deal with it again, I'm afraid, because it doesn't matter how much you deal with it. Somebody gets confused and you have to explain it to them again. And so, I mean, is that the whole thing? You just got to block that out so that you can build a good book of business and let your business thrive? Honestly, I think that's a simple.

whether it's a symptom of hiring, right? And I didn't weed that little detail out, though I tried, right? Or if it's more of a symptom of, I mean, we have a really good profit margin as we should, right? That's a beautiful thing. Absolutely. And so I don't know if it's that or if it's, even though I truly love my team, something's missing. I don't know. Well, you're going to have people leave.

I can't, you can't stop that. people leave for all kinds of reasons. They leave because they want to go in business. And the restaurant business in general has high turnover. Yes, three months that is the nature of the business. I mean, I've got a friend that owns about 60 restaurants. He said the national average is 328% a year. That means you replace everyone three times.

That would drive me bananas. But he said, that's the norm. He's got his down to 120. He only loses them all once a year. I can't even imagine. Mine's probably 6% or 8% here. I couldn't imagine a 125% turnover ratio. So you're in a high turnover industry in its nature

and any businesses out there listening to you and me have this conversation. You're going to have people leave. You're going to have people leave that you don't want to leave and they leave with integrity and don't steal your customers and go do something else. And they could open up in the same, they could open up their own chef thing. And don't steal your customers. They can do that. But that doesn't harm you because they're getting business that wasn't yours.

There's plenty of people out there, plenty of houses you can cook in in Denver. So if one guy goes up and he starts cooking in 10 houses, that doesn't hurt your business, as long as he didn't take yours. And they're going to do that because it's the nature of the food world right now to be a celebrity chef, right? Yes. And no, and I love the competition. We had to get far better over the eight years. I could be half the business owner I was before COVID.

Yeah. No, I love the competition. I'm good with it. Yeah. I wasn't accusing you of that. I'm just saying that I, you know, I'm people that have been here 20 years and, you know, something happens. They get married and a single lady gets married and her husband decides he wants to take a job in Oklahoma. Well, I lost a 20-year problem.

person when that happens, you know? There's nothing I can do it. I mean, that's just part of life. You're going to have some people that leave that you really didn't want to leave, and there's no magic pill to keep them. But I think the more frustrating thing about your story for me is, and I went off on the soapbox, but is the stealing of customers. And like you said, you have to start over every time they take your whole book, and I'm not going to do that. I got such a low tolerance for thieves that, you know, people trying to steal money. It's ridiculous. So anyway, yeah.

But I think also you've got that combined with just the high turnover nature of the food preparation world, the restaurant world, that it's unusual for a chef to go somewhere and stay 20 years. It's very unusual in that world because things change and people go open to different restaurants. and they go do something else and they move around. It's just kind of, there's a vibe to that. So I think you're going to fight some of that just the very nature. And I don't think you can do anything about it other than treat your people well, do the stuff that you're talking about. So I think you're doing a great job. I think you're probably doing a better job than it feels to you like you're doing. Folks, remember better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high-quality leaders like Morgan. So take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening

to the Entree Leadership Podcast.