EntreLeadership - How to Navigate Stress at the End of the Year with Dr. John Delony

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

You love your family—there’s no doubt about that. But you also love your business. And as we head into the holiday season, expectations will increase on both sides. How will you effectively balance it all? In this episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast, we sit down with Ramsey Personality Dr. John Delony. John’s a bestselling author, mental health expert and host of The Dr. John Delony Show. He walks us through how to manage expected business results and family responsibilities. Then George Kamel chats with Ramsey Solutions Chief People Officer Jack Galloway. Jack lays out how we handle balancing the holidays and work at Ramsey Solutions—and how you can do the same.   The EntreLeadership Podcast The Dr. John Delony Show Redefining Anxiety by Dr. John Delony Download the free How to Create Core Values guide. Schedule a call with Tim, our producer.   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit | EntreLeadership Master Series   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite | Advisory Groups | Executive Coaching | Workshops | Weekly Report Tool   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership Partners: BELAY | Gravy | Hite Digital | NetSuite Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner. Does the idea of balancing your business and family during the holidays fill you with dread? How do you navigate this time of year without getting stressed out? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Campbell, and today's episode is about setting boundaries and taking care of yourself during the holidays, which connects to our business driver of personal. Our first guest today is Dr. John Deloney.

He's a leading voice on relationships and emotional wellness, one of our Ramsey personalities, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, and author of Redefining Anxiety. We talk about healthy practices and habits you can use to navigate this holiday season. In our second conversation, I talk with Ramsey leader Jack Galloway, and he talks about how he balances business and the holidays and how to keep your team from mentally checking out this holiday season. Up first, my conversation with Dr. John Deloney. John, welcome back to the Entree Leadership Podcast.

What's up, George, how we doing? You are becoming a frequent guest. I know. I've become that for many podcasts when they think, oh, no, we have nobody else to be on the show. That guy will do it. We got plenty of options, but we wanted you. And it's for good reason. Okay.

We are entering in to what some call the most wonderful time of the year. You set that up like you're going to enter a horror movie. What is the most wonderful time of the year? It's the holiday season, John. Yes. And many people are excited. about it. But if you're a business owner, this time of year can carry a lot of things, a lot of baggage, emotion, stress, worry. Sometimes you're checked out. Sometimes you can't unplug. There's a lot

going on for the business owners out there. So with all that being said, can you balance time off with family while finishing the year well in your business? If you're highly intentional, you can. It comes down to intentionality. When you know, you got the Q3 budget trying to wrap up, you can tell Q4, we're not going to make it or we're going to barely make it or I've got to, you start having a fantasy about whether you're going to make it or not make it or you're going to have the best Christmas, all that. And then your kids are busy and you've got travel plans and people coming over all that. It's easy to try to do everything all at the same time.

And so it's an important thing for me to remember, and I'm in the middle of the season too, is if I'm on the road, if I'm doing work things, I need to be fully there. And it doesn't help my kids any. If I'm somewhere not with my kids thinking about, I should be with my kids right now. It's not helping them at all. It's just making me crappier at my job. And when I'm with them, if I'm trying to half get work done on my phone or whatever, I'm doing a half job on my work.

So be where you're at and just be intentional about setting up some time. My wife and I are setting up some pretty strong boundaries at the beginning of every week to get us through these weeks where we stop smiling our faces every day. Yeah, let's talk about boundaries. Describe what boundaries you've put in place, maybe in the past, especially around the holiday season with work and family. Because it can be hard to turn off and go, all right, I'm not in work mode, I'm in family mode,

I'm not going to check the email, not going to have the laptop out. What do those boundaries look like? Can I back up for a second? Yeah. We have a habit of when you wake up and you check your phone or you wait until 9 o'clock or whatever. You listen to Jocko and Ryan Holiday, so you don't check your phone until you get to work, or whatever the thing is. When we're on holiday, when we have time off, when you're with your family, you're working half days, whatever that is,

we stay in that same habit. And so I think it's important to be intentional and say, I'm not. not at work, so I need some new routines and new habits. And so I'm going to put my phone in a drawer. I'm going to completely disconnect. So to answer your original question, some of the things important for us with boundaries is no technology. Like it'll be really intentional about technology use. And when the kids are in the room, all screens are down. I focus on them. If I need to be on my screen, I'm going to go to a separate room, close the door so I can get in and get out of that thing. We're hyper-intentional in my house about the things that we talk about and don't talk about,

whether that's like no politics, no COVID, no, like, let's don't talk. talk about religion. There was a season when a lot of my family members, we all worked at the same university. We all ended up talking about work all the time. And this leader's doing this. So no work. Just talk about human stuff. Laugh. Tell the same old dumb stories over and over and find ways to poke at each other. Whatever brings your family joy. But those are really important for us. And with boundaries comes this really fancy word. It's two letters, no. How do you know when to say no as you make plans? You can be stretched in a lot of different directions when it comes to the holidays. How do you do that appropriately without, you know, hurting a relationship?

So I think the cool, hip things to say is, if it's not all yes, it's all no, right? And the holidays, that's dumb because sometimes you drive eight hours to honor your grandmother who's still with us. And so my rule of thumb is, does it honor me or does it honor somebody else? And if it doesn't do one of those things, then I'm going to start leaning towards, let's pass on this. And so does it honor me? Is this going to be a restorative activity? Is this something I have time or energy to devote to? Or is it going to honor my kids to go to their play? You know what I mean?

Or is it going to honor my grandmother to drive eight hours and get there? In that trip, once I say I'm in, that trip's not about me anymore. It's about honoring my grandma. It's about honoring my parents. It's about honoring my aunt and whatever thing we're going to. So does it honor me? Does it honor, you know, my workplace? If Dave asks us, hey, I want you all to be at this holiday event,

it's going to be important for people who work with us, who support us, that I'm going to go. It's going to honor Dave's gone on this company. So does to honor me? Does it honor somebody else? And then outside of those things, then I'm more like, nah. But the whole, it's either in or I don't think the holidays are that simple, man, because we have multiple roles in multiple areas of our life. Yeah.

And when we're talking about honoring yourself, it reminds me of this idea of kind of taking care of yourself as a leader, especially if you own the business. I mean, it's hard to focus on anything. But, hey, is this a team okay? How are the numbers? Is everything good on that side? and the word self-care has kind of been destroyed a little bit by influencers out there. Gosh, yeah.

Everything is self-care. Just have a warm bath and a candle and it'll all be better. Yeah, it's just a blanket word you used to say it's all about me and what I need and what I want. It's grown-up yellow is what self-care is. How do you do this the right way? Because taking care of yourself is important, but you can't be selfish either. I think it goes back to that word intentional, and you know the things that recharge you, and they're different for everybody.

And I think anybody tries to tell you that you come. to join yoga or if you would just be keto or vegan will check they're trying to sell you something you know what recharges you and you got to be intentional about it the one trap i've fallen into and bigillions of folks business leaders that i've worked with behind closed doors fall into is you run so hard that when you finally hit vacation you aspire to quote unquote do nothing and that's a recipe for disaster you find yourself just sitting there you're eating like chips and nachos for breakfast and you're drinking beer at 10 30 in the morning like I'm just doing nothing, bro, and it's a disaster.

So set up some things that you're going to do, whether it's go for a walk, take care of yourself. If you're going to get off the rails and eat nachos for breakfast, do it, but do it with intentionality. Don't just set up to do this thing. Like, I'm just going to do nothing because it's a wreck. So you can't plan to do nothing. It's okay if you want to watch some Netflix,

but plan for that, so it's not just you floating in existence. My rule of thumb is don't fall off a wagon. You can park the wagon, climb off and roll around in the mud, but don't fall off the wagon. Be intentional. If you're going to make bad choice, Consciously make bad choices, right?

Don't just like, I will overeat over the holidays intentionally. Don't let yourself control get the best of you. So describe some of the traditions that recharge you during this time of year, during the holidays. What are some of those for you and maybe some that the business owners out there can take hold of if they don't have those? I mean, it's for me some of the big ones. It's hunting season, and I know that goes against my personal brand of like this, I don't know, this nerdy mental health guy. I bet I will take a couple of books and my gun out to the woods. You got plenty of camo.

I do. I don't like to admit that, but I do. I wear my punk rock shirts underneath the camo. I mean, the research is so clear, but it's just the restorative, both for your physical health, your mental health, just being out in nature, being in the woods. It's a big deal to me to know where my food comes from. That's a whole other podcast. But yard work is important, like that year, cleanup.

You get a lot of exercise, you'll have activity. And you can start a project and finish it in one day or two days. a lot of our business cycles, you send out an email campaign or you send out your discount or coupons, and it takes a long time to cycle back. Yard work, man, you can start it and finish it. It just feels good. Hiking, being silly and being intentional, I try to run through a bunch of books over the holidays, wrestling with my kids.

I mean, just those are things that are restored for me. Yeah. But a lot of that is movement-based, right? I've been sitting down for nine and a half months, 10 months. Let's do some movement now. So get outside, get your body moving, and that will recharge you for sure. Be around people. Yeah, that's good.

And when it comes to practices that you use maybe reflect, I mean, here at Ramsey, we love to take a pause at the end of the year. We celebrate with a big Christmas party. And we like to look back at the year and like all the things we've accomplished. And I think in business a lot of times, you just go from December to January and it's just another day. Is it important to have some practices in place where you can reflect and go, wow, especially with the team and go, wow, look what we did this year? Well, it's important for your team. Absolutely. I think it's always important to stop the presses for a minute and just reflect where are we.

And again, the word there is intentional. A guy named Dr. Rick Lytle, who's a business scholar and professor, he's a wonderful mentor and friend, he gave me an idea years ago, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, that has ricocheted through my life since. And he said, we're that intentional about our businesses. At the end of every year, we close the books, we do the taxes, we say, do we meet our goals? He said, but we just float our family on. And he said, our family should be more important. So stop the presses with your family. and take an inventory.

How did the year go? Did you all meet your goals that you had? Oh, you didn't have goals? Why not? Right? And so that started after that. My wife and I have a, basically an annual review

of how our relationship is, how's our marriage, how our kids doing. Did we meet our financial goals that we set this year? Do we meet our business goals? Where are we chaotic? Where are we on?

And we take a retreat. Some years it's a half-day retreat. Some days it's a full retreat. Sometimes we get out of town. The last couple years, we just go from like a coffee shop to a coffee shop to a restaurant and we'll have different objectives at everyone and it sounds so unsexy but i tell you what

man there's nothing more sexy than clarity with your spouse we know what this year's financial goals are how are we're going to get there are we going to take vacations this year what's that going to look like and it's just a annual review of the status of my most important relationships and again same with business but man do that with your home take your kids out take them to breakfast how was this year what some things you remember about this year sometimes they'll lean towards it was all great and you can say, there was some hard stuff and vice versa too, just about attentionality. And then you're going to model to your kids what it's like to be reflective and then plan ahead. Yeah, for a lot of business owners out there, they're focused on success and they're wired for that

and for the next thing and the next thing. And you're saying, hey, we've got to pause and look backwards and have perspective and have gratitude and use that reflection to kind of propel us into the new year. All professional athletes have journals on their lifting and their nutrition because that's how you chart. Are you growing? where are areas that you need to lean into more, and it's the same thing. So you are taking a lot of calls on the John Deloney show around mental health. And some of this stems towards that when you talk about anxiety, balance, boundaries, all of these things.

What types of activities should we avoid to keep from increasing anxiety during the holiday season? Are there kind of the triggers that you found? I'd say the number one trigger is the fantasy of the holidays. man we go to the same house with the same people and we act surprised that we get in the same fights every year and there's a part of our physiology that knows we're going to that same place and it starts gearing up for that fight even if we're not consciously thinking of it and i often fall in the trap of this year everyone's just going to be cool and we're going to laugh and then they're not and so i get the disappointment plus the fights plus it's just nonsense so i think leaning into that fantasy and saying what is reality here like if we go to this house with these people again here's what we can experience and let's be realistic about what we are.

So it's living in reality. The second thing is, is for some reason, it's a chance to prove yourself. Look how good I did mom and dad or brother and sister, or look at the clothes I'm wearing, or rental cars, or, like, dude,

everybody drop your shoulders. This is your family. If there's one place where you can just let it all hang out, it's with this crew, right? With your family or with your friends. And if you can't, then think about not going because there's nothing worse than going to holiday events

and it's another performance. But what's important about me with your family is remembering if you all get in a fight about COVID or religion or vaccines or business or whatever, if you win that fight and somebody else loses, you both lost. Nobody wins those things. So don't, just don't, man. Don't engage it.

Go have a good time. Water balloon fights in December, whatever, dude. But don't engage in that nonsense. The other ones are, man, like not moving. eating like an idiot and then not moving, riding in front of a TV, lack of sleep again, going back to this idea, like, I'm just going to do nothing is a disaster. So not being intentional about setting up activities, setting up movement, setting up whatever. Same with our budget, right? You overspin, you blow everything because you're trying to, you just get carried away, right?

Yeah, I love that. It all comes back to be intentional. Just write it down, the same as you are in your business. Yeah, it's interesting that they have that much intentionality in business, but then the holidays come around and you kind of just, you go into La La Land way over here with family and it's hard to unplug without losing yourself

at the same time. Or we think the planning part is work and vacation means we don't want to be at work and so we're not intentional. And my proposition is if you will be a little intentional, a little clear,

it makes everything so much better and then you can actually relax. Do you have any stories of a time maybe you are aware, very aware of your, stress and anxiety around the holidays, something that maybe triggered you and how you dealt with it? Hmm. Or have you had this thing on lockdown for a few years now?

Dude, nothing about my life was on lockdown. Last year, Thanksgiving, my father-in-law's got a deer hunting lease, and so we went, there was a whole bunch of us that stayed in campers out on this lease. There's no running water. There's no bathrooms. And so it was about night four, it was about 11 o'clock at night, and I can hear the pigs and the coyotes, we're in nowhere, Texas. And I'm going to the bathroom in a hole in the middle of a field.

And I thought, what am I doing? Right? Like, I just started... Existential crisis. Yeah, the wheels of my little brain car were starting to rattle. And, man, I'd really check my attitude there. And it all came back to, brother, you chose this. Nobody tricked you.

You know exactly what you're getting into. Have a good attitude. You can choose, now that you're here, you can choose to be miserable and be an idiot, or choose to have a good attitude. That's the only two choices. voices I got. Or I can, the third one is throw a temper tantrum and get up and like, we're leaving, which is, no one's going to do that. And so I chose to make it a carnival from her on out. Like, there were kids everywhere, so every animal within 10 square miles were like, let's don't

be over there. Hunting was going to be futile. We're just going to go have a blast. And it just turned into a good old time. And so it came back to me checking my attitude because nobody tricked me. You know what I mean? And you say that attitude is one of the only things that's actually in our control. That's it. And then the resulting behaviors. So this sounds so lame, and I'm rolling my eyes as I say this. Right.

But when we take long car rides, I travel with a couple of kettlebells in the car. Like, I can never say I don't have the opportunity to work out. I thought you're working out in the car. And I was like, that's very impressive. That's kind of hardcore. Yeah, I know. But no, like, I always have, like, where's a place where I can make sure I can exercise and have some running shoes?

Where's a place where I can go for a walk? Where's some place I take my gratitude journal with me. So I make sure I can do these actions that I can control. and I know that downstream those things help. There's days I can say, today's not a Cheeto day, because I'm already teetering on the edge of rage and complete meltdown.

Probably filling up on Cheetos and Twinkies is not going to be great. That can be a gasoline on that fire. And, man, I'm just going to make good choices today. So I can control my thoughts, I can control my actions, and that's it. Yeah. So for the business owners out there

who maybe family is a sore spot, they love their immediate family, but when it comes to the holidays, you're being kind. A lot of people do not love their immediate family, right? Sure. Holiday's a disaster. Well, I mean, their wife and kids are great, but now we've got to deal with maybe aunts, uncles, in-laws, you name it, who may already, as I say that, they feel it.

They're like, oh, gosh, we've got to go there this Thanksgiving. Or me and my wife, like, we're, I mean, I don't want to brag, but, like, we're one of the better married couples I know. We don't travel well together. I tend to think if the flight leaves at 630, we should get the airport about 615. And if the flight leaves, because we got 15 minutes to get there, it'll be fine. And if the flight leaves at 6.15, my wife thinks we should get there four weeks early and just camp out. And that way we don't miss anything. We can get all the announcements.

And so we don't travel well together. So we've got to set up some boundaries ahead of time on how we travel. So, yeah, it can be any sort of, even if your marriage is great, doesn't mean you're going to all make that 17-hour drive in the minivan well together. Yeah. You've been traveling a lot. You've been all over the country speaking, going to a lot of our entree leadership attendees. and clients and helping their teams, especially around this topic of winning won't make you well. And I feel like a lot of this stuff leads towards that as we try to finish out the year strong,

we're trying to balance it all. And we think if we can just get those Q4 numbers in and we get the books closed, we're going to be great. But then our lives aren't quite there. So what do business leaders need to know that are listening who think if I can just crush it in business and unplug for a week with my family, my life's going to be awesome? Well, no, that's absolutely 100% not true. Pipe dream. Yeah, it's not real.

Good numbers help, let's be honest. It helps reduce the stress. It helps whose financial stress, the mental stress. You're worried about, you want your people who work for you to have a great Christmas. You know what I mean? You want their kids to have a great Christmas. And so if you're a good leader, you feel that responsibility, and that responsibility is good. That's why you're a leader.

I think it goes back to winning won't make you well at your house either. And so trying to win arguments, let's crush this trip. Change that mindset. Let's go on this trip together. And things are going to pop up, and you can choose when they pop up to your debit card gets declined, and we've got to figure this out live. You can choose at that moment, am I going to stress and be crazy about this? Or am I going to lean into it and smile and be like, we're on adventure now, right?

Or you're going to get a flat tire. Or one of your kids, my wife took the kids to Texas recently. She said they got off the plane. My son pulled his little mask off that he'd been wearing all dayland plane and just barfed everywhere. and that started a 24-hour bug then they got him taken care of he barfed all night she's going to work in another state by the way and then as soon as like uh he had a good morning he's eaten and my daughter was like mommy i don't and then now we're on it again and so that my wife is like i get to choose my attitude am i going to lean into this and say i'm going to get some really intimate time with the kids

i'm going to get to cuddle with them for 48 hours because they're barfing everywhere or am i going to say, my plans are ruined. You get to own misery or let's lean into the adventure. And so take off the crush it. Let's dominate this trip. Let's be hospitable. Let's drop our shoulders and say, come what may. Let's plan. Be intentional. And then let's lean into the unknown of what all these trips are. You know what I mean? Yeah. So as you're hosting the Dr. John Deloney show and you're traveling speaking to a lot of business owners and teams, what are some of the biggest pain points, trends that you're kind of seeing out there that may be concerned you, that you're like, I really need to help some people in this area.

Is it just a general level of anxiety? Is it the fear of the unknown? What's going on, do you think? That's a great question. Off top of my head, George, there's several things. One is, I think the last 24 months have shown us we don't control much anything. And we don't have a psychology for what that means. We thought we controlled our kid's school and our counties.

And we thought our voice mattered on certain things. And we thought business just works like this. And now we're just having to figure it out. and I think that we don't have a psychology for if I can't control it then what do I then who am I then what do I do? And leaders have found themselves having to actually lead and leadership the last decade has been relatively good like profits have been up and things like this year's been hard. The other side of it is a lot of people have had incredible years and they can't say it. They can't speak that out loud. They feel guilty?

Yeah. And Bray Brown says it best that shame eat secrets. for breakfast. Depression is all about secrets. Even anxiety to a large degree is about secrets. And so whether stuff is going well for you and you can't say it out loud, you don't feel like you can, or the wheels are coming off, your marriage, your job. Or you don't even want to do this anymore. My bunch of buddies who are coaches. And after all the years of this and then that, they're getting out. And it was just freeing for them to say, I don't want to coach anymore and just saying those words out loud, wherever you are, you're finding out where your identity has been.

in and now you've got to reclaim it and now everyone's asking this one question who am i now and so if you can sit back and say as a part of the transition from 21 to 22 who am i what do i actually want what does my family need do we want to live here anymore like kansas looks like a great place to live i know whatever you want to do this is a moment in history to really be intentional about who you are where you want to be and then go do that and stop living this false story that this is the quote unquote way things are supposed to be. Yeah. One of my favorite things about our Entree leadership conferences and Entree leadership elite advisory groups is that when other business leaders get together, there's this feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm not crazy. It's social norm. I can say this out loud.

Oh, you experienced that too. Yeah. And so that's so powerful to have that. And I think a lot of business leaders may not have that in their day to day where they feel like they can say those things out loud. Yeah. Because the team's looking to them to go, wait, this guy doesn't have figured out we're screwed i don't know who said this quote but it stuck with me that the definition of a friend is oh yeah you too and there's something that just makes our physiology go oh gosh i thought i was the only one dealing with this or that or i thought i was the only one that feels like i'm crushing it at work and i'm an imposter at home or that feels like i am being a great dad in the season but i don't know what my business is anymore and yeah there's something

about getting people in a room that's why entrees that's why this whole platform you guys have is so amazing because it takes a group of people who are driving around in their car with their two employees and connects them with other people just like them all over this country so people can feel less alone right and just you don't feel like you're bonkers yeah especially with these last 18 months being so wild and people are struggling with hiring and retaining team members and we got to bend over backwards because now people have so many options and remote work is a thing now how do we deal with that and people have opinions about covid how do we how do we make everyone happy. So, you know,

Giacco, I know he's an entree friend, he has the statement that he says, and he just says, good. You know what I mean? That's very Jocko, but that, hey, we just launched this firefight and all of our tanks won't start, and his first response is good. Like, we'll do something else, or we didn't get the

promotion. He's like, good, we can live here a little bit longer and get some roots, and I overcooked the steak tonight. Good, we'll just have vegetables. Our bodies probably need a break. It's just an ethos and the nerdier way, the less jocko way that I say that is, man, you get to choose your response to these things. And I've just taken a posture over the last two years. If my school makes whatever mandate for my kids, I'm not going to fight them.

I'm not giving them that power over me. The guy cuts me off on the highway. I'm not giving him the rest of my day and a couple of hours off of my life because my blood pressure went up. if Dave Ramsey changes this mind and then changes that mind, it's his business and I can choose to work here or not, I'm not going to give that part of me away. And what I want to recommend to everybody is turn the news off. Here's what's about to happen.

There's going to be all these videos of like craziness at the shopping. Turn it off. Here's the new numbers. Turn it off. And look at your kids, man. Get a foosball table and play with your kids. My son and I played a tournament of Hungry Hippo last night. Remember that game?

Oh, yeah. There's no reason that game exists. It's a parent's nightmare. It's loud. There's marbles everywhere. There is no objective skill to this game. It's just chaos. Candyland.

You know, Candy Land? Yeah. That game was made up by serial killers. Frustrating. And it's the way the world works because you're about to win and all of a sudden, nope, you're a loser. And then one kid rolls like the candy cane and wins the whole, whatever. That's the most realistic game about life on Earth is...

My dude, we laughed. and we poked fun at each other. My son is getting good at cut downs. Man, we had no plans, no nothing. We just leaned into that. I had no phones. That, man, put your energy there, not in fighting everything, man.

And just, stop giving your power away. I feel better already. You should. This is great. That was a failed, not so subtle attempt. George, relax, brother.

You're just walking on the office, all fired up. You're right. You're right. I'm very tense. You are tense. So there's a lot to think about. We covered a lot of ground

in this conversation as we try to hold work and family in this tension. Where would you recommend we start as we prepare for Thanksgiving? Have a plan. If you've got a spouse, just sit on a plan. Why are we doing this? Like, why are we getting together or why are we not? How can we honor the people that we agree to be with? We agreed to go to Aunt Margaret's house.

How are we going to honor them? Let's talk only about COVID. That's all you want to talk about. Let's lean all the way in. Let's wink at each other the whole time. And when they're like, can you believe whatever the can you believe story is, let's just lean into it. Ask yourself, how can we make this more fun? I don't think we ask that question enough. How can I make this ridiculous situation I found myself? I've been making more fun. And the last thing is ask yourself, look in the mirror and be intentional. What do I need? Do I need quiet time? Do I need to take two books? When I get there, do I need to say, I need an hour about myself?

I've developed over the last year of just traveling all over country I know that when I land in the town and I go to the hotel 45 minutes going straight to the gym at that hotel some of them are great some of them are terrifying

terrifying if I'd spend 45 minutes there the rest of my time with the entree group that I'm speaking to with the people that we're talking to whatever group we happen to be with is infinitely better

my soul's better I travel better I sleep better all those things so what do you need and lay all that stuff out Why are we going? What do I need when we're going to dare? And what can we do to make this thing fun and honor everybody?

And man, you will come home. Your blood pressure will be lower even if your kids barf all over you, which happened to my wife the other day, right? It just comes back to dude. You get to choose. Am I going to make this chaotic and be angry all the time? Or, man, I'll just lean in this thing. One more thing.

You can not go. I was coaching a couple the other day here in Nashville. They'd come in to town. And they were talking about this and that holiday. and I said, just don't go. Just don't go. Plan something for you and your immediate family. And George, you would have thought I was like,

hey, how about we all take our shirts off and start dancing? They were like, what? What do you mean, not go? Yeah, what do you mean not go? And then it turned into, you mean, we can just not go? And I was like, y'all are 60. Yes, you can do whatever you want. You can just make a phone call and say,

hey, this year we're going to do just a small family thing. Tada. You know what I mean? So if you can't honor people, if you think I can't have fun, if you think my parents or my mom or my aunt is a predator, they're ugly, they're mean, whatever, don't go. Don't go. Like, let that be your boundary and then do the fun things, the things you need by not going. Take control back of your life. Well, John, that's the perfect way to wrap. I appreciate you coming on the podcast to share

healthy habits, practices, perspectives that we can have as business owners and business leaders as we enter into this holiday season and hopefully get through it with our heads on straight. Thank you for having me. And I wish you and Whitney, great holiday season. Thank you. Always great having Dr. John Deloney on the podcast. Thanks so much, John. As he talked about, taking control of your attitude and behaviors is foundational to a restful holiday season. But how do you keep your team from mentally clocking out as you try to finish the year strong? We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, my second conversation is with Jack Galloway. He's an operating board member here, Ramsey, and our chief people officer.

He talks about how he balances business and the holidays and how to keep your team from letting their foot off the gas in this season. Jack, thanks so much for being here. Hey, George, it's great to be with you today. So you are quite the family man. On top of your roles here at Ramsey Solutions, you have a big family. How many kids do you have? Eight children, one grandbaby, one on the way.

Wow, that's an impressive feat in and of itself. So when it comes to the holidays, I know you love your family deeply, and it can be hard to balance it all because we don't really stop here at Ramsey Solutions. We go all the way through. We don't go and take a month off for the holidays. How do you balance holidays and work? You know, that's a great question. And it's something that we've always sort of dealt with here at Ramsey Solutions

because a big part of what we do serves people during this time of year. And so the very first thing that we do is as soon as it starts to cool down outside and fall is here and summer is over and the kids are back to school, we start talking about the holidays. And we start talking about what our customers are going through, what other people and other workplaces are going through. We start talking about the fact that a lot of people start to unplug as they start to think about Thanksgiving and Christmas. And we talk about our customers and what they need during that time. And so the first thing that we do is just talk openly about the fact that It is sort of a natural thing if we don't do something about it to start to slow down in the

fourth quarter of the year. So how do you keep the team from kind of unplugging as we head into the season? As customers, maybe are also a little bit scattered with the holiday season, how do you tactically go, hey, team, we got to stay plugged in. We got to stay game on with their foot on the pedal. That's a great question. Well, as you know, we only hire people here who are really plugged into our mission who care about the needs of our customers. And I hope that's true for our audience as well, that nobody at their

workplace just has a job for a paycheck. But our team members actually care deeply about our customers. And we talk about the fact that our customers, for a lot of them, the holidays are a difficult time. And we talk about that our customers are probably not going to be at their best. If they're having financial stress, there's no more stressful time than Christmas and Christmas shopping and all the things we want to do. And we talk about the fact that our customers may not be at their best. And so Ramsey Solutions needs to be at our very best so that we can help those people through a difficult time by extra service. Yeah. And when it comes to unplugging, there's another side of the spectrum where it's hard for people to actually unplug. So instead of keeping their phone on the gas,

they're like, I can't stop, man. How do I stop? I'm checking email at nights. I'm hanging out with my in-laws, but I'm still working. What are some of those ways that we help our team actually unplug in a healthy way? Well, in addition to talking about it, in addition to talking about the importance of our customer, that's to keep the person who might want to slow down from slowing down too quickly. On the other end of the spectrum, as you described, we've got people who don't know how to slow down, don't know how to gear down in their work. And we're just as tough on those folks as we are on people who want to slow down too quickly because we know if we don't take time away from our work to slow down, to celebrate with each other and away from each other, to get some

quiet time, to be with our families, real quality time with our families. If we don't do that, it's just a matter of time before even the toughest of us are going to hit a wall and we're going to have problems. Our family's going to have problems. And so we're looking for, for that balance between our foot on the gas all the time. But then there comes that time to go. It's time to not just slow down, but actually stop. We take quite a bit of time away from the office here at Ramsey Solutions. And we don't want people sneaking on their laptops,

pushing that project just a little bit further. We want those people to really put the devices away and have some quality, fun time with the, their family during the holidays. Yeah. And while we don't stop here, Ramsey Solutions, there are some different rhythms that we have when it comes to, especially November and December, we like to party. So we like to do that. We really focus in on ministry time and take the focus off of what we're doing and really try to go serve the community. We have generous PTO. What are some of those examples of how Ramsey does that? Well, last year, we did some neat things where we helped some folks outside of Ramsey.

We gave a lot of money away last year. And we paid our... off some debt for some people who couldn't pay it off for themselves. And we bought some bicycles for some kids who were in a children's home here locally. And we bought some Christmas presents for the people who are taking care of them. And we turn that focus away from ourselves and start going, let's start giving to other people. And when you take that focus off of yourself, that's just sort of a natural way to start telling yourself it's that time of year. Let's start reflecting on the year. Let's start reflecting on that this isn't all about me, that there are other people involved in this with me and on this journey. And it helps sort of prepare our minds for this time of

year as we try to make sure that we're grateful for everything that's happened for the year, taking time to celebrate. That's something if we're not careful at Ramsey Solutions. We're pretty competitive. We can win the Super Bowl. And if we're not careful, we'll be ready to get back to practice the next day. But we've done a good job of saying, let's stop and actually celebrate the wins and take some time and rest and heal so that when we come back to work, we're ready to get back to work. Yeah, that's so important. And it is really one of my favorite times of the year here, Ramsey, being here eight years. I've experienced a lot of our epic Christmas parties, a lot of our incredible serving opportunities that kind of make you take a pause, slow down a little bit,

slow down your rhythm, look back at what we've accomplished, look outward at the people that really who are here for, and it really helps center yourself as you head into a new year. So I think for a lot of small business owners, they've been running and gunning so hard, and like you're saying, it's so easy just to go from December 31st to January 1st, and nothing really changed. It's also worth mentioning that a portion of our audience, the holidays is their Super Bowl. If you're in event planning or you're in retail or you're in food service in a restaurant, the fourth quarter of the year is your Super Bowl.

And so that group particularly, they may not be able to slow down as much as someone whose Super Bowl season is in the summer, but they need to still plan that rest time, that sabbatical time. They may have a slow time in the spring or the summer where they need to plan that time so it doesn't have to be a certain day on the calendar, but it must be planned and put on your calendar or else it is easy just to work right through it. And as we've learned, that just doesn't work for a long period of time. Yeah, you'll burn out. So as we wrap here, what encouragement would you give to those leaders, those small business owners as they try to balance this? They want to stay productive, finish the year strong.

They want to unplug in a healthy way during the holidays, keep their teams engaged. What encouragement would you give to them? Talk to your team. Talk openly about it. Talk about the temptation to let your foot off the gas and Christmas shop while you ought to be working at work. Talk about the temptation to work while you ought to be at home relaxing. Separate those two times out and agree on what they should look like. Talk about the reason that this matters, the why.

your customers need you right now. And then lastly, I would say to the owner, your team needs you right now. Your team are people too. Life is just difficult. And your team is no exception to that rule. Broken relationships, family stress, financial stress, they're feeling it too. And so while your team needs to be at best for your customers, you as the business leader or owner need to be at your best to slow down enough to appreciate your team and

celebrate them, give them time off to go and rest, and thank them for the work that they've done throughout the year. Some great reminders there, Jack. Thanks so much for loving our team so well, for caring so deeply about this place, the people, the mission, and a very happy holidays to you. Thank you, George, you too. As Jack talked about, you have to remind your team of the core values and mission, especially during the holiday season when it's easy for people to clock out mentally. One of our core values at Ramsey Solutions is Crusade. Dave or a board member will remind us of that core value

as the end of the year approaches and talk about how we're on a mission to help people. And that mission doesn't slow down during the holidays. You see, core values reflect what's truly important to you and your business. So if you need help in this area, we've got a great free guide for you called How to Create Core Values.

If you want to download it, just click the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, please leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next. one. And we want to hear what you think of the show, what you like, what you don't like, and what we could do better. You can give us your feedback by clicking the link in the show notes to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us

at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison and Bob Borquez, and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like Borrowed Future. Not so fun fact, America has a $1.6 trillion student loan crisis and it's out of control. I'm George Camel, host of the Borrowed Future podcast where we uncover the underbelly of the student loan industry and show you what you can do about it. It'll inspire you to see that it is possible to avoid student loans and graduate college debt-free. Listen to Borrowed Future wherever. you listen to podcasts.