EntreLeadership - How to Multiply Yourself With a Habit of Delegation with Dave Ramsey and James Clear

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Join us as our host, George Kamel, sits down with Dave Ramsey, the founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions, for our first episode of our series on habits. Dave dives into the habit of delegation and why it’s a force multiplier for you and your team. Later, George sits down with speaker and bestselling author James Clear. James shares how to start new habits that actually stick so you can live out the leadership habits we’re covering in this series. Hang around until the end of the episode for a special announcement from Dave Ramsey about the future of this podcast! You’ll learn: •      Why leaders don’t delegate •      How a gruesome injury led to Atomic Habits •      How habits shape our culture •      How successful people leverage their time Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Give us your feedback by leaving a voicemail at 844.944.1070 or emailing [e-mail] •      Get your copy of the Delegation quick read: https://bit.ly/3HDrV5r •      Register to join Dave at EntreLeadership Summit 2023: https://bit.ly/3Uw3PMQ •      James Clear’s website: https://bit.ly/3G2k1kZ •      Atomic Habits by James Clear: https://bit.ly/3UYKyDG •      Previous episodes with James Clear: Atomic Habits with James Clear: https://bit.ly/3HBTcVH How to Build Great Habits with James Clear: https://bit.ly/3uX5obX •      If you have a leadership or business question for Dave, call and leave a voicemail at 844.944.1070 •      Listen to The Ramsey Show: http://bit.ly/3ErRhQp 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 with the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy New Year. We're kicking off the year with a five-part series on the most important habits you need to develop this year to become a successful leader. On today's episode, we are diving into the first habit on the list, delegation, and why it's so crucial to your success as a leader. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast from the Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, your team, and you know, your team. team and your profits. For our first segment today, we've got Dave Ramsey on the habit of delegation why leaders don't want to delegate and what it looks like to win at delegating. In our second segment, we've got speaker and number one bestselling author James Clear. You know him from his book Atomic Habits, and he's going to share how to start new habits that actually stick so that you can take these leadership habits we're laying out in the series and instill them in your lives each week. Then stick around to the very end because we've got a special announcement from Dave Ramsey

about the future of this podcast. Joining me now for our first segment is Dave Ramsey, founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. Dave, welcome back. Well, thanks, George. And happy new year to you. Happy new year to you. So as we are jumping into this series, we know that delegation is one of the most missed habits that can hurt leaders as they try to scale and grow and develop.

And you actually released a quick read book on this. Why now? Well, it keeps coming up. I mean, there's four or five things. We know that leaders in small businesses, consumers of this podcast, really that I've struggled with as I was doing this thing called growing a business. And so one of the things is delegations. So we felt like we needed to address it head on. And we talk about treadmill operators. So a lot of the times these leaders that are just, you know, they're starting out. They've been in business for a few years. But now it's like, oh, we've scaled. We have enough revenue. enough growth that I can't do it all myself, and it becomes a bottleneck for the rest of the team, which is frustrating for the leader and for the team. Absolutely, it is. It's frustrating, and I don't know, it's more than frustrating. It creates this pull because it's like, I know I need to do something. I don't know how to do it, and so I just don't. I mean, there's this freezing

of the deer in the headlights kind of thing that happens with, it did with me anyway. Yeah. Well, I want to let our listeners know if they want to grab a copy of that quick read on delegation from Dave Ramsey. We've got a link for them in the show notes. So as we dive into this, what if you found the reasons to be that leaders just can't let go? They can't learn to delegate. Well, I mean, it is tied to the whole thing of getting the right people on the team. That whole thing we do on hiring and firing, and we talk about that a lot. That's also a major pain point like delegation is.

These are tied directly together because if you've got the right people on the team, it makes the process easier. but most people that hesitate to delegate aren't control freaks. They simply want the job done right, and they're not sure the person in front of them is going to do the job right. So not delegating in that situation would be called wisdom, right? You know, you don't want to hand the keys to a car, you know, a $50,000 car to a 14-year-old who's never driven. I'm not delegating that. That's wisdom. That's not, you're a micromanager, dad.

No, I'm not going to let you tear up my dad-gum car. I've worked hard to build this business and you're not going to screw it up with your, you know, by your ineptness, your incompetence in these areas. So it is wisdom in a lot of cases. But we kind of accuse ourselves in our own minds, sometimes external forces accuse us of being micromanagers. If that's the situation, you're not really a micromanager. You're wise and you need to be training people to where they are competent to carry it so you can turn it over to them. Yeah. What I love about that is it holds the mirror up to the leader going, oh, I have a lot.

done a good enough job showing this person how to do this. We just assume in our minds, well, we hired them. We're giving them a paycheck, Dave. They should just know how to do it. Exactly I want. And not only do they don't know how to do the particular thing, which they may have been trained to do the thing, but do it the way you want it done inside your brand, inside your business. It's got your thumbprint, your fingerprints all over it. And people aren't going to look to the guy that messed it up. They're going to look to you. You own it. You run it. It's got your face, your name on the thing. And so, I mean, you're heating their guy. your technician tears up somebody's house, they're not going to point their finger at that guy.

They're going to point your finger back at the guy that owns the thing and says, you know, you let a duber in my house. And so you've got to go through that. So when I first started delegating, I did it for the wrong reasons. I did it because it was work. I just was frustrated. I was overwhelmed. I couldn't get to it.

And so them doing anything was better than me doing nothing because I was overwhelmed. And that was really a bad basis for delegated. Another reason I delegated was, and this is actually a good reason, was this something I didn't know how to do. I have never written a line of code yet, and I've got almost 500 people on our team here in technology that write all kinds of lines of codes. And it's like a big joke that I own this technology company and I can't spell technology. But those are people that know how to do something. I don't know how to do. They're a specialist in a sense as if you hire someone to do your taxes that doesn't work on your team necessarily.

but, you know, same thing. You're delegating the tax work because you don't know how to do the taxes. And that's a smart thing to do. That's different than the frustration thing. That's saving you a lot of time and energy. And, you know, all this delegation, it reminds me of marriage in the sense that we assume the other person is just going to be a mind reader and know exactly what we're needing, how we want it done, do it perfectly, and that causes a lot of tension. And so we've got to get good at this habit. But what needs to be true for someone to get good at this? Because you mentioned, you know, your kind of turning point where you started to get good at it. What was true in your life at the time where you went, oh, this is working? And I actually enjoy delegating now. Well, the first thing I did is I started realizing there was a nobility to delegation, as my friend Gerber says in the book, E-Mith, to work on your business, not just in your business. The business was never going to grow. It was never going to be bigger because I was controlling everything because, A, I didn't have the right team in place that had the right skills and B, I'd never trained anyone to be able to me to be comfortable to hand off to them. And so there's a nobility that says, A, I don't know how to do everything. That's a humility

of a nobility of humility. And then there's this thing of, I want to do something bigger than I can do by myself. And so I've got to learn this skill. Once I dove into that, I finally poked around and I discovered what became the thesis of the original entree leadership lesson on delegation, still is the thesis on that lesson. And the thesis of this little quick read. And that is here's the secret to delegation. Right here. Ready? One, two, three. If you can trust someone's competency and you can trust their integrity, you can delegate to them.

Are they going to tell the truth? Are they going to do the right thing? Are they going to take care of the customer? And do they know how to write a line of code? Do they know how to fix the heat and air? Do they know how to do the thing? And are they going to do it in a way that they act like they care and they act like they're one of the owners of the business emotionally, and then you're ready to delegate to them.

And I can turn out, I figured out about myself. I'm really not a control freak. I just am very protective of the name Ramsey and what it means. And so I don't want to turn something over to someone who's going to screw it up. So, but as soon as I can find they're not going to screw it up, because they're competent and they have integrity, I love not doing all the work. It's a lot more fun.

I can get a lot more done. I can be a little lazier. I can be places where I'm not. I delegate the crud out of everything around here. Once I find people that I can delegate due to their competency and their integrity. Now, how do you know that that's the case? Well, you've trained them, you've spent time with them, you've mentored them, you've listened to them, use very similar phrases that you would want them to use because the same thing would have

come out of your mouth. Can you finish my sentences is one of the things we say around here all the time? And if they can do that, if they're going to do it the way, you want it done from an integrity perspective and a competency perspective, it's a joyous affair to delegate to that person. But that involves the quality of the person. You can't put a doofus in the seat, never train them, okay? No donkey's going to become a thoroughbred, no matter how hard you train them, all right? So we put the right person in the seat, and then we're going to pour into that person and spend time with them, not just assume because they've got a certain degree or a certain

certification or there's something on the resume that they can just walk in day one and delegate. That's where corporate America screws up, is they delegate to supposed knowledge instead of proven competencies. That's big. So that coaching piece is really important. Does that happen in one-on-ones? Is that more, you know, you delegate to a different leader as you scale? What does the coaching process look like? Because obviously, like you said, this happens over time. It does not day one. We just have this instant trust of their competency and integrity. Well, it starts day one. I mean, your onboarding process. You know, when you have someone come in, in the old days, we'd say, there's a desk and a phone and a computer, start making calls, you know,

and we'd walk away. And that was your whole onboarding process. They couldn't even find the bathroom. They didn't know what to do. And so their effectiveness early in their career was very low and very frustrating for them, for the customer. And then we would go, well, they're not doing the job right. Well, you never showed them how to do the stinking job. So onboarding and saying, this is, I know you know how to do right code. I know you know how to fix heat and air. I know you know how to dot, dot, dot, dot. But the way we do it here is this and this and this and this and spend some very intense time in the first three or four weeks while they're in their honeymoon phase when they came to work for you and really, really pour into them. And then it's checkups with one-on-ones. And then it's course

corrections when there's a stumble. And then it's, you know, regular check-ins and meetings and, you know, you're checking metrics and going, wait a minute, this thing seems to be off track. You look at the math and you go, you dig into the situation, go, oh, the reason the math is doing that is, stinking things off track. We know, we're not on course. And we go, okay, why is that? And so, but then you start, that's delegating the basic tasks. Then delegating leadership takes a little longer because you're delegating a concept then.

And they've really got to get inside your spirit, inside your philosophy of life to be able to delegate leadership to someone so that they can lead others the way you want them led. That's more complicated, but much more. Man, you talk about a force multiplier. When you can start to lead leaders well, and you can trust their competency as a leader, their integrity, boom, this thing explodes. That changes everything. And it also goes back to the mission, vision, and values, making sure those are clear, they're communicated early and often, and you've rallied the team around that, rallied your leaders around that, so we're all on the same page. Now, that's the cultural piece of the, you know how to do what you do, but we do it this way here.

And that's what mission is. That's what values are. That's what our internal culture is. And so, you know, the way we say it is we always say it this way. And it's almost like a scripted training, if you will. But it's not really. It's just ingraining the culture. It's not reading a script, wrote, or just like, you know, boring and, you know, monotone.

But it's drilling into my head. This is the way this place breathes. This is the rhythm. This is where the tide goes out. The tide comes in. This is how I can feel what I'm riding here. And then the person has a lot of confidence to go with their competence and their integrity. But new people that come in solely on their resume or on their past successes at another place,

their confidence is unfounded until proven in the location that you're running. Yeah, that's so good. So what's the first step a leader should take? They're listening and they're going, Dave, I love the idea of everything you're saying is great. What do I do this week to get better at delegation? First thing I had to do was I looked up and I had hired some donkeys. And the reason I couldn't delegate is they weren't going to win the Kentucky Derby, no matter how much I poured into them.

And so I had to do an assessment and go, I screwed up. I can't delegate to that guy or that gal ever until they've become a whole different person. I ain't got time for that. So I'm going to have to put someone else in that seat if I'm going to delegate that particular job. otherwise I've got to watch donkey boy and make sure he does every stinking thing right which drives me nuts okay and so that began a process of getting the right people you know the old jim collins thing get the right people on the bus the wrong people off the bus and the right people on the right seats on the bus and in some cases you know we've all talked about this in the hiring and firing portion a donkey is actually a thoroughbred in the wrong seat

and when you move them into the right seat boom they light up they're functioning in their skills their natural personality attributes, you know, and it's like you just thought they could do something they couldn't do, and they can do this other thing a whole lot better. And now you've got somebody you can delegate to, because they've got the right stuff, and they're even going to add to it things you couldn't add to it with their skills. So getting people in the right seats a big deal or set them free in Jesus' name. And so this all really starts with hiring. You can't delegate if you didn't do hiring right. And so it's a great reminder going back to that as we talk about hiring a whole bunch on this podcast. and a lot of leaders are struggling with that.

Sometimes you're like, I got to hire someone, Dave. I got to need someone in the seat. But I think the thing that people miss on this is the pure management theory people who don't actually freaking run a business and make payroll, they throw around this delegation like it's just automatic. And it's like it's plug and play. Like you just plug this person in and you should magically delegate to them. That's so much crap.

That is just not true. And I kind of have this like delegation shame on me. You know, like I just wasn't good enough. I was too much of a control freak. I was too demanding because I got a low tolerance for anything less than excellence. I really do. And so I thought it was just me being a hard butt or me being crazy or whatever. And so I'll never really be able to grow anything because nobody will do it like I want it done, all that.

And it really was none of that. I was actually being wise because I had someone I couldn't delegate to. And, you know, again, giving a 14-year-old the keys to your $50,000 automobile is not delegation. That's stupidity. And so I want to tell our entree leaders out there, I want to set you free. You should not delegate, and you should not be ashamed for not delegating until you take the steps to get the right people on the seats and the right mentoring and the right onboarding, the right training, the right ongoing checkups, the right one-on-ones, so that I can trust your competency and their integrity. And that takes a lot of time. But once you get it done, it saves a lot of time.

Yeah, man, so much wisdom in that, Dave. Thanks for giving us a spark notes of the delegation. Quick read. I want to make sure all of our leaders check that out. And if you want to hear more from Dave, he's going to be at Entree Leadership Summit, 2023. We are ramping up for it. We've got an incredible speaker lineup. Not just Dave Ramsey. We've got Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Manit Johan, Patrick Lanchione, Willie Robertson, Ken Coleman, Dr. John Deloni, need I say more. They're all going to be taking the summit stage. And a few of them will be on the podcast this month. So it'll be a little teaser of what's come. And it's all happening right here, Nashville, Tennessee, May 30th through June 2nd. Don't miss it. Go to Entreeleadership.com slash summit to secure your spot. Up next, I'll be joined by bestselling author James Clear to talk about how to start new habits that actually stick. All right, coming up next, we've got the one and only James Clear speaker and number one bestselling author of the book, Atomic Habits. And we're here to talk about how to start habits that actually stick for all of you leaders out there. James, welcome to the show.

great to talk to you. Thanks for having me. So this book Atomic Habits has been on the desks of so many Ramsey team members, many Ramsey leaders here. And I got to ask you, over the last four and a half years, has your mind changed as you've dug into this topic more? Has anything changed? Do you have any regrets? Well, I don't think I have regrets, but I certainly am trying to continue to learn, you know, and improve and try to refine either my approach or thoughts on the topic. And you always come across new examples and new stories. And now I've had a chance to talk to a lot of the people who've read the book and they come up with new ideas that they have their own stories. So that part's been great. I would say in general, it feels really affirming. Like I tried to write a book that I felt

was evergreen and timeless. And so you kind of hope that those principles don't change that much. And, you know, habits have been a topic for a very long time. And they will continue to be a topic for a long time after I'm gone. You know, like, I'm just kind of adding my little bit to the pile. It's a very long history of people who've wrote about the topic. Probably the one thing, if I had to pick one thing that I feel like is more important now than I realized when I was writing the book is the influence of social environment and just how strong the pull of the groups and tribes that were a part of

can be on your habits and behavior. And so that's something I'm happy to talk about more. But I would say if I had to pick one thing, that's probably the one. Yeah, a lot of change in that sphere, especially with social media now and technology and the internet and remote work. I mean, all of that has kind of, this is all pre-COVID when you wrote the book and now in a post-pandemic world, it's like, how do we still create these habits, get connected, be around the right people and change our physical environments, which now matter so much more. So we're going to get into all of that. But I want to start with your baseball career, which is something you don't talk about too frequently. but what is the connection between habits and your baseball career? Did it start there or is it before that?

Well, it was before that, but I wasn't thinking about it too carefully. You know, all humans are building habits all the time. So, you know, from the moment you're born, your brain is looking for ways to conserve energy, to be more effective and efficient, to solve the problems of life with less thought so that you can free up attention and energy to direct elsewhere or to just kind of get through your day more smoothly. And so, of course, there were all kinds of habits I built throughout my childhood. But I would say that baseball was the place where I was exposed to the ideas in a very explicit way. You know, as any athlete can tell you, there are all kinds of habits that you're practicing in the gym or on the field and so on. And then, as I mentioned in the book, I suffered a very serious injury where I was hit in the face of the baseball bat. It was an accident. But the response from that, the fallout from that injury, was very long. I couldn't drive a car for nine months.

I was practicing basic motor patterns, like walking in a straight line when I went to my first physical therapy session. And it was kind of this time in my life when I had to start small. You know, I could only do a little bit each day. And so that was all that I could focus on. Of course, I just wanted to be able to flip this switch and get back to the person that I was before. But it was a very long and arduous process.

And so I didn't have a language for it. at the time. Now I write things like an atomic habit's about getting 1% better each day or, you know, finding small wins. And I, I never would have said that if you were coming up to me at the time, but I did have to practice it. And so I think that that experience gave me some real life examples of what these concepts look like in practice. And then as I started researching and writing about the topic more in the like decade to come, I had something to kind of root what I wrote about. It kind of root those experiences in the words I was writing. And this is something I feel like is central to my approach for writing in general, but specifically about habits, which is,

you know, it's a decent amount of work to have a thoughtful opinion, but anybody can have an opinion. It's much harder to practice something. And I try as best as possible to write about topics that I implement and don't just like theorize on. And I think that's, makes the topics better. I think it makes the writing better because I have struggled with all the same things everybody else struggles with what habits. You know, it's like, do you procrastinate? Of course. You know, like, have you focused too much on the goal and not enough on the process? Yes, all the time. And so in a sense, everything I write is just a reminder to myself to try to come back to center or return to the fundamentals and focus on the things that actually deliver results in

the long run. Yeah, and part of that approach is identity-based goals. and that you kind of flip goals on their head, and this has been one of the stickiest pieces of your work for me personally. And for leaders out there, it's reframing their sentences to instead of focus on results and revenue and things that can be tracked, it's starting the sentence with, I'm the kind of leader who. That is a very different approach. What is the power in that?

Well, first, I think it's natural for us to focus on results. You know, this is coming from someone who, like I consider myself to be very results-oriented. And results are highly visible. You know, like, you're never going to see a news story that's like, man eats chicken and salad for lunch. You know, it's like only going to be a story after it's like, man loses 100 pounds, you know, or you're never going to see people talking about like, you know, James wrote 500 words today. It's only a story when it's like, James launches Atomic Abbots and it's a bestseller.

So the results of success are highly visible and widely discussed. And the process of success is often hidden. and invisible and not really talked about. And I think that kind of gives us this bias towards overvaluing results and maybe undervaluing the process a little bit. It's all we ever talk about. It's all we ever see.

Now, the typical discussion about habits is that the reason habits matter is because of the results they'll give you. They matter because they'll help you be more productive or more efficient. They matter because they'll help you get fit or make more money. And it's true that habits can do those things.

And that's great. But I think the real reason that habits matter, the true reason, is that every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become. And so your habits are how you embody a particular identity. So, for example, every day that you make your bed, you embody the identity of someone who's clean and organized. Or if you study biology for 20 minutes on Tuesday night, you embody the identity of someone who's studious.

and all of your experiences in life matter. Like, they all shape who you are and part of your story. But your habits, by virtue of the fact that they get repeated over and over again, they cast more votes on the pile. They provide the bulk of the evidence. And so as you repeat habits, each time it's like you add another vote and you start to shift the weight of the story in favor of being that kind of person. You know, like, if you go to, you know, go to the court and shoot basketball for five minutes,

you don't instantly think, oh, I'm a basketball player. But if you show up and do it every day for a month or six months or a year or two years, like at some point you cross this invisible line where you're like, oh, I guess being a basketball player is like part of my identity. It's kind of part of who I am. And all of our experiences in life sort of work like that, where you're kind of reshaping and constantly touching or retouching your identity. And so I think that's a crucial question to ask yourself.

is who is the type of person I wish to become and what habits reinforce my desired identity? How do I continue to add votes to that pile and shape the kind of person or the type of leader I would like to be? And once you begin to take pride in that aspect of your identity, it becomes easier to stick to the behavior. You know, like, if you take pride in the size of your biceps, you'll never skip arm day at the gym. You know, like if you take pride in the way your hair looks, you have this long hair care routine, you do it every day. And so once something starts to become part of your story and it's something that you kind of like hang on to, you don't have to convince yourself to do the behavior in the same way that somebody who's like just getting started

might have to. You know, like, if you view yourself as I'm a runner, you don't have to motivate yourself to go for a run today in the same way that somebody who's just getting started might. You know, it's like, no, this is just like part of who I am. It's part of what I do. So I think that is the real objective, the real end goal that we're trying to get to by building better habits, is to connect or to shape your sense of identity. And once you view it as part of the person that you are, you're not even really pursuing behavior change anymore. You're just acting in alignment with the type of person that you see yourself to be. And ultimately, this is why I think small habits can matter so much. It's not because doing one pushup will transform your body. It's because doing one

pushup casts a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And it's not because sending one bit of positive praise as someone on your team makes you the world's best leader. It's because sending one bit of positive praise casts a vote for I'm the type of leader who cares about their teammates. And so individually, they're small actions, but collectively they start to shape this sense of self. That's so good. Really paying attention to where you're casting those votes as a leader every single day in your business. Clearly, I've casted a lot of votes towards my hair care routine, not a lot towards my biceps. So thank you for that reminder. So when it comes to teams, it's one thing for a leader to develop these habits, but they can't hit the goals by

themselves. They have teams that they're working with. So how can you start to kind of have this bleed over into your team? You talked about your social environment and how we kind of imitate habits. And we look up to leaders, whether we like it or not, some are toxic. And some So we go, that's who we don't want to be. But if in an ideal environment, you have a great leader and the team starts to emulate that, how much of that is intentional and how much do you have to coach? Yeah, it's an emulates a good word, because I do think that's a big part of it, is you need to role model the behavior that you want to see.

You know, like it or not, people are looking to you to set the tone. And so whatever they see is often what they mimic. It's very natural for people to do that. You know, we often imitate the habits of the people who have what we hope to have in the future. We imitate the habits of people who are already successful or the people who have the kind of lifestyle that we think we would like to have. Another way to think about this influence of social environment is that we're all part of multiple tribes. And some of those tribes are large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be Australian. Some of those tribes are smaller, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of the local CrossFit gym or a volunteer at the local hospital.

but all of those tribes, large and small, have a set of shared expectations, a set of shared beliefs or social norms for how you act in that group. In the company context, we often call this culture. I think the true culture of any group, the true culture of any business is the shared habits of that group. If it's not a habit, it's not actually part of your culture. It's just like a slogan you came up with at the offsite one time or something that's like on the wall in the office, but not actually something people follow. So as best as possible, I think this is the punchline. You want to join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Because if it's normal in that group, it's going to be very motivating for you to stick to it.

You know, we perform habits for multiple reasons. Sometimes we perform habits because of the results that they'll get us. But we don't only do it for that reason. We also perform habits because of what they signal to the people around us. So it's kind of like, hey, I get it. I fit in. I understand how you belong here. You know, like, people will join a CrossFit gym and think that they go to, like, get in shape.

And then six months later, they're all eating paleo and wearing the same brand of knee sleeves and buying the same workout shoes. And, like, they weren't trying to do any of those habits when they started. They just soaked it up as being part of that group. Now, if you're thinking about this through the lens of a leader, I think sometimes the groups that you want are ready made, like that pocket's already there for you. and you just need to either get into it yourself or you need to get your people into those groups and they can kind of rise together. But a lot of the time, especially in business,

because there's often a big benefit to thinking creatively or to creating something new, you may need to have the courage to create the space that you wish existed. So by personal example of this, I didn't have any entrepreneurs in my family and I didn't have any authors in my family. So I didn't really have anybody to look to.

You know, I didn't have any friends who were doing that kind of thing. When I first started, I was kind of fumbling around a little bit, trying to figure out, like, is this even pot? Like, am I kind of crazy for trying to do this? And so what I ended up doing was I put together retreats with other authors. And so I would get six or eight authors. Most of the time, I'd try to pick people who their careers were kind of like two years ahead of where I was. So close enough that I could still provide value and they wouldn't say no.

But I was always learning a ton from them. And I would just email them. We would all get together for like three days and split the cost up. an Airbnb, and almost inevitably, I would have like six months of ideas that I would need to execute on after that. And so all that took was a little bit of courage on my end to reach out to people and cultivate or create the space that didn't exist yet. But by putting myself in that environment and surrounding myself with people where my desired

behavior was their normal behavior, suddenly became much more real for me to be like, yeah, you know what? Like, I think I can make a run at this. and you often can find value in doing things like that in business. So where are those people that are already, their normal day is already what you aspire to have? Or if you're thinking about your team members, who's the person on the team who you want the rest of them to inherit those habits and so on? And can you create spaces or cultivate spaces where those groups can be put together? That's huge, especially with how much isolation so many of our leaders are feeling right now.

It's a great reminder that they need to go find that community, get in great. groups of like-minded business owners, get with mentors who are a step ahead of them, who can walk them through some of the challenges. Because for small business owners, you're right, they may not have another leader they can go to. It may be them at the top. So this is something crucial to pay attention to. Yeah, entrepreneurship is tough. You know, it can be a lonely journey. And so having a group like that, you know, again, these were retreats that I put together maybe twice a year, sometimes once a year. So it's not like I'm seeing these people every day, but it still had immense value for me just to do it a couple of times.

And, you know, I know small business owners like myself, like very busy, right? Like you're trying to wear a bunch of different hats and got to keep the business running and there's all kinds of things tugging at your time. So it may not be the kind of thing that, you know, you see them every Friday or something, but it can still be really valuable even if it only happens every now and then. So let's talk about the habit of delegation. It's one a lot of leaders struggle with. I think it's a good example.

And you've got this example of time debt, time, assets that I think ties to the issue of delegation. And you also talk about replacing the bad habits. So we all have the habit of we check the email. There's a fire to deal with. And so we go deal with the fire of the day instead of pausing, delegating. And it's not always a control freak issue. It's just a, I'm the guy who deals with the problems. How can leaders get better at that? I'm definitely the wrong person to ask this question, too, because I feel like I'm terrible at delegating and run into the same problems that everybody else does. I think, think although I'm bad at delegating, I may be good at a different skill, which applies to this

question, which is trying to focus on the high leverage work. And I think time assets and time debts, which I'll describe in just a moment, that's definitely something I consider to be a high leverage, like decision-making mindset or a high-leverage way of thinking about where to direct your time. So the core idea is very simple. It's just that some things that you invest your time into are assets, and they pay you back in the future, and they benefit you, the work that you put in continues to work for you once it's done. Other things that you invest your time in are time debts, and when you commit to it, it's putting you on the hook to spend time in the future. So any meeting that you commit to, you know, once you block that hour off in your calendar,

that's a debt that has to be repaid a week from now or a month from now when the meeting happens. You don't get that hour anymore. I view a time asset as something like writing atomic habits, for example. I spent thousands of hours writing that book. It was like a really long process. But all of those hours are still working for me right now. You know, there are people out there reading the book, recommending it, buying it.

And so that work is continuing to get more and more valuable. Each of those hours that I spent is continuing to pay off more and more into the future. So in a sense, when you're focused on time assets on things where, and again, I think the central question is just, what is the work that keeps working for me once it's done. Those are ways that you invest your time. Time debts are ways that you spend your time. And the difference between the person who invests their time and the person who spends their

time grows with each passing day. It becomes an enormous gap over the long run. So as another example, when the book first came out, I did a bunch of different interviews to promote it. And a lot of them were podcasts. Some of them were radio. I don't really like doing radio interviews anymore. because the work that I do for those interviews

vanishes as soon as we go off air. You know, as soon as I get done talking and the segment ends, nobody's hearing it anymore. But a podcast, by contrast, is recorded. And so there are people listening to other podcasts I've recorded right now somewhere. It's almost like there are multiple versions of James out there

and they're all kind of working at the same time. And so again, that was an hour or a block of time where the work is continuing to work for me once it's done. And the more that you can, you don't even have to do this all the time. Like there's just stuff that we have to get done to run our businesses, you know, like, and that's fine. That's just kind of part of it. It's like having a garden. Like every now and then you just need to weed. There are just things that you need to do to keep the business running. But if you can just do one high leverage thing a day like that, where the hour that you

spend or the time that you spend is going to keep working for you once it's done, man, you get all, you only have to do that for a year or two or three and all of a sudden things are way easier than they were before. The person who continues to invest their time, rather than spending their time, it's almost like it becomes easier to get better results once you get that flywheel running, once you get the snowball rolling downhill.

So I think that that is, time assets and time debts is just one way to think about it. Trying to focus on the highest leverage behaviors is another way to think about it. But that general idea of investing your time into things that will continue to work for you once the time is spent,

it is very simple to say, a little bit harder to do, but man, it can be really powerful to implement over the long run. Yeah. And we talk about the power of onboarding and training, and delegation comes down to, can I trust this person and can I trust their competency and their character? And when you do that training and you hand it off to them and they accomplish it, you go, oh, it worked. Now it's a time asset. Now I don't have to do that ever again. And I can focus on what really matters, work on the business instead of in it. So that's such a

powerful analogy. You know, I, this is, again, I don't think that I'm very good at this, but that's a good example of this same kind of philosophy, which is, yeah, you know, it might take more time up front to properly train the person and invest in them a little bit and make sure that they have everything that they need to do the job the way you hope it can be done.

But those hours are going to continue working for you every day after that. And so it is an investment if you do it the right way. Man. Well, this is like the SparkNodes version of Atomic Habits. We're just scratching the surface. So I assume every listener has read Atomic Habits by now, but if you haven't, you have to go pick up this book, get a copy for your entire team, read it. There's so much value.

And James, you've added a ton of value to our listeners and to me today. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Really enjoyed talking to you. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with James Clear. And like I said at the top of the show, I'm here with Dave Ramsey with a special announcement about the future of this podcast. Welcome, Dave.

Well, thanks, George. Hey, today we're announcing some big changes coming to this Entree Leadership podcast. We're going to change some stuff up. Every so often, you just got to throw a grenade in things and reset. So here's what we're doing. A perfect storm has occurred. George has, well, the problem with George is he works really hard, he prepares fabulously, and he's very talented, which means he's become inside of our building in great demand as a Ramsey personality.

So as a money personality with the media hits and prepping for the different speaking gigs and the different things we've got you do on the money side, he's just overwhelmed. And so we're taking this off his plate and we're thought, okay, what are we going to do with the entree podcast? Because, you know, oh, I'll do it. Hey, hey, that's what we're going to do. It was my idea, actually, because I love working with entree leaders and I love small businesses. And by the way, this is a brand I started. And so I like the idea of hanging out with you guys.

And so February the 13th, we're going to change the format of this. and it's going to be me and you guys. Yeah, you are the podcast, me and you. We're going to be hanging out together. You're going to call in and ask questions about your business, whether it's anything you want to talk about, because I'm the guy that started on a card table in my living room 30 years ago. I'm the guy that's in here running this dead gun business as the CEO

through all of Ramsey every day. And so I'm putting up with the same crap you're putting up with. I've got the same stress you've got, sometimes with extra zeros on the end. And maybe you've got 10 people, but I remember having 10 people. Maybe you've got 50 people, but I remember having 50 people. And so whatever it is you're dealing with, wherever it is in your marketing, your strategic planning, wherever you are in the stages of business, whichever driver you

want to work with, we'll talk about those and we'll, you know, cue back to that quite often. That's the baby steps, if you will, for entree leadership. But we're going to take live callers. It's a new caller-driven format. you guys are going to call in and ask questions about business. So money questions, people questions, leadership questions, ethical questions, family business questions. Now, that'll be juicy. So we're going to get lots of good stuff. It's going to be great. I'm excited about being able to do this and just serve you guys. I like just sitting and talking to you, taking your calls. And the

beautiful part about that is, just like it did on the Ramsey show when we started that 30 years ago. of those answers informs all the listeners, all the viewers, hey, I can change my marketing that way. I could deal with my personal situation that way. I can deal with my family business situation that way. So, you know, these callers are both entertaining because we are all entertaining when we get down in our stuff and they're informative. So we think it's going to be fun. I don't know how long we'll do it, maybe a year. And just see how many, if anybody watches or listens, we'll have to get somebody else if I fail. But we're going to give it a shot and we're really excited. Again, February 13th, and George, you've done a great job. Oh, thank you. Congratulations on being

so successful where you're fired. I got to sit with that for a little while. It feels good, but also bad. But, David, really is an honor. I was a huge fan of this podcast before I started here. For the last, you know, decade I've been working here. I was a fan. And to get to host it was the honor of a lifetime, and I'm even more excited about the future of where you're taking it. Oh, it's going to be a blast. It's going to be a blast. And we'll keep you busy. Never for you. Oh, yeah. Always something to do around. here. So I'm real excited. And so here's the deal. I want to make sure you guys understand how this works. If you've got a leadership or business question for Dave, call and leave a voicemail at this number, 844-944-1070. Our team will get in touch and schedule you to be on the new Entree Leadership

podcast. I'm so pumped, Dave. Thanks for being here. Looking forward to you as host. February 13th, here it comes, baby. Well, what an episode to start off the year. Hope you guys enjoy today's episode of the show. Be sure to follow or subscribe and give us a five-star review if you enjoyed it. And be sure to share this episode with your team, with your friends on social media. We want to spread the impact of this show. You can always follow us, of course, on social media at Entree Leadership. If you enjoyed this, you should check out some other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network like The Ramsey Show where you can hear more of Dave and I. Until next time, folks, keep learning and keep leading.