EntreLeadership - How to Make Hard Decisions and Achieve Greatness

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Today, we hear from: •      A business owner who is trying to figure out when to hire so he can scale his business •      Lewis Howes on his book The Greatness Mindset •      A business owner whose rent keeps going up and is wondering if he should build or buy a new building •      A school board member who is afraid the school is going to close because of its poor finances Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Lewis Howes’ website: http://bit.ly/3ZlGT5M •      The Greatness Mindset by Lewis Howes: https://bit.ly/3KAHdcH •      The School of Greatness podcast: http://bit.ly/3KxBSCH •      Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: http://bit.ly/30CezmJ •      Get your ticket for EntreLeadership Summit 2023: https://bit.ly/3LRiZJH •      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: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE •      Payority: https://bit.ly/3IaA5SK •      Staples: https://staplesbusinessadvantage.com/ramsey Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the 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 in any stage of your business and your leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. I started this deal on a card table in my living room, and I've stumbled forward for 30 years. And here we sit. So I have a Ph.D. in D-U-M-B. I know. what it's like to do stupid butt stuff and survive, and I'm here to help you do just that. If you're looking for a think tank theory from a business think tank from a pointed head professor who's never made payroll, you're in the wrong place. I make payroll every

freaking week and have for 30 years. We've got 1100 people on this team, and we're here to help you. If you got a question about business, that's what this is about. It's called entree leadership. You've got a question about leadership, for that matter. It doesn't even have to be business. be ministry. We'll talk about it. If you got a question, just call us. The phone number's 844-944-9-44-1070. Or you can leave us a little message at the website. We'll get back to you, set you up as a caller and do all that stuff since this is, after all, a podcast. Entreleadership.com slash ask. Josiah starts us off in Missoula, Montana. What's up, Josiah? Hey, doing real well. Saved and Born again, Heaven Bound.

I love it. Life's good in your family. Yeah. Cool. How can I help? Yeah, I am a owner-operator of a small hot tub business do repairs and water maintenance and looking to see what is kind of some key clues, if you will, of when I should be hiring my first employee, financially, time-wise, that kind of thing, and how is the best way to go about doing that to get some in that seat that can serve the company well. Wow. That is the first employee you hire, the first team member you hire, is by far exponentially the hardest team member you will ever hire.

It's hard because emotionally you're accepting the responsibility for this person and their family. you are trusting your brand, your reputation with your customers, your relationships to someone else for the first time. It's like your teenager got their license and leave home in the family car. It scares the crap out of you. And it's very hard. It's also hard financially to figure out when to do it and how to do it with the math, which is also what you're asking about. And so I don't want to understate that this is hard. This is a difficult thing you're asking.

It sounds very simple. It sounds very primitive in business. But I got to tell you, it's hiring, I've got 1100 people hiring the 1,100th. I didn't even notice. The first one, I couldn't sleep. I mean, it was like, I was so worried. So here's the deal. Number one, we're going to look at this as a leader pulls.

a boss pushes. And your job as a leader is to serve. And so the first thing I want to do is I want to get my head around. My job, if I bring someone on, is I have to be able to keep my word. I have to pay them what I said I would pay them. And I have to have set my business up in such a way that it will do that. My integrity is on the line to that employee, to that team member. I have to be able to do that.

That's the first thing I'm going to get out of the way. Now, and so that means that you have to have enough hot tubs to keep clean enough people on your route, so to speak, enough people subscribed to your service that you can't get the work done. Because as long as you can get the work done, you can't financially justify someone else. Okay. You know, so because right now you're a solopreneur, we call it. You're out there. You are the business.

the chief everything officer. So what I need is I need to be so busy with actually maybe even some clients in queue in line on the waiting list that I can't get to. And then maybe I raise my prices and do it again and just really, you know, I really want this thing super profitable, super busy, super prosperous to where when someone steps in to pick it up, it's a no-brainer that there's plenty of work for. of them to do, thus I'm going to have plenty of money to pay them. Does that make sense? Yeah. You don't hire someone hoping they're going to do enough work to justify themselves.

You need to have so much work stacked up that they walk into this like a hot knife through butter. And too many times in business we think of, oh, if we hire someone, the business will come. No, dude, you've got to go get the business and then you hire someone. And so that will take a lot of the stress out of it. And then that leaves you only with the last piece of stress, which is training them to do it the Josiah way, not the guy's way that you hired. And so this is how we do it at my company. I know they may have done it another way at another company, or I know you may have never done this before. But this is how we treat customers. This is how we, when we're going to someone's home, how we act, here's how we address the lady of the house, here's how we

address the gentleman of the house. Here's how we bill. We put on the little paper booties if we're walking through their home. Whatever the thing is that you do that makes people very glad they have Josiah doing this. We show up on time. We do what we're supposed to do. That when we leave the equipment is running perfectly. We never charge people for repairs that weren't done. You know, we have integrity. You just have, and you have to talk through things that to you are obvious, but to someone else is training them the Josiah way. And then you can begin to turn over your reputation, your brand to someone else's work. And then you got to check on them. And you got to call the customer and go, hey, you know, Henry was over there today. How did Henry do? Is everything

okay? I just want to follow up. I'm new at this. It's my first team member. I'm a little nervous. I want to make sure you're being taken care of Mr. Ms. Smith. And you follow up on the customer service side and make really, really sure they are doing a great job and push them all the way through that way. But I think it's good to say out loud again, for your sake and for everyone out there, this thing about hiring their first team member, mathematically, financially, emotionally, brand, all of these make the first team member you hire the most difficult, exponentially. It scares the crap out of you. And if it doesn't, you're not wise. Because what you're saying, if you're a little bit scared about it is, you're saying, I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm going to step into the unknown. I'm going to go learn how to do this. But until I've actually hired someone successfully trained them, made them a part of this, and made payroll and paid them properly. I haven't proven to myself or them that this can be done. And I'll give you an example of this, Josiah, that for the first 50 people or so, we hired and really even passed that, people would ask the question sometimes in the interview because I was the brand in those days. I was the only thing creating revenue, Dave Ramsey. The Dave Ramsey Show, the Dave Ramsey books, the Dave Ramsey speaking, all of those kinds of things was creating all the revenue back then. and people would ask, well, what happens if Dave dies?

And our answer was truthful. You're screwed. This place is going to fold up like yesterday's Walmart tent if Dave dies, because I'm the source of all the revenue. So I just, you've got to be honest with them. And people would say stuff like, you know, we had 10 team members. What are your benefits? Your check clears. That's your benefits.

We don't have benefits. What do you mean benefits? Benefits are you've got a job. That's your benefit. Benefits are you actually work with somebody that knows your name. Benefits are you're working with family that cares about you. But if you want corporate benefits, you need to go get screwed by corporate America because we're small business people. We don't have big benefits.

That was in the old days. Now, today I got a pretty good benefits package if you work here. Okay, we've got like 401Ks and matching and PTO and all this other. crap around here. You know, all these things that people pile up. We get them all kinds of insurance. We got all kinds of stuff for people. But in the old days, it was like, what are the benefits? And what happens if Dave dies? And you just got to be honest, in other words. And so Josiah, you're hiring your first guy. And he goes, hey, tell me about your leadership style. And you're going clueless, because I don't, I've never done it before. But we're going to

figure it out together. And I'm always going to tell you the truth. And I'm going to love you. I'm going to take care of you as best that we have money coming in and just be honest, be authentic. And that's so freaking refreshing instead of somebody posturing and strutting around like they know what they're doing when everybody in the room but them knows that they don't know. And so go ahead and just say what it is. Say it out loud. And when our kids were teenagers years ago, they had this thing. They would do their hands with the, can't even remember how they did.

Their hands with their with their, how you do it? it. Thank you. I can't, I can't even do it. That's it. Now, he's backwards. Okay. You, where your thumbs come out, you know, it's an awkward turtle, right? They would say awkward turtle. Like a turtle's over on its back. So what is this? Awkward turtle is me trying to do this thing, and I can't do it right now. But, yeah, so, oh, there it is. I got it. Woo! Okay. All right, thanks. I got all kinds of guys in the booth showing me how to do this crap. I'm four years old and can't do it. But awkward turtle is we're going to have an awkward conversation. So let's just say it out loud.

It's awkward. I'm insecure about hiring someone new because I've never hired anyone. You may be better at interviewing than I am at interviewing. Because you may have been hired more than one place. You're my first team member if I hire you. It's okay to say all that. If that runs them off, then they didn't need to be coming in because they thought they had to, because that's who you are.

You're a one-man band. And you're getting ready to turn over some of the instruments to the other guy, and you're going to play the rest of the instruments in the band. But wow. And I did that. I told people, I said, you know, number one, this place is going to fold up like Walmart tent. Number two, if I die, number two, I don't know what I'm doing, but I do know what I'm doing. What I'm doing is I'm helping people. In your case, Josiah, we are one of the best companies that cares the most about its customers, the quality of the water in their hot tub, make sure it's proper. of the chemicals are properly balanced, the cleaning is properly done, any repairs are properly done. Our customers don't have to worry. We know how to do that. We're really good at that. And what we need to do is more of that. And can you help us? Do you want to come on board? And if you do, you're going to

participate in the growth of this company. We're always going to be generous to you. We're always going to be kind to you. And we're always going to tell you the truth. Nobody's going to yell at you or cuss at you here. And this is what we're doing. So come on. Let's go get some work done. And that's how we did it. being very, very, very authentic in the process. That's the thing. So that's how it works. Your first hires your hardest. Your second is your next hardest. Your third is your next hardest. And really until you get up above 50 or 60 people and you start hiring some C-suite-level executives, it doesn't really get hard again. And it gets easier and easier and easier. Oh, and by the way, first time you fire someone, that's the hardest.

First time someone that you really counted on that you really love quit and it hurts your feelings, that one's the hardest. The 1,000th that quits? Oh, well, this is the Entree Leadership podcast. Hey, Entree Leadership listeners, Dave Ramsey again. Of course, we are excited to have the one and only Lewis Howes in the studio with us. brand new book, The Greatness Mindset. Unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today. Now, Lewis is a New York Times bestselling author of the book, The School of Greatness.

The greatness is the title of your podcast as well. You spend a lot of time working on greatness. And you know what? This is a topic that I am just kind of, I'm a little bit pissed off about, honestly. Not about greatness, but about the fact that I'm talking to a little bit. a lot of my friends right now, and I've heard you've been on some of their shows, too. There's a whole group of us that are kind of raising up against this mediocrity movement, the quiet quitting movement, the yolo movement, the movement of I want to work as little

as possible and expect people to give me stuff for free. You know, that movement. It's called communism, I think. But yeah, but the greatness mindset, striving for greatness, striving for excellence, it always unlocks things. It always unlocks gifts for you and talents for you. And you've really studied greatness for like a decade plus. Yeah. So what do you, let's just start with the idea. What is greatness and why bother? Well, I think I want to share what greatness is by first defining what success is to me from my own personal experience of what I've

studied. I wanted success most of my life. I wanted it in sports and then in business. And I got it. for me, but I realized it wasn't everything. And at 30, I was like, well, I'm accomplishing so much in sports. I'm winning. I'm getting the awards. You know, I'm making money in my business, but why do I still not feel fully fulfilled? And that's when I started to study greatness. And I realized that greatness is really what you've been doing for so long.

It's about using your gifts and talents to pursue your dreams, but making the impact and the people around you, whereas success is more about how can I win? How can I look good? how can I accomplish for me, whereas greatness is about how can I do those things in the service of others. And that's where I really love and try to model the things that you've done, which is about growth and contribution in your process of goals. Well, the idea, I mean, we're talking to small business people on the Entry Leadership podcast, and the idea being here that business can have soul.

Yes. Or it can have success. But if it's going to have greatness, it's got soul. 100%. It's got, there's some, it's visceral. You can feel the service. You can feel the community is glad you're there. Yes.

Your customers are glad you're there. They don't feel screwed over in every transaction. They feel celebrated and seen. Like your customers, when they get out of debt, they come here and they scream and they celebrate and they go through an emotional experience because of the service you provide. As I said, with the crap on TikTok and the crap on Twitter particularly, I mean, some of the other platforms are not as bad, but they're still got their, version of it. There's this whole thing of, and there always has been, it's just social media is a new way to do it. Amplifies it. Yeah, it amplifies the stupidity. But the, um, but there's always been, there seems to be a disturbing level of people that are somehow demotivated to reach for the

stars. Yeah. And it's just distressing. I feel like the old guy, get off my lawn. You know, I mean, come on, man. Success. I mean, it's greatness. Go do it. And, and, and, you talk about your path to success means you must tune out the critics. A hundred percent of the time the people that are, if you're going for it, if you're leaving it all on the field, if you're getting up, leave the cave, kill something, and drag it home, the people that are part of that anti-work movement, I'll call it, are going to be critical. Yes. How do you tune out the critics?

I think for me, I've found good coaches that give me great feedback. That's the right information that I need to improve and to grow and overcome. But as you know, no one great is. really critical of others. No one who is an author leaves nasty reviews on other author's books. No one who's actually doing the work and creating things are out there talking bad about others. Maybe it's a few people, but most people when they're creating something and doing something, they know how hard it is to do that work. And they're not critical of others. So it's being aware and to really keeping your coaches, your mentors, your team close to you to give you the right

feedback to support you to overcoming these challenges, but not listening to the critics. only relying on their opinions in order to see if you are of value in doing good work. Better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. Yes. You know, never been a statue erected to the critics. Man in the arena. Yeah. The classic lines from Roosevelt, you know, and I'd rather have that dust on me.

I'd rather have those bruises on me, their scars on me. I'd rather have the dirt under my fingernails, the mental calluses. from the stress of having tried than to be the quivering soul in the corner that Roosevelt talks about that never tried. And I don't think you can have greatness with instant gratification. Again, this is something I think you preach a lot where it's like you can't be great if you just want something that you didn't earn or deserve or put work into creating and developing. If you didn't overcome something, you can be great as a human being for your generosity, but the instant gratification desire that you're talking about on social media, where it's like, I want this now without doing the work, without putting the reps. I don't think you can be great in that endeavor without doing those things.

Well, talk about the role of, and you do a great job. Talk about the role of failure on the path to greatness. Did you play sports growing up? Yeah. What was your main sport? Hockey. Hockey. When I played sports.

I'm water skiing, but yeah. Water skiing. A lot of falls. A lot of failure. Now, here's a funny, you know, speaking about the internet and memes, here's a meme that I actually appreciate. There's a meme that I've seen out there years ago that is of a baby trying to walk. And the quote above this photo of this baby trying to walk says, when a child is learning

to walk and it falls almost a thousand times, never does he think to himself, maybe this walking thing isn't for me. It's actually the path to falling and stumbling and be like, okay, I actually, I actually, got to figure out how to stabilize myself that it takes us to require to walk and learning that process. In sports, failure was just feedback. It was the information that I needed, okay, this approach to my shot doesn't work. That's information, it's feedback. Let's adjust it and try it the next time. In sports, you know, Michael Jordan missed half of his shots and he was the greatest of all time, arguably. The best baseball players fail 70% of the time. They strike out or don't hit a hit

70% of this time, and they're the greatest. And they have a 300. I mean, they have 300. Yeah, yeah. And I just think it's approaching failure as part of the process towards success and accomplishing what you want. I love this story from Sarah Blakely. I'm not sure if you've met Sarah.

Yeah, no, sir. Sarah from Spanx, sold her company, I think, for $1.2 billion a couple years ago. Sarah and Jesse have spoken for us at Andre. Yeah, they're amazing. And she has this amazing story that I talk about in the book where she said, every night at the dinner table when she was growing up, her dad would ask a simple question to their kids, what did you fail at today? And they would get in trouble if they didn't fail at something, if they didn't have something to say that they tried that. And I think celebrating the effort

and saying, you did it. Keep going. Okay, you're going to stumble and then it's going, you're going to figure it out eventually. If not, maybe that's not your thing and try the next thing. But celebrating the failure as a part of you're trying, you're learning, you're massaging, you're creating your talent, your gift. It's all part of the process. Don't shy away from it. Lean into it. And for those of you don't know, Sarah Blakely started the Spanx, the underwear to make you look skinny thing.

And one of the youngest female billionaires in American history, brilliant, brilliant business. And she talked about failure is the way. Yeah, it is the way. It's the path. I'm convinced after having met people in ministries, huge ministries and sports figures, country music people that I know. here in Nashville, business people that have done amazingly things of scale, that failure is really a pile of garbage, all the things you did, you just happen to be standing on it instead of laying under it. I like that. You know, it's just this, this gleaming mountain of success

really, really has a stench to it, you know? Smell of me. It's just really, it's really ugly. I don't really want to look down from there, because I know what I'm standing on is all of my stupid stuff that I survived and never do again. See, I do a lot of it. See, I do a lot of of stupid stuff, but my motto is don't do the same stupid stuff twice. Yeah. It's course correction. I wish I... It's course of correction.

It takes me a while to learn things and I do a lot of the stupid things over and over. Winners never quit. Yeah, they do. They quit doing the stupid stuff. Right. But you don't quit, quit. You just quit doing that thing that way because it didn't work. You adjust it.

Yeah. And it's a, it left a mark. Ouch. Yeah. I don't want to do that again. Ouch. Exactly. And, man, I, you know, I did that listening to the tapes of my radio show when I first started.

It sounded like the Beverly Hillbillies. We're doing talk radio. is country fried from now on. You mean you weren't perfect right away? Oh, you have no idea how bad it was. It was so bad. But I listened to it, I went, God, you have absolutely no credibility. You sound like you aren't, you're like your parents or cousins.

This is awful. And so I had to go course correct. I had to get a little help with my, I didn't want to take all the southern twang out because some of it has a certain appeal. But I had to get enough out to where it had some credibility. Oh, my gosh. Because it really was bad. And that's why I think having a coach, you know, from interviewing a lot of top athletes and being an athlete myself, I never accomplished my goals without a coach without having some support.

If you can't hire a coach, finding a personal advisory board of mentors and friends and peers that can support you. And I just think there's this kind of lone wolf mentality as well out there is like, I'm going to do it all on my own. And again, being here, knowing you have a thousand employees and you're impacting tens of millions of people every day through your network, you can't do that on your own. You need a team, you need coaches, you need advisors, you need support to get you to that next level. I just think that's wisdom. Yeah, that's one of the entree leadership materials. We have entree leadership coaches here on the team that work with the small business owners that are listening to us right now. And you just, you cannot, without videotape and someone to help you analyze the videotape, you can't correct your golf swing.

That's it. You just can't do it. You can't. And you've got to have someone else looking over your shoulder and going, you don't really see that, do you? Giving that feedback, yeah. I'm blessed here because I've got so many high-quality leaders in my inner circle that were all accountable to each other. And so we coach each other internally.

Exactly. But one of the biggest things that small business people struggle with is exactly what you said is loneliness. Because you know you can't see your own flaws. You know you can't see that swing is not. You know, you're off swing plane. You're going to hook the ball. You know that's going to. And you've got to see the video.

And then you've got to have a guy go, oh, look, if you'll just change that stance that, Oh, look at that. Look at what that did. Isn't that amazing? I don't do anything without a coach or at least an advisor or a mentor or someone who's been there and done that and leaning on them consistently. And that's why I think, you know, again, if you're an entrepreneur or a small business owner, like if you haven't signed up for your coaching program here, that should be the first step people take because I don't do anything without a coach if I want to be great at it. One of the things I loved about the new book, the greatness mindset, unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today. is my guest, is this, really the thesis, the central concept of the book is the greatness mindset. Yes.

So explain what you mean when you say a mindset of greatness. There's a page in here that is an assessment that I talk about the difference between the powerless mindset and the greatness mindset. And this is powerless. Powerless mindset versus the greatness mindset on page 201. And it's just a simple graphic that allows you to see it and reflect and say, where am I stepping into? A powerless mindset. Does this

does not mean you're bad or wrong or judgment? Just where are you at? Do I lack a meaningful mission? If so, I'm not stepping into my greatness when I'm not clear on a path. It doesn't mean I have to know that I'm going to, what I'm going to do for the rest of my life? Just what's season am I in and am I taking action on that path? Does fear control me? If so, it has some type of power over me. It's holding me back. It's causing me to not act courageously because I'm controlled. controlled by fear. Am I crippled by self-doubt? I'm a big believer that self-doubt is the killer of dreams. We could have all the talent in the world. We could have everyone else around us saying, you're incredible, you can do it. But if we don't believe, we're not going to take the action.

Yeah, we were talking about the haters, but the worst haters sometimes in our own head. Man, I don't know about you did, but if they recorded my thoughts when I was younger growing up, my teen years, my 20s, and they put it on a loudspeaker to the world. They probably put me in a mental institution for all the negative things I said to me. What, and if I said these things to my friends and my family and partner, they wouldn't want to hang out with me. We don't allow people to bully people anymore, but we bully ourselves. So much.

And so again, it is, we're, we're concealing our past pains and that's why we hurt, we hurt ourselves, we say nasty things to ourselves. We're defined by opinions of others. That means we're more powerless when we act out of fear of what other people think about us. And we drift towards complacency. Again, what you were talking about this kind of. quiet quitting mentality, this, I don't want to work hard. The complacency is a powerless mindset

way of thinking. So it's just being aware of these things. And again, it's not right or wrong, good or bad, but stepping into greatness means being driven by a meaningful mission, addressing and writing down your fears, I call it the fear list, going all in on your fears and making them something you're confident in, something you overcome, overcoming the self-doubt, whatever that insecurity where you say, I'm not enough, and learning how to make it and I am enough and I'm still improving and growing. That's what we need to do. We heal the past.

We create a healthy identity, which means we're not speaking horribly to ourselves constantly. We create a new contract with ourselves that we step into consistently. And we take action with a game plan. Again, your seven baby steps is a game plan. It's taking action with a game plan based on a meaningful mission. And a meaningful mission with a greatness mindset is not just for me, me, me. It's for we. It's how can I impact the people around me in my.

world. Yeah, it's work that matters. Yeah. It's got to be doing something that matters at the end of the day. When we added up, was it worth, did it do something for the culture, to do something for the society, did it do something for the organization? You know, this does align exactly with what we were talking about with failing forward, as our friend John Maxwell would say, this idea that the gleaming mountain of success is

really a pile of garbage. It involves engaging in activity, which 100% of the, you know, that's a lot of, you know, the time is going to cause you to make mistakes. 100%. The only way to avoid a mistake is do nothing, right? But doing nothing is a mistake. Yeah. And then you made a different kind of mistake.

The mistake of passivity. Yes. And so you engage in activity 100% of the time you're going to make a mistake of some kind to some degree. And then you get to create a healthy identity, which is forgive yourself. 100% for having done something stupid. 100%. I mean, the stupid stuff I've done became my brand, and it's working for me.

Right. You know, it's my failures are like, make me relatable. But you don't beat yourself up over them all the time. No, I don't. I mean, the rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason. You've owned it. You've accepted it. You've taken responsibility.

You've had peace with it. I'm not in denial that I did something stupid. I'm not in denial. It caused me pain or someone else pain or both. I'm not in denial. But it is in the rearview mirror, and there is nothing I can do about it. So I'm going to look out the windshield. It's a lot larger.

And let's go on to the next thing. Yeah. Next up. Next up. But a lot of times, at least I did this, and I know other people, we hold on to the memories of our past so much in our present, and it affects our future as well because we're living in that past. Well, and we'll cover that same conversation four thousand times in our head that's already

gone. Gone. The person's dead. Can't do anything. They're not even alive anymore. Gone. And you're still having the conversation. Move on.

Yeah. That's grace. That's personal grace. giving yourself forgiveness for not being perfect and existing in a human body. And oddly enough, not being perfect, existing in a human body, and in a human experience, and forgiving yourself for those things is an element of greatness. 100%. That's weird. Again, it's healing past pains as the greatest mindset.

It's not concealing past pains and being in shame or being in denial about them. Denial, lack of forgiveness, resentment, that doesn't support your peace. I know exactly what I did when I was 26 that caused me to file bankruptcy when I was 28. I know exactly what I did. And I know who did things to me. I was a victim of some things. But I was also set myself up to be a victim. So ultimately, I was not a victim at the end of that.

So I'm going to take personal responsibility for the parts that I have. I'm going to avoid the type of people that can do that to you. And that's one of the things called banks. You know, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do these kinds of things. I'm going to make these decisions to never be there again, to never be there again, to never be there again. So, yeah, there's a scar there, and there's a memory there that goes with that, but it's not my identity. It's in the past.

Yeah. And, man, in business, guys, you guys listening, you people doing leadership, you're going to screw up. You're managing people. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to trust the wrong people. You're going to place loyalty in the wrong places. You're going to fight sometimes on a hill. you shouldn't be fighting on.

Welcome to running a business. Welcome to human interactions. So forgive yourself and move on. Don't do the same thing again. Right. I mean, that's it. That one I'm not going to do again. That one I'm not going to do again.

And this is the part of the greatness mindset. And for goodness sakes, have a meaningful mission. And for goodness sakes, have a good coach in your corner. Get in touch with his entree leadership. If we can help you with that, we'd love to. Lewis, Howes, you're a great man. You are greatness. You are, I've been watching your career.

We've been friends a long time. have blown up, you've become a huge deal. I'm so proud of you. Thank you, sir. The greatness mindset, his latest bestselling book, unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today. So be sure and check it out. He's a New York Times bestselling author. Check out his podcast as well.

He's been a friend of ours for a long time and will continue to be. Thanks for stopping by, brother. Appreciate it, bro. Good to have you. Thanks, sir. Welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey. Well, this is it, you guys.

Entree Leadership Summit, arguably one of the best, if not the best leadership event in North America today. I'm proud of it. It's an event I would go to even if I didn't own it. I would be sitting in the audience and taking notes, and I will be sitting in the audience and taking notes. It's almost completely sold out. If you're going to go, it's time to paint or get off the ladder. It's time to make a decision. If you want to be there, you need to get your tickets that are almost gone. The Premier Leadership Conference of the Year, well, you're here. hear from the world's top business and thought leaders. Jordan Peterson will be there. My friend Willie Robertson from Duck Commander will be there. Malcolm Gladwell will be there. Dr. John Deloney, Ken Coleman, Dave Ramsey will be there. Many other top line speakers, teachers walking you through this leadership journey. If you want to come to Nashville,

we're going to be doing this in our home city, we would love to have you for the Entree Leadership Summit. go to Entreeleadership.com slash summit and reserve your spot before they're sold out. It's coming up this May, and you don't want to miss it, boys and girls. All right. Sean is next up. Sean is in St. Louis. Hey, Sean, how are you? I'm great, Dave.

How are you? Better than I deserve, brother. What's up? I appreciate you taking the call. I got a dilemma here. I own a lawnmower dealership with 18 members, been in business about seven years. My landlords have more than doubled the rent in the past six years. I don't really want to buy the building I'm in, and it would take probably 800,000 plus to build something

or buy something. I'm curious your advice on what to do, I guess, and how much to save before I go for something like that. Okay. One more time, you're in the lawn, what business? Law and loan loan loan loan loan dealership, so I sell zero turns and stuff like that. Okay. So how important is the traffic count in front of the location, or does the location matter at all? Is it destination customers? No, the traffic is very important. The location we're at is very good, so I don't want to lose that. Yeah. Well, you've lost it because you can't pay the rent. It doesn't make sense anymore, so we're going to go somewhere else. But the traffic count matters. So the quality of the traffic count by there, the number of cars per day in front of it, is a big. advertisement for you and it lets people know to come there to buy the lawnmower, right?

Or to get it repaired or whatever. Okay. That makes sense. So what's your gross revenues? We do about a million and a half right now and hopefully growing year every year. Okay. That's where we're right now. And you've got a high cost of good soul because you're running an actual hard inventory

piece, right? Correct. Yeah. So what are your margins under 10%? It's more like 20 probably. That's a gross margin, though. You're not netting that, are you? No, and that's, yeah, and that's probably closer to 10.

Yeah, okay. That's what I was thinking. All right, because, I mean, you've got a big, you got a big dog piece of machinery in the equation here. Okay, so. Yes. All right. Number one, I would not think about buying today.

I would just move to another rental location. Okay. And we want to tie it up at least five years. I prefer to tie it up five years with an option to buy it if it meets certain guidelines. Now, here's the problem. How long have you been in business? Seven years. Good for you.

How much have you grown during that seven years? A lot. I think the first year we were probably $250,000. What about in terms of space needs? How much have you grown? We're definitely both done at the seams now. So you've grown 4X in space needs as well as revenues? Yeah, I think, I mean, I can get by where I'm at now.

We're definitely bumping elbows. Okay, so aren't you glad you don't own that? Yeah. You know? Because all of a sudden the real estate starts squeezing your business creativity because you're subconsciously afraid to grow because you're outgrowing the place you bought and own. This is the problem with buying the real estate for a small business.

Usually, if you're in a growth curve like you are, you're going to be better off for a long time being a renter, as long as you're growing. Until you get cash flow so dramatically good that you can afford to buy way beyond your needs, and you've got, you know, you're buying 2x what your need is so you can grow into it for years to come. All right. So what I want you to do is I want you to do two things. What your ideal property is today, if I'm in your shoes, is go to an area of town that is the edge of the growth area. It's kind of green. Everything hasn't quite gotten there yet. It's not mature. You follow me?

Yeah. So in the next 10 years, it's going to grow all up around you. You follow me? If you go to an area that's just okay right now, but was prime three years ago, 10 years from now, it's probably not an area of people even want to drive into. So go out to the edge of the green and start talking to somebody about leasing there from them five years with a five-year option to renew, with an option to purchase for X number of dollars anytime in those lease years. okay so and it ought to be two X what you need in size pay some extra rent pay a little extra rent that building doesn't exist do i ask someone to build it for me i guess yep they build it and lease it back to you got it um uh because it's not an expensive building and you've got a pretty

stable ongoing concern you would be a strong tenant for somebody to do that you're not an a class tenant, meaning you're not a credit tenant, but you've got a thing. And just keep poking around. And I want you to look at so much real estate in the next several months that you're gagging on it. You hate real estate because you know more about every building that's available in the area than anybody else, including all the real estate agents, because all you do is look at everything. Anytime you see an empty building, you look it up on the tax records, you call the owner and find out what's going on with it, even if it's not for sale or lease. Right? You're just, you're turning over rocks, you're turning over rocks, you're trying to find the right deal.

This is exactly what I did 15 years ago, 14 years ago, all right? And I ended up with three properties that would work. Only one of them would let me lease with an option. So I went with it. It was a 55,000 square foot building. I needed 13,000 feet. And I had an option to take the rest of the building as a tenant as I grew as someone moved out. and I had an option to buy the building after five years for $5 million.

I saved the $5 million during that five years, bought the building. It was worth $13 million. We outgrew it and came out to the green area. I'm talking about seven years ago and bought 47 acres and started building again. And so I've experienced exactly what you're dealing with. And I'm telling you, if you're not careful, when I had that $155,000 square foot building and we had outgrown it, you can't keep it because you love the real estate, you love the building, but all of a sudden the business is conforming to the real estate instead of the real estate conforming to the

business. You follow me? That's what I don't want you to get into. I would rather you rent the rest of your business career than have the building tell your business what to do instead of your business tell the building what to do. I don't care if you own real estate for the purposes of the business. I care that the business grows and thrives first and foremost. And if as a part of that we can work some building ownership into it, fine.

If not, we'll take a bunch of those profits and just go buy some real estate for fun. That's still be a tenant. Does that make any sense? Yes, definitely. If you had called me 10 years ago or seven years ago and I had told you some way to finance the building that you're in and you had bought it, you'd be screwed right now. Yeah. You'd be trying to figure out a way to move and sell the building you're in.

You'd have a business problem and a real estate problem right now because you're all away up against the wall. You've got no room for inventory. The customers can't walk through there. You've got stuff stacked 10 high. There's no room for the parts delivery. I mean, I know what you're dealing because if we did the exact same crap, we had shipping stacked three high.

We threatened to put cubes in the building that were double-deckers. We were trying to figure out a way to make the stupid building work instead of make the business work around it. And that's what I want for you. I'd rather you just be a renter. Okay. But best case is you rent in enough space in an area that the economy is going to grow towards you, and you later can buy it when you've got the cash, no debt. You knew I was going to say that, right?

Some things are predictable, brother. Amen. That's a really good question. and thanks for letting me get on my soapbox and tell stories. But it also, they're real stories. They really happen. And it really helps you in this situation. But you do need a high traffic count location.

You are going to pay a premium rent for that in some way or another. But maybe the particular location you're in is just more, is a little bit more valuable than you actually need. You don't need an A class location from a retail perspective. You need a B minus or a C plus from a retail perspective to sell lawnmowers. This is the entrepreneurship. Tray Leadership Podcast. Thanks for being with us on the Entree Leadership Podcast.

I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is Common Sense. In the South, we call it horse sense. I don't know why. Like horses have sense. But, yeah, it's just good old common country ideas that have been woven into sophisticated academic and leadership concepts and been used to create a $300 million business called Ramsey Solutions. I'm the owner. I started it on my card table in my living room over 30 years ago,

and one layer at a time, one stupid but thing at a time I've survived. We've grown this thing, and I've made every mistake out there, and I made a lot of good decisions too, and that's how we got here. And we're here to help you do just exactly the same with your leadership skills, with your business, with your ministry, whatever it is. We would love to hear from you. If you want to be be part of the podcast. You can call me at 844-944-1070. We'll help you. Or fill out the form at entreleadership.com slash ask, and we'll make you part of this. The other thing we need you to do is subscribe to this podcast if you haven't. Push the old follow button there. The subscribe button, whatever it is on YouTube or

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And so we need your help with that, every bit of it. Darren is with us. Darren's up next in Canada. Hi, Darren. Hi, how are you doing today? Better than we deserve, sir. How can we help? We're a small nonprofit grade school here.

And my question today is how can I best lead with the spirit of humility for the rest of my school board members? I'm the youngest member, brand new, and just, I don't know, maybe a sense of peace for what I need here is all the alarm bells are going off. And it just seems like that emergency. What alarm bells? mostly financial so I started this year

was the year I started being part of the school board and no one seems to think that our school is going to shut down but to me

it's looking like if we continue the way we're doing things we're not going to make it very far and I don't know my my thoughts keep getting pushed aside by the other board members

but I just don't see what they are supposedly seen. Am I crazy or am I just young and inexperienced and just need to let them take care of it? So it looks to you like that the revenue versus the expenses is on a crash course for the wall? Correct. That's a math thing. How are they explaining that away? I get a lot of, well, I can't reinvent the wheel, but I would think that, well, if you change terrain, you've got to change your wheels. And we've changed terrain.

No, no, no, no, no. We have to first have agreement that we're heading towards the wall. Correct. Do we have agreement on that? No. Okay. Then let's start there. And, you know, if you say, okay, we've got, I'll make up a number, $100,000 coming in,

it appears we have $120,000 going out. How is it you guys think we're covering that shortfall? I'm missing something. So the thing they keep saying, since we're a Christian school, let God provide. Sure, I agree, let God provide, but I believe he already has provided, and we're just letting the money fall out the window. But there is a shortfall, and their answer is let God provide. Correct.

We're just kind of sticking our head. And that is not biblical. No, I agree. Jesus said don't build a tower without first counting the cost, lest you get halfway up and you're unable to finish. And all who see you began to mock you and say, this man began to build and was unable to finish. Here's another bunch of Christians who can't seem to do math,

and they close the thing and hurt the reputation, the witness in the community, because they didn't bother to do arithmetic. Hey, God says he's going to feed the sparrows. but he doesn't drop worms into the nest. They have to leave the nest, go get the worms, right? Yeah. So if the only answer to obvious systemic business problems,

sewing and reaping cause and effect problems is, la, la, la, la, la, la, nothing's going on. God's going to provide. And you're not in power to stop that. your best bets not be there anymore. See, I think that we actually have a lot of potential, though. I do think that we don't have potential if you're going broke and everybody's standing around. The airplane's out of gas.

It's going to the ground and everybody's singing kumbaya. Yeah, I just think that. I think the school has potential too, but it's got crummy leadership is what you're telling me. Right, and I'm trying, that's kind of the point of the call. How can I best come to this? How many board members are there? How many board members are there? Five total.

And how did you get on this board? We are elected one by one from the society. The society of what? Cool society. It's just all the parents. Okay, from the customers. Correct. Okay, so it's a nonprofit and the customers vote on the kids' parents vote.

on who's going to be on the school board. And you all five have equal votes. Is there an executive, a superintendent, a principal that's supposed to execute the directions of the board? This person is also thinks everything's okay? This person is part of the board. I know, but they also think everything's okay? They will just, it sounds so weird to say it a lot.

It will just work itself out in the end. Yeah. and I disagree. I want to be able to, I do think that just with a few pen marks you could fix this off. Just cutting, you know, cutting costs. St. Ambrose said, work like it all depends on you, pray like it all depends on God. Okay, so this form of Christian narrative that, if there's a form of Christian narrative that does not involve the power of God, it's not a Christian narrative. If there's a Christian narrative that does not involve you people taking responsibility for what he put in your hands as good managers and you're faithful in the little things, then it's also a toxic form of Christianity.

And that's what you're discussing with me. So I don't know exactly how to convince someone not to do that, but I'm probably pretty quickly going to draw a line in the sand. I personally don't want to be involved with this board if they're going to fly the airplane into the side of the mountain. I don't want to be on board. I'd rather watch from a distance, you know? And because if they, in other words, this is an ultimatum. If they refuse to be responsible stewards, God has entrusted the responsibility of this school to them,

and if they refuse to take the practical, reasonable business actions to cause the school to exist, then these are not adults. These are children. and I'm going to put it on the table. I mean, you could do that humbly. You don't have to be as brash as I'm being right now, but that's the essence of what you're facing, Darren, and I'm so sorry.

It's so frustrating. I've been in those kinds of meetings. It's one of the reasons I don't serve on boards. I'm not very good at it because I'm right and they're wrong, and then there we are, you know, so I'm the opposite of what you were asking about, you know, so I don't know if I'm good enough to answer your question, but how do I humbly approach this? I think humble is you say I'm not positive I've got any thanks but my perception ladies and gentlemen is that God gave us this responsibility and not addressing these issues is irresponsible much like the parable the talents the one guy that was given the least amount did the worst with it and what did Jesus do he shut down the school he took the money from the guy with the smallest amount in the parable of the talents that did a bad job and gave it to someone

else left him broke. Who did he give it to? The one who addressed the issues, who did a good job of managing the money that he was given. So we have a responsibility as people of faith to take action and to do a good job as best we can with stewardship and then leave the results to God. In other words, if you're going to, as you sow, so shall you reap. If you're going to, if you want corn, you should put some corn in the ground, not stand over. over the mud and pray for corn and say, well, God will take care of it. It'll work itself out. Yeah, you're going to have sun and rain and mud and no corn because you planted sparingly and you're going to reap sparingly. There's a cause and effect part of our faith walk as well. And so that's the kind of stuff

I'm going to talk to them about, is we have a responsibility as stewards over this opportunity called this beautiful little school that we have. And if we don't manage that, and instead we just stand back and say, God's going to fix things that we were supposed to take care of, that is irresponsible stewardship, and that's covered in Scripture. Does that make sense?

Absolutely, yeah. I'm afraid that. I don't know that they're going to hear that, though. I've tried. Yeah. Okay, so a follow-up, then. But from this point on, what can I do? In my mind, I would have a couple options.

I could stick around and do my best to try to work it out until the end of year until that decision of closing or not comes up. Or would you just walk out and give up? Or would you take other option? I don't know that there's a nuclear option in terms of, there's no, you know, I personally wouldn't stir up a church split over it. You know, I wouldn't try to get all the parents to fire all the board members and get responsible ones in there. I don't want to cause that much of a ruckus.

That does feel, has smacks of disunity and all those kinds of things that I abhor worse than I abhor poor stewardship. So, you know, I think you've got to do what you got to do, Darren, you've got to make a decision. I have no idea what to tell you to do. I think if I'm in this situation, I'm going to really do everything I can to be as convincing and persuasive as I can that we have to address these things or we're going to lose this and it's going to be our fault and God trusted it to us. And then if they just look at you like you've got one eye in the center of your head and you're too dumb for words and they're not going to do any of it, I really can't leave my name on this disaster that's going to happen. I have to step out. Now you can just choose to do that now, after having a discussion with them one last time, or you can choose to do that at the end of the school year or whatever.

But if you are convinced that their irresponsibility and their lack of diligence in managing this well, and instead of taking, making hard decisions, instead of adjusting expenses, instead of not hiring because they can't afford to, and ignoring the mathematics, in case of any of that, then if you're convinced that they're just not going to do it, then you're not dealing with people that you want to be associated with long term. I don't anyway. And so I've got to gently and kindly as I can go, guys, y'all have a different view on this, I do and I don't fit in.

And I sure hope what you're doing works. I don't see how it's going to work. And I can't leave my name on something that I think is being mismanaged. It breaks my heart. I would love to. I would love to be in here and help. And I just can't. And so I've got to submit my resignation.

And obviously it's not a paid position anyway. It's just something you've got a heart for and you're trying to be helpful to the community and maybe your kids go there and whatever else. And it's just sad, just sad. But this happens a lot. This type of thing happens a lot in a nonprofit setting, sadly. And but it is incumbent upon those of us, for the rest of you out there that are people of faith,

to trust God for his provision while simultaneously taking action and being responsible stewards over what he is. has given us. The area he has given you responsibility for, you're supposed to act on that area. That field is yours to till. That field is yours to plant. And if you don't do that and you stand back and say, God will provide, that is not Christianity. That's a form of mysticism that does not involve biblical Christianity. Because God does not strike the field with lightning and corn pop up. He can, but he doesn't. Instead, he involves calluses on your hands, my hands, hoeing, getting the rocks out, putting the corn in the ground. And that's an act of responsible stewardship. And then once the corn's in the ground, then it's God's job to bring the sun and the rain. It's this wonderful dance, this rhythm, this partnership of faith with the great Almighty. And that's true in a nonprofit. And it's true for those of us that run a

profit organization. By the way, there's no difference in nonprofit and profit, because as we've just heard from Darren, nonprofits that don't make a profit, close. Nonprofit is an accounting entry by the tax people. It's not a biblical entry. It doesn't make it wholly, and it doesn't give you a pass on cause and effect, sewing and reaping, because you put it under the heading of a nonprofit. And so we have to address those things out there. Darren, I'm sorry, you've got a sweetheart. You're You're kinder than me. I'm old enough. I'm the get off my lawn guy.

And so I, I, you know, my patience for this kind of stuff has, has waned over the years. I'm not as, you know, if I was sitting in the room with them, I might be a little gentler than I am being right now. But that stuff aggravates the crud out of me, as you can tell. So I hope it works out for you. Hope it works out for those little kids in that school. I hope you and I are wrong. And these people have a, they have a plan. they have a vision that we just don't see in this conversation, and it all works out.

I'm not going to be mad if it all stays open. I don't want bad things for them, but it does give us the ability to get on a soapbox and teach about a proper perspective of faith in the marketplace and how that all works out. Hey, if you've got a business or a leadership question that you want to ask me, hey, just leave it. We might put it on the podcast. Go to entreleadership.com. ask or give us a call and leave a voicemail at 844-944-1070.

We're so glad you're with us. Spread the word for us, folks. We'll be on here yaking every Monday. We'll drop a new one of these. Don't miss out. It's called the Entray Leadership Podcast.