EntreLeadership - How to Make Decisions You Won’t Regret in Business

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Today we’ll hear about: •       The irony of Zoom asking their employees to come back to the office •       How to help a co-worker who is struggling to be self-aware and it’s hurting their career •       What to do when purchasing a business from your aging parents  •       How to make sure you have the right people around when your business is booming Links mentioned in this episode: •       The EntreLeadership Podcast •       EntreLeadership Master Series •       Have a question for The EntreLeadership Podcast? Leave a voicemail at 844.944.1070 or submit your question for a chance to be on the show with Dave Ramsey: https://www.entreleadership.com/ask Start growing in business and leadership with the EntreLeadership Newsletter. Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://bit.ly/3IRWnsL   Support our sponsors: •       NetSuite •       BELAY •       Payority •       Trainual Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •       EntreLeadership Summit •       EntreLeadership Master Series Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •       Elite •       Advisory Groups •       Executive Coaching •       Workshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/company/policies/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host for 35 years. We've run this business known as Ramsey Solutions. It started on a card table in my living room. So this is practitioner, people that do this every day. I've made the decisions and the mistakes this week running this business that I will live with for the next. five years. And that's how life works around here. If you want to be part of the program, all you got to do is call, leave a voicemail. We will make you a caller here on the show. It's 844-944-1070, or go to entreleadership.com slash ask. So from the irony, ironical irony department, Zoom is asking all of its employees to return to the office. for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

When the tech company blew up as one of the main means of communications for people forced to work from home by the Fauci quarantine. That was me adding that. Zoom, which remains a leader in the post-pandemic remote work trend, is now asking all its employees within 50 miles of a company to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule. We believe that a structured hybrid approach, meaning employees that live near an office, need to be on site two days a week to interact with their teams is most effective for Zoom. A spokesman told Business Insider in a statement, as a company, we're in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate and support our global customers. Towards the end of 2021, however, Zoom stock had plummeted, and the company has since lost $100 billion in market value.

you. The stock stagnated again this year as workers have returned to their offices across the country, cutting the reliance on video communications. Business Insiders reported. In January 2022, Zoom said that only 2% of its employees worked on site. Not so anymore. They're calling everyone back to the office. Irony of ironies. So we zoomed out. Now we're zooming in. There you go. Just helping you with that. Now, why is my bringing that up on a leader. and Business Podcast. Well, because the work-from-home trend has been a thing prior to the pandemic quarantine, but certainly afterwards.

And there were pundits out there saying, oh, don't buy office buildings because there's going to be no one in them. Everyone's going to work from home on Zoom. I, however, was not one of those. and I have caught in a lot of crap from some of you out there, you hater-aids, that Dave Ramsey's a dynosaur, and he just doesn't understand how business works in the modern world and all this. Well, let me tell you how business works. Business works through people.

People are your greatest asset. Relationships matter. Loyalty and unity and culture inside your organization. matters and it cannot be maintained over a text, a Zoom or an email. You can do tasks that way, but you cannot get the level of productivity and creativity and vision casting and hope you can't feel the air of the organizational momentum when you're on a freaking Zoom call sitting in your underwear with your dress shirt, on behind a table.

It does something to your brain and you are not connecting. And when you say you are working from home, well, all the data tells us this. I'm going to go work from home. Well, the data tells us this. You're going to end up falling into one or two camps. You're going to work 12 hours a day because you're never going to be away from that stupid work. You're going to work yourself to death. You're going to work more than you've ever worked in your life.

or you're not doing squat. You're working part-time and being paid for a full-time job, and that's theft. You're stealing. And this is my contention on the work-from-home movement. Is all work-from-home bad? No. I got to tell you, if you need to hire someone to write code for you

and you don't have the money to put a full-time code writer for your website on staff, and you want to hire a freelancer on contract basis and they work from home, that's not unusual and that's fairly efficient. Do that. But that's not a full-time employee. They don't work for you. They work for themselves. You're paying them for the code. You're not paying them a salary. You're paying them for a result. And you don't have benefits and you don't have a long-term ethical and moral commitment to keep them up and take care of their family and make sure they're okay. when you're leading a team member. So the work from home movement is a joke.

I've been saying this, and you guys have been hating on me to no end, but here it's showing up. Even Zoom is calling their people back to work, because people need people. It is not good that man be alone. We need to be in the presence of other people to regulate and adjust our attitudes, our creativity, and everything changes when you do.

The quality of your relationships is different. This is why when a teenager grows up and doesn't know how to go sit down face to face with a member of the opposite sex and instead is so cowardly and wussified that they do their teenage breakups on text or they're bullying on social media instead of in person that they're setting themselves up for a life that is not real, a faux life in the digital environment. You're an avatar of yourself. When you deal with real human beings and you're sitting in their presence,

you talk to them differently. Some of the things some of you say about someone on social media were you to say it about them in their presence, you'd get the crap beat out of you, and you'd deserve it. some of you you have digital courage only that's an example of why this whole work from home movement doesn't work you can't do conflict this way conflict is best served in person when you want to mentor someone and help them with a difficult conversation in person is the only way you can do that lovingly bluntly and kindly you can't pick up the phone and call

somebody. We've had customers over the years that we couldn't seem to move the ball. We couldn't seem to get the contract deal closed. We get on an airplane. We go sit in the office in person. In 25 seconds, the deal is closed. But we couldn't seem to do it over the phone or the email and certainly not over the freaking Zoom. And we weren't trying to do it working from home in our underwear. This is the difference, folks. Okay. So when you take a shower and shave and come to work clean with clean clothes on. Your mindset is different than you roll out of bed half hung over 10 minutes before the Zoom call. And your brain is still foggy. It's a completely different world. And so, you know, we've had a lot of people internally and externally go, we've lost our

dadgum minds at Ramsey because we work from work. Well, I got to tell you right now, I'm feeling like a profit. I'm feeling like a genius because we work from work. And we're going to keep working from work. And those are the reasons. And even old Zoom, after $100 billion in market cap is gone, realize their people have to work from work. So they have to come be creative to figure out a way to get you to use Zoom. And they've got to do it in person.

Think about the ironies, the levels of irony that are in that whole story right there. It's masterful. It's a master class in human relationships. and the breakdown of that and how ridiculous the quarantine set up the mindset on this for people to believe in people to do. So, end of speech, end of rant, end of me thumping my chest saying I was right, but I was right. Human beings need to work at work with other human beings. You get more done.

You have a higher quality output. You have a higher creativity and a higher productivity. conflict is better, everything, even an exit is better done in person. You don't fire somebody by email, you wuss. If you're going to sit down, fire somebody because they did something wrong, at least have the dadgum backbone to sit and do it in person. Oh my gosh. How demeaning.

How dehumanizing. But it all comes from, you know, the Fauci economy where we say, well, he's essential. She's not essential. She's essential. He's not essential. Who determined who's essential? Absolutely ridiculous. And this whole thing got twisted up in this.

And guys, we're going to return to human beings, being human beings, not human doings. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. I'm your contrarial host, Dave Ramsey. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. For those of you that are left after that segment, we're glad you're here. Thanks for hanging out with us. One of my buddies, who's a big leadership expert,

he and I were having a debate about that stuff, by the way, a friendly debate where we argue like good friends do. And he said, Dave, you just need to be more flexible. And I said, you know, when you're telling the truth, you don't need to be flexible. He said, well, maybe it's not the truth. And I said, maybe it's not. But my perspective is it's the truth.

And, you know, Dave, if you're going to attract the millennials and the Gen Zs, you've got to have a level of flexibility and understand their use of technology is native to them. And I'm like, yeah, and my use of relationships is native to me. My use of human relational IQ is native after 35 years of leading a company. And, you know, 1,100 people working here. There's things that I know that a millennial or a Gen Z doesn't know. And so based on that truth, I'm going to continue to tell you the truth.

And some of you aren't going to like it. it and it's kind of been my career. So it's part of my brand. Thanks for hanging out with us. If you want to be on the show and call, do use the number 844-9-4-1070. Let's go to Sam in Asheville, North Carolina. Hey, Sam, how are you?

Hey, Dave, how we doing today? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Awesome, awesome. Hey, man, I'm a developer. I'm on a team of one in a beverage manufacturer here in Asheville. We've got about 100 employees. We did probably 30 mil gross last year.

Cool. Yeah, man. I've got a buddy who I've worked with in several environments who came along behind me to this business. I've been here for seven years. And I'm seeing that he's kind of running up against his own glass ceiling of sorts where he's having trouble with his people smarts. If you're thinking about the Pat Lynch-Ligioni model, he's probably either a skillful, politician or a bulldozer. And I just, I love him.

He's my friend. And I want the best for him. And I'm not sure how to, you know, tow the line between professional and friend. Does he work for you? He doesn't. He's a teammate. He's a, he's a beer.

We both report up through the CFO. Is he aware there's a problem? Sometimes. You guys make beer, right? Yeah. You probably ought to give him a beer. And start a discussion. Let's start a discussion.

You know, I do not answer questions for people in my life anymore. I stopped doing it when I was about 28 that they don't ask. But I have been known to try to get them to ask the questions. that we can start the conversation. Sure. And here's how that might sound, okay? I'll call him Henry for a second, okay? Hey, Henry.

One of the things I have struggled with over the years in business is sometimes my people skills have held me back because I'm a developer and I'm all about the task and I'm all about the detail and I don't really give a crap about what somebody's feelings are. and if I don't watch my I trip over the people in the process of trying to get the work done when if I had worked with them better, man, it just caused me a lot of pain. And it's been one of the things I've struggled with. And I've really had to work really, really hard on getting better at that. And it's just been tough for me.

And if he doesn't say, yeah, me too, I'll be shocked. Yeah. But you lead with you. Right. And then you go, well, hey, man, you know, you want me to tell you some of the stuff I did? I read this book, and I did, and I started rethinking this. And, you know, because the first, my daddy used to say 90% of solving a problem is knowing there is one. Mm-hmm.

And recognizing and clarifying the problem. He would say that right after he asked me to clean up the basement, and I would say, are you going to help? He said, no, I thought of it. So, you know, but the, so, you know, that's kind of the deal. But if he becomes problem aware by you using your former problems, like we do that in the debt world, for instance, like somebody's, your brother's misbehaving and overspending, and you don't go, hey, you need to quit overspending, dofus, you're not in Congress. Instead, you go sit down and go, man, I used to overspin, and I didn't have a budget, and I was out of control. but I got on a budget, we got out of debt, and, man, I am sleeping so much better. My wife likes me more.

And, you know, and all of a sudden then your brother goes, oh, well, I want some of that. And that's kind of the angle I would use. And then be prepared that he might not take the bait, and you've done all you can do. Because you can't give a fat person a book on dieting. It's insulting. unless they ask for it, okay? But like I was trying to lose weight, and a buddy of mine goes, hey, have you looked at this new map?

And I'm like, okay, yeah, because I was already working on it. We're talking about the problem. Dave eats too many donuts, you know, this is a problem aware. And so Dave had to, you know, quit eating some dadgum many donuts. And have you tried the new map? Yeah, okay, let me look at that thing. Oh, by the way, they did $700 million last year. I want to look at this business.

Yeah, I want to know what's going on with these guys. So, yeah, so, you know, became a few. fan of their business, became a fan of the app and the whole thing. But it wasn't like somebody came up and go, you know, you're kind of fat. You need to use a diet app. You know, that doesn't work. And so, but helping him get problem aware and then, you know, hey, and if you want to meet once a month or once a week and let's study scripture together, let's study these books by Pat Lynchione together, Let's study how to win friends and influence people. The old gospel from Dale Carnegie from 100 years ago, you know, here's how you treat human beings.

You remember their name, and it's the most beautiful sound in the world to everyone is their own name. And you remember their birthday, and, you know, let's have some people skills. Let's figure out what they are. You could probably work on it together if he becomes problem aware and is open to, but if he just shuts down and is bound and determined to be a Sesame Street grouch Muppet, You know, then there's nothing you can do with that, right? Right. It's got to be a two-way street.

Exactly. And by the way, even if you were a supervisor, that's what you'd be facing. Yeah, that's true. You use exactly the same technique. Very few times at Ramsey, or have we got something where we have to just sit down and look at someone and go, hey, you're not doing that anymore. I mean, if they're serious misbehavior, we'll do that, real blunt. But other times, we'll just ask and say, hey, you know, have you thought about this?

and see if you can get them buying them, problem aware is most of it. If you can get them problem aware and they see the need to change and they're willing to put forth some effort into that, boy, you can give him a path, can't you? For sure, for sure. It's some of the stuff you read. I mean, you named it. Oh, yeah, it changed my life.

Yeah, Ideal Team Player, The Motive, his latest book, you know, reading Malcolm Gladwell, you know, some of these. There's all kinds, the classic Dale Carnegie's, all these things. Let's have a little book club or let's pull scripture out. And, you know, those that are first or last, those that are last are first, oh, here's an idea. You know, people matter, all this stuff, you know, that kind of thing. So that's the direction to go. That's what I would do.

But you just have to, I've tried it the other way, but the old two before in the face thing, it just seldom works. You usually have to go the subtle fishing expedition and see if you can get them on the hook, problem aware. and then we can develop a path to move away from the problem. Some tactical steps. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Thank you for joining us here on the Entree Leadership Podcast. If you haven't gotten your ticket to the Entree Leadership Master Series, you just about missed it.

There's just a couple left. I mean, literally a few handful. As a business owner, you know there's no shortcut to growing your business. You have to work through all the five stages of business to build something to leave a legacy. at Entree Leadership Master Series. We're going to give you the plan you need to do exactly this. And over the course of five full days,

you're going to get a tactical crash course on how to address the problems you're facing. The stuff we do every day at Ramsey, and we've done for 20, 30 years at Ramsey. It in theory, it's how we really do it. It's our playbook, how we win the Super Bowl. Tickets are almost sold out, just a few left. I think I mentioned that.

If you're a business owner, it's going to be here on our campus at Ramsey and the new Ramsey Events Center. I'll be doing a lot of the teaching. It's going to be a blast. I'm looking forward to it. November 5 through 10 here in Nashville. Go to ontrae leadership.com slash master series and get your tickets today. Sarah is in Washington, D.C. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My parents own three daycare centers. Combined, they have a gross revenue of about $3 million and roughly 55 employees. Three bakeries? Daycare centers.

Daycare centers. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm a little deaf. Okay. Three daycare centers and three million bucks. Yes. Okay. They're going to be retiring this coming spring, and my husband and I are going to be buying them out through owner financing.

And we're thinking it's going to be a two-phase process, first the business portion, and then second, buying the real estate, and that it could take six to ten years to do the whole thing. So how do we structure the buyout so that my husband, and I are protected if something catastrophic were to happen to them in the process. To them? Right. Who are their heirs? Myself and my four siblings.

Okay. So if you have a note that you owe your mom and dad, that note is part of the estate. The heirs don't have the right to call the note. They would just be receiving whatever payments you had promised to your parents. To them. Okay. Can I make a suggestion? Yes.

Don't make it a standard note. Okay. Make your payout based on profits, not based on interest rates. Right. Okay. Okay. So what's the net profit of the whole operation annually? About $400,000.

And what's the price on this? We haven't settled totally yet, but I think it'll be between $1.5.5 million on, that's just the business. That's pretty steep. Okay. It's probably worth about one six. Okay. You need to look at the valuation on that. About four times net is about all I'm going to pay for.

Maybe five, but that makes it $2 million. Okay. So here's how the formula would work in either case. You guys are working there now? No, neither of us are. Oh. What do you make at your, are you going to be working there when you buy it? I'll be making about $150,000.

my husband, he won't be an employee of the business. But you'll be working at the daycare making $150,000? Correct. Okay. Who makes that now? So my mom, except that she makes significantly more than that. Okay. Okay.

So the $400,000 includes her making significantly more than that? No, we adjusted that already for a reasonable salary. Of $150. So with $150,000 as the only $150,000. salary, mom not getting anything, then there's $400. Correct. Proper adjustment. Good.

Well done. Okay. It's exactly what I would have told you to do. Now, the, um, so you're a step ahead of me on that. Now, so then we establish the value and then if you're making 150 and it's netting 400, I'm going to give them the lion's share of that 400 until we get to their number. Okay. In other words, it might sound like, uh, the note states, we're going to pay you.

I'll just use a number. 80% of net profits with you making 150, 80% of net profits, 20% going under retained earnings, the other 80% go to them until you hit the $1,750 number or whatever the number is. Okay. And so if you throw 300 years, in like three or four years, it's paid out. Right. Okay. Then the real estate deal, what I would do with it is a lease, a long-term lease,

like a 10 year or a 15 year, or three, five years, you know, a five with two, five options, that kind of thing, with an option to purchase at a set price any time during that. Got it. Okay. And so what do you think those buildings are all worth as an example, that real estate deal? There's four of them, and we think combined it'll be between two and three million. Okay. All right. Let's just, so you say, we're going to establish the value. at 2.5 million on the real estate. Anytime in the next 15 years, we can write you a check for that.

And we set the price for that today. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. Because I bought a building that way, and it wasn't a relative. Okay. We had a 10-year lease, but five years on the 10-year lease,

I had the option to purchase it for $5 million, which was its value at the time I moved into it. Five years later, I purchased it for five million. dollars in cash because I scratched the $5 million together, which is what you're going to do during this 10 or 15 year plan. You're going to first pay out them, and then you're going to pile up cash and write them a check for the real estate as fast as possible. So you own the real estate free and clear.

You own the business free and clear. Now you're going to be making bank. Right. And that's going to take you about six years probably to roll out of all of that. Anyway, by the time I closed on that building, it was worth $13 million and I had it tied up at five. Yeah. Okay.

and that's what you're going to do. And that's fair because you're running the building and leasing it. Because if you purchased it today on payments, that's what you would be doing. You'd be locking in the price. Instead, we're leasing it on payments with an option to purchase and locking in the price. So it has the same net effect to them of you having purchased it today. Okay.

That makes sense? That makes sense. And so if something happens to them during this whole process... All of that's locked down. siblings don't have a choice. They have to abide by the deal. Okay. And we just pay it to the estate.

Yeah, well, you pay it to the estate and the siblings will split it, what, five ways? And you're one of them. Yeah. Is that right? Okay. Or if that's what the estate says to do, I don't know what your parents are doing with their money, but if they're going to split the estate five ways. So when you get ready to close on the lease payment would be split five ways each month, until you close on the real estate and you close on the real estate, $2.5 million, each person is going to get a half a million bucks.

if it's even, right? Right. At that time. And then they'll have their own issues with that. But the, and the same thing would be true of the profits on the first discussion we had until you get the payout done. But the notes all need to be drawn up in detail with an attorney and in the estate file. And oh, by the way, tell your brothers or sisters what the flip's going on.

Right. Everybody, it's all cards face up. Everybody knows what's going on. So somebody isn't pissed off later. If they want to get pissed off, let them do it, Mom and Day. add now. Right. Where were they when you bought this? I mean, they didn't buy it.

Exactly. And they were all given the choice. Okay. And they opted out. So instead, they're going to get the assets of the estate, which are notes from you. Okay. Leases and options and notes. But they're all based on profits. So if the quarantine hits, because somebody wants to come around and shut your daycare down again, Well, you don't have any profits.

You don't have a note due unless there's profit. It doesn't run you out of business with their structure. And that's why it's the only way I can think of to finance a business, particularly with people you love because you don't get in a problem situation then. So very good. It sounds like you guys are way down the road and you're using good discernment, good decisions. The brothers and sisters are in on it. Everybody knows what's going on.

We're going to lay the whole thing out. It's going to be in detail, make sure an attorney drafts the documents so that they survive your parents and are enforceable with your brothers and sisters in case one of them's wife or husband gets a wild hair and decides they want to try to undo everything. Because it's usually the wife or the husband, not the brother. What do I know? This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Hey, guys, the marketing budget on the Entree Leadership podcast is you. Yep.

You didn't know you're a budget, did you? You're it. You're the only chance we got. If you don't help us spread the word, we're going out of business. We're not going out of business. It's booming, by the way. Thank you. Thank you for telling everybody about it.

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That's how you can say thank you if you like the show. If you don't, go listen to something else. Wouldn't blame me a bit. Understand completely. Nathan is in Houston, Texas. Hi, Nathan. Welcome to the Ontario Leadership podcast. Hey, Dave.

Good to talk to you. I've got a question for you and a bit of a brag story. Cool. And I really just appreciate everything you've done. I was fortunate enough to talk to you in the fall of, or the spring of 2009, to do a debt-free screen. But my business, I have a partner, and we are an energy storage development company. We own, develop, own, and operate battery energy storage projects. So we connect to the power grid, and our lemonade stand makes money by buying power low, selling it high, and providing grid support services.

So as of today, our firm has seven full-time employees. We have just under $100 million in projects deployed, and we have two joint ventures that really fund and make our projects go around. And so the question is, is – How long is – how old is this business? So we both left our jobs in March of last year, and we have a lot of things that have just kind of worked out really well. Man, well done. Proud of you. Thank you.

You're a stud. That's awesome, man. Well, you're a stud to take the call and to listen and steward us. And we've been honored to be in the position to steward these resources, one from a public company, our first joint venture that is the Devco or the development company. The Opco, which the Devco delivers projects to, is a fun. This is all public, so I'm comfortable talking about it. But we're really stewarding, you know, we 100% in our company.

where most of the businesses in our industry or private equity backed or otherwise. And so we're asking ourselves, you know, should we consider getting an advisory board or something around, given, you know, frankly, all of this stewardship that we're doing. It's really, we're blessed and honored, but it's a little daunting, to be, to be honest with you. It doesn't hurt anything. I mean, there's a lot of upside in having people that have experience. and have technical knowledge in those fields, just looking over your shoulder. And, you know, if you paid for them and their wives to go to a nice resort a couple times a year

and hang out with you and just look at what you're doing and say, you know, this is what we're doing. You know, what do you see? What do you see? What I would be leery of is I'm not real big on people that haven't done anything giving me advice about doing things. Mm-hmm. And there's a lot of people that are life coaches that never had a life. You know what I'm saying? I do.

I do. So I think the, it's not all life coaches, but I'm just saying some of them are people that didn't make it at anything else, and now they're a life coach, right? And the same thing's true with business consultants. Sometimes business consultant is code for unemployed. Right. We're thinking of other business owners that we have. Yeah, that's the kind of thing I'm thinking of.

If you got somebody actually has freaking done it, I want their advice. I'm looking for best practices. I'm looking for people who are looking further down the road than me. And, you know, I had a friend of mine that was managing a billion dollar fund for an endowment fund for a massive college. And he was a MBA doctorate in economics from Cambridge. and this kind of crap. And so he completely thinks different than me. I'm a hillbilly, you know.

And so he's a different dude. And so he came to our business and hung out one day. And he said, look, there's so much entrepreneurial energy in here that you guys are going to do incredible. If you don't learn, this was like 15 or 18 years ago, he kind of made some of the people on my team mad. He said, if y'all don't learn to think strategically as well as tactically, you're not going to make it because you're only going to go as far.

as Dave's energy will take you. You've got to learn to think strategically. And it was kind of sandpaper a little bit, but it was really good advice because it was accurate. Because we were doing anything, everything just, you know, just raw, bust it, knock it down, tactical, right? And if you don't get above the problem and the opportunity, sometimes you don't see it. So that's an example of someone who's actually doing something.

He's not a professor in a classroom who's never made a payroll. I don't give a crap what that guy thinks. Okay. Right. But this guy's managed. in a billion dollar fund. He's done startups that were like 80 times larger than our company at that time. And so this is a guy.

He thinks at a different plane than I do. I never played on that board before. So that was an example of someone giving us advice that was a doer, not just a theory person. But if you get that, I'm good. Yeah. Yeah, but beware of consultants that haven't done it. Understood. Understood.

Yeah, that's exactly. We're, you know, from a fund like that, we are one of their investments. They don't own us. We're not a portfolio company, but they have, you know, we're in the process, and we should be fully deployed on all of that capital by the end of really first quarter of next year. Well, and if there's somebody in there that can keep from getting their loyalties confused, there's probably some people in there that are serious players in that fund that will see stuff you don't even know is there. Yes, sir.

That kind of a guy. Like I've got another buddy that's a venture capitalist, and he buys in, but he mainly buys into situations where he also goes in and sits there and helps them run the company. And he brings, you know, he'll take a little startup and bring a lot of wisdom to it and jack it to the moon. Help them jack it to the moon, and he gets a piece of it because he's the venture capital in it. So that kind of stuff. That's who you're looking for, is people who have, you know, actual practical hands-on knowledge.

for advisory. In that case, yes, I would form an advisory board. I don't want them to have, they're an advisory board. They're not a board of directors. They don't have the power to hire and fire people. They're there to give us, you know, knowledge. And to do it in a group setting is powerful because they can play off of each other then. And you can actually watch them argue about the advice too. That's healthy sometimes. So I love it. I love it. Congratulations, man. Very, very, very well done. Good stuff. just, man, you just pull that off. That's pretty incredible. Hey, guys, that about puts this particular episode in the books.

Remember better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. Leaders serve. Leaders are active, not passive. Leaders act on principle, not appearances. This world needs more high-quality leaders. So choose to lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Entree Leadership podcast.