EntreLeadership - How to Set Up Your Business For Success in 2021 with Dave Ramsey

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Dave Ramsey reflects on the highs and the lows of 2020 and shares what he learned about himself, his leaders and his team. You’ll hear why courage and principles are the cornerstone of being a small-business owner, and how going against convention and taking a stand in your community can inspire others. This full-throttle conversation will get you fired up to make a solid plan for 2021 so you can thrive—no matter what comes your way.   entreleadership.com/podcast Ramsey Solutions' website The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey Learn more and join the EntreLeadership Elite Advisory Group Waitlist EntreLeadership Toolkit - Top tools to help your business grow and thrive Schedule a call with Tim, the Producer   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2020 will go down in infamy. One of the craziest years we've ever experienced. And if you're a business owner, of course you had to navigate new storms. You had new challenges, new things that you were facing. And many business owners are still reeling from how crazy it was last year. But if you're still stuck in last year and you're not thinking about the year ahead, guess what? You're already behind.

From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and the profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and in studio today is the founder of Entre Leadership and All Things Ramsey Solutions, Dave Ramsey himself. Guys, you've heard us talk about him. He's been on the podcast a few times before, but if you haven't heard Dave, man, you're missing out because this is the guy that founded this entire thing 30 years ago on a card table in his living room. And today it's a thriving multi-million dollar organization. And what I love about Entree leadership is it is the story of how Dave and our leaders actually lead. And just like you guys, last year was crazy for us. We faced a lot of storms.

We had a lot of challenges, but we got through it. And we had a plan. And we have a plan for this year going forward, and you can too. To have a successful plan this year, you got to be thinking about this right now. It's January. It's a new year. It's go time. And it all starts with a vision for what success looks like in the year ahead. I think I'm probably like a lot of people. It can go nowhere but up after last year. And we had some wonderful things happen. There were some blessings that happened in 2020, but I think most people will always look back on that as a year of stress, strain, anxiety problems. And it's good to have it in the review mirror.

You know, it's tempting to just run forward into the next year. But one thing we've done around here is taking the time to pause and think back on what are the lessons we learn from 2020. Because anytime there's pain, problems, stress, it's human nature to want to get away from that as quickly as possible. But we don't want to miss the lessons that we learned. As you think about looking back on 2020 for Ramsey Solutions, what are some of the top things that you go, hey, we're going to take this forward with us? These are some things that we're actually glad. We didn't like the process, but we're actually glad that we went through it because now we're this much stronger. Yeah.

Sometimes people think that times like that make people into something. They don't expose them for what they are. And I, for sure, I have a new level of gratitude and respect for our leadership team. Not only were they courageous, not only were they smart, not only was their work ethic incredible, but they were able to keep their chin up and, you know, swing. and fight and claw and scrappy and what does it take to survive in these times? What does it take to even prosper in a weird time? And they did.

So one thing I took away was just gratitude and a new level of gratitude, a new level of respect for our leadership team, our team in general, but certainly our leadership team. I also, I mean, I've always believed what John Maxwell says that leadership is influence. but I have observed with our team and with our leadership team and lots of situations that each of us have been in this year where you get the dirty looks,

where you get the eye roll, the public shaming if you don't behave the way someone wants you to behave and those kinds of things. I'm amazed that when courage and peace and strength and a smile walk in the room, how they can dominate a room. And if you stay in that room long enough, it changes the room. It encourages as infectious as fear is.

And that when we stood, because it was the only thing we knew to do, when we took a stand in the community, or we took a stand with holding an event that wasn't popular with people who were afraid. or when we did that, what we got from other people was gratitude, and they said, wow, you changed the tone of this. And so, yeah, this whole thing of leadership sets the tone. Oh, brother, did I relearn that at a different level? For sure.

You know, you're giving a lot of credit to our leaders, but it started with you. I remember when it first started getting weird out there. Your approach, it wasn't shocking to me because I know you, we've been friends for a long time. I've served under your leadership for years and years. but I think we all, including our top leaders, were a little bit hesitant because this was this big new thing going on and you hit it head on.

In fact, I think about, you know, the movie Forrest Gump, when Lieutenant Dan and Forrest are out on the boat and they're in the storm, and Lieutenant Dan is at the top of the thing, he's going, come on! So you got God! In my mind, that's Dave Ramsey during, like, coronavirus and shut down.

You know, like, the scene after that they're the only boat still sailing and and bubba gum shrimp company is born and they succeeded as a result because everybody else sank where does that straight into the storm where does that come from i don't know exactly i mean i i don't know where it's a decision it's a decision you know you're looking at this situation and you say okay what is what are the facts facts are your friends in a crisis not what are the emotions and you know

what are the the realities of a pandemic is this is this the black plague is all of my team members going to literally die if I don't send everybody home when someone said I should

if I don't require temperatures at the door if I don't whatever right and so it's just one of the things that has made this whole place work has been the idea that normal and whatever this contrarian mentality to whatever's normal is probably a bad idea what everyone else is doing

is probably a bad idea uh and so i you know it's a little bit of rebel i guess and it's it's built this business from the ground that for sure this contrarian thing of normal sucks don't be normal so but And some of it came from that and some of it just came from, okay, what are the options here when I look at the facts? You know, yeah, I'm afraid. And yeah, I don't want to harm anyone. I love my people. My family works here. My children in this building every day.

The parents of my grandchildren, most importantly, are in this building every day. And so would I actually bring harm to them? I mean, what kind of idiot would do that? Oh, I wouldn't. I'm not in that list. And so, but given that, I'm looking at the fact. And I'm going, okay, what are the, what is the risk, the actual risks, and what are the returns, and what are the alternatives? And when you look at the options, there weren't any good options.

Doing nothing in hiding in a cave has turned out to be devastating for businesses. And being shut down has turned out to be devastating for businesses. And choosing to ignore the fact that your revenue and entire segments of the business, what you did with us, disappeared. Exactly. Ignoring that is devastating. And so you've got to look at that and go, okay, I have to deal with the hand I'm dealt, and I'm going to play those cards. And I'm not going to push all the chips to the middle and walk out of the room and just surrender the hand. I'm going to play the hand out.

You know, as you say all that, it dawns on me that not only is there this social pressure, but more than ever there's pressure from government figureheads reinforced by the media. I mean, it's just becoming less and less popular to be contrarian. And small business owners especially are positioned to hold the line for our country, to actually lead, to actually drive forward based on facts and not just fear and emotion. What is it about small business that we need to be thinking about how we really set the pace? I think most of us that start a business and run a business in modern America, we don't. respect rules. You know, the reason you start a business is you saw something was wrong. Something's wrong and it need to be fixed and you're there to fix it, which means the status quo sucks. And I'm not okay with status quo of whatever it is you're there to fix. I'm not okay

that small businesses don't get the respect out of Washington that they get. I'm not okay that, you know, many times when I was having to make a decision, especially in the earlier days of this place, I didn't have any resources. I had people. writing on the concepts of leadership, but I didn't know how to walk someone through an actual confrontational conversation before I had to fire them if they didn't change their ways. I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to communicate difficult things to the entire organization. Nobody teaches that. The tactical applications of some of these theories, it wasn't out there, so we need to dissolve those problems. And so, you know, I'm breaking all the

rules. Let's break all the rules because basically rules are made by people who want to be safe and Nobody in small business started out their whole thing to be safe. You'd have kept your dadgum job that was horrible if you wanted to be safe. I get what you're talking about. I'm wired that way, too. I like breaking the rules, and we've even laughed about some things I've done around here where I've broken the rules. And I also know you, and you're one of the most high integrity people I know. How do you balance this idea of breaking rules, being a renegade, pushing against status quo? I don't think what you're saying is lack integrity and doing that. Where's the line? How do you know when it's right to actually yield and submit versus,

no, we're going to push back with integrity and break the rules and be okay with that from an ethical standpoint? Well, I mean, to me, it's a higher calling. I don't serve the statutes of the United States. I serve Jesus. And if someone passes a law that is immoral, I'm not going to abide by that law. And if someone is doing something that's immoral, I'm not, I'm not called to abide by that. Breaking a rule just to be a lawbreaker is not what I'm talking about. I'm not going to go rob a bank. That's not that's not what I'm discussing here. But, but this idea, sometimes, you know, some people, particularly in governmental situations, and sometimes even in business or in the media, their whole goal in life is to make rules and enforce them.

And they get, you know, they have a Barney Fife syndrome. And so when we're dealing with, you know, the codes administration on putting up a building, I don't just automatically assume that their code, that their idea that this code needs to do this, I push back and go, okay, why? Where'd that come from? And is there not another way to do it? And it's not that I have to be mean to someone or angry with someone. someone. It's just that sometimes people make up stupid crap. And it's like their whole life is making

up stupid crap and enforcing it. And so, you know, to exist and to prosper, you've got to push back against, quote, convention because there's so many people that are enforcing rules that they forgot while they were put in place in the first place. Now, obviously, we're going to abide by the fire code. If this place burns in this building, we need to have put in the proper sprinkler systems and those kinds of things. But sometimes you run into Barney Fife and the fire marshal. And you go, dude, really? Yeah. I mean, you are not in charge of the world.

You are in four sprinkler systems. Come on. So it's not like you're not following the rule. You're challenging. Why does this rule exist? In some case, I'm just not going to follow it, you know, because I don't believe that it's there. Now, a difference in a rule and a law, maybe in that case. But for me, the speed limit is a suggestion.

That's a law that I just break every morning on the way. down here. I like driving my car. But the, you know, but, you know, the stuff around COVID, I mean, the pandemic, the stuff on that, they were just making up stuff on the fly. And the math didn't add up. And the CDC guidelines, you're not following the CDC guidelines, which morning. They changed them every morning. Exactly. Yeah. We spent $60,000 cleaning surfaces to CDC guidelines in this place, only to have them come out and say, oh, cleaning surfaces really doesn't help. well, you buttholes, where's my 60 grand? Right.

You know, because I followed your suggestion, and I did that to keep people in this place a little less fearful. But, you know, I'm not going to spend another 60 grand cleaning surfaces because you guys are making up this stuff as you go. I think a lot of owners at the top think like we do. They're going, yeah, this is, we don't follow all these rules. But you sits on the key there, and that is that we have teams who are following us that maybe don't think exactly. like that. How do we help them see the truth? How do we help them as leaders, educate them, bring them along? Maybe they didn't come out of the womb with that same bent of just like, yeah, it's us against the world. We've done that really well here. I think it's just two or three things.

Number one is we've got good relationships with people. And so they really know, even if this feels weird to me, even if this is outside my comfort zone, these leaders in this building are not people. I know them. They're not people who want to hurt people. They're not harsh. They're not unwise. They're not crazy people. And so when they take a stand on something and go, okay, we're going to come back to work. And then we had three people, you know, out of 1,000 go bonkers because we weren't going to check temperatures at the door.

I'm like, you know, we're not going to do that. It's okay. If you don't want to come, it's okay. It's a free country. It's not Russia. You don't have to work here. But, you know, if you think that we are really going to cause you to die, and we're those kinds of people, you don't need to work for us anyway.

You should never work for anyone who's trying to kill you. That's kind of ridiculous, you know. So they quit, you know, or one of them quit or two of them quit and the other one decide is okay, you know. But, you know, because we had good relationships with 900 people and we have a track record of being wise, not rash, but challenging convention when appropriate and when convention doesn't have a good reason, it's just there. the logic flow is bad, then they're okay. And then, you know, we did lose some to fear because we didn't have enough relationship with them.

So number one, we were consistent all our lives, and they could look at that. The entire time you've been here, whether it's 20 minutes or 20 years, you knew how we were going to act and react, and this was not different. Well, it's like you said earlier, a storm doesn't make people that exposes where they're at. And so any time you're going along, building a business, building a team, you're You're hiring people during peacetime when battles come. I mean, some people are going to be exposed as, oh, you're really not one of us.

And that's okay. Yeah. You know. And because we're warriors here. I mean, this place is a crusade-driven place. And if you're not a warrior, you're not, and you don't have to be a brave heart warrior. You don't have to paint yourself blue and get on the thing. But you've got to care about the stuff we're working on so much that you're willing to fight for it.

And fight to keep the place going because what we're doing matters. And that was exposed. among a few folks. And that's okay. I'm okay with that. I'm not mad about it. It's okay. So I think we communicated,

communicated, communicated, communicated. We were very open. We were very vulnerable. I said, you know, it's not perfect. Let me tell you why I'm doing this. Here's what my intent is. Here's why we're opening back up.

The first week's going to be voluntary. You know, we're not going to work at home anymore. We're coming back to work. First week's voluntary. After that, we'll work with you if you've got kid problems. You can't, your kids aren't in school. We'll work with you if you've got infirm family members and you're worried about them being exposed.

We'll give you some grace there. But by and large, this place is beginning to come back to work. And over time, we're all going to be back at work. We're not doing a work from home thing. We're not changing. I'm sick of Zoom. I hate freaking Zoom. I'm done with it.

And so if, you know, and if you don't want to do that, it's okay. I'm just telling you what we are doing. This is who we are. And we're real kind and real clear. And we've got some folks wear masks or some don't. And we've not been shaming anybody for that. And we don't, you know, if you don't, if you're, if you're not pushing back against all the misinformation in COVID and pandemic and crap coming out of government and shutdowns and stuff, if you don't believe all that, that's okay. We're here.

We love you. We love the people we're serving. We're going to work and scrap and fight to get to continue to bless the people outside these walls. If you want to be on that train, that train's still running. Yeah, that's right. We've said it already, but doing all the stuff we're talking about takes courage. I'd like for you to talk to business owners as they're thinking about 2021. And some of them may say, you know, I haven't felt that courageous. There's a lot of significant relationship between

having courage and being around courageous people, not being alone, not just sitting down in your fear by yourself, but actually, you know, here we have an incredible leadership team where you've got a lot of bold people pushing on each other all the time. And we're not all up 100% of the time. There's times we lift each other up. It's really important to have in your your corner some other leaders that think like you do that help you feel courageous even when you're not necessarily, you know, topped off on your tank of courage. Yeah. And, you know, courage is like, this isn't superhero stuff. This is like, I'm so scared I can't breathe and I'm going to go do it anyway. That's, that's courage. I didn't, I was scared. I didn't know what we were

going to end up with during those dark days and that year. So, you know, to be accused of being courageous. I don't know if I go along with it. Yeah, yeah, because we went forward anyway in spite of the fear, but that doesn't mean there's an absence of fear. It's there and doesn't mean there's not an absence of angst or anxiety or concern or worry or stress. And it doesn't mean that your tank doesn't get emptied out. It did. All of us around here got, we hit the wall, man. We had adrenaline burnout because we were busting it. But, but you know, the thing is that. The thing is that, this, you've got to make decisions based on what you believe is right. The principle, not based on optics.

Optics are for cowards and wussies. And a lot of these publicly traded companies, a lot of these big companies, a lot of people are worried. You're not wearing a mask, some of you, because you're worried about the illness. you're worried about how it looks. And if that's the case, you're just a wuss. Now, if you really are worried and you really believe that the mask is saving someone's life or your life or someone you loves life or whatever, then you should wear a mask on principle.

And you should do that everywhere you go. And you should not be inconsistent. Because if you take that off, you're killing somebody. And so don't wear it sometimes and not wear it others. because that reveals that it's not a principle, that you're only worried about the way things look. And so you cannot make decisions based on optics and be anything but a publicly traded wuss. You've got to stand on principle, not optics. And the principle is I'm not trying to hurt anybody.

The principle is we're trying to help the people around here, the people outside these walls. The principle is we would never do anything to intentionally bring harm to someone. We love folks. but the other thing is I'm not going to do something because we had a lady drive down the interstate and saw all the cars in the parking lot and call our customer care and just cuss them up one side and down the other. How could we possibly be Christians if we were at work? And she's cussing them up one side and down the other.

So inconsistent people are just duffices. But the, you know, I'm thinking about that. She doesn't get a vote. What she thinks doesn't dictate our decisions. we are going to look at the facts and based on principle, we're not going to do it based on the way it looks. We're going to do it based on the way it is, what principle is.

And you've got to do that in all times. And, man, I got to tell you, I relearned that lesson 63 times in 2020. And it has made me as bold as a lion going into 2021 because principle, man, it works. Yeah. standing on principles. This is what is real and this is what is right. And if you don't like the way it looks, I can't help you with that. All you can do is just not do business with us. All you can do is just not work here. All you can do is come try to arrest me. But you can do all those things

if you don't like the way this looks. We had interaction with public officials when we're doing these events and all they cared about when you really got down to it because we created solutions to calm their butts down. And all they really cared about was the way it looked. Yeah, we sat in those discussions and we're talking through. They were worried about the press. I mean, it was all obvious. It's just ridiculous.

Yeah. And so, you know, that's just the inconsistency and the hypocrisy of that stuff just blows my mind. So whether it's a pandemic, whether it's a reaction to a force fire, a hurricane, whether it's a reaction to... Team member issue. I mean, it's really anything. There's stuff happening in Congress that affects your business and tax law change. and they cram health care down your throat as a business owner or whatever it is.

You know, you've got to do the thing that is the right thing. And if you're taking a poll all the time on how it looks, you're not going to make it. And you shouldn't. Well, I want to go further on this. You know, some people have principles, but they're too scared to make decisions based on those principles. I think a lot of people, they default to optics because they don't have principles. Like they never just sat down and decided what they believe and what's true and where they're going to stand. Well, they're more afraid of what people think than they are not following God.

They're more afraid of what people think than they are the violation of the principle. If everybody's jumping off a building, the principle that's going to kick in is the law of gravity. Right. And if you jump off a building with everybody else because everybody else is doing it, you're more afraid of the popularity contest than you are the results of hitting the sidewalk. Yeah. And I'm more afraid of the sidewalk than I am what you people think. Well, but you had to have principles before the storm. I mean, you can't develop your principles in the middle of the chaos.

Well, you have to recognize that they exist. So how did you develop your principles that you were going to stand on these things? You were going to say, hey, it doesn't matter if it's popular. It doesn't matter what the optics are. This is where Dave Ramsey's going to take a stand. Well, I have the unfair benefit of having gone broke on my 20s. And one of the things that happened when we went broke and lost everything, thing. We were humiliated. We were embarrassed publicly. Stuff sold with my name on at the

courthouse steps. It's in the newspaper that Dave Ramsey's gone broke. My family thought I was an idiot because I was an idiot. It was embarrassing. And so I lost the popularity contest. I was no longer the cool kid. And the benefit of that is, that I survived without all of those people's approval, and I prospered without any of those people's approval. Some of them came back around later on. The best revenge is always success, right? But by then it doesn't matter what they,

I lost my need for other people's approval almost to a sick level. It's almost bad. Like I should actually dress a little better. You know, I'd be a little more button up, look a little better, you know, but I just don't give a rip. And that's not good all the time, honestly. But what the Bible calls fear of man. I don't have a fear of man anymore. I have a fear of Jesus, not that I think he's going to thump me, but I have a fear of doing him wrong. I don't do him wrong. And I'm not going to do him wrong. And if you don't like what I'm doing because

I'm not doing him wrong, then you're not going to like me because I'm not going to, you don't get a vote. He does. And so that fear of man and my faith. walk as a Christian, that lack of fear of man, and my faith walk as a Christian where I have, I revere God's input. I revere God's principles in ways of handling things. So treat other people like you want to be treated. The golden rule, right? Jesus said. So there's a way to walk through a pandemic. There's a way to walk through. We had two people on our team completely have their homes destroyed while they stood in the hallway by a tornado. And last Thanksgiving, we had a, people stand up and say what they were thankful for.

And one of the guys got up with tears rolling down his face and told the whole story of how our team showed up in trucks with chainsaws and work gloves and food and hotel money. And his family standing in the midst of what was left of their home. Literally the five-foot area they were standing around was all that was left. So we treat other people like we want to be treated. We didn't do any of that to be in the newspaper. And it never was in the newspaper. We didn't do any of that so that some left-wing.

nut job would think that suddenly this conservative was compassionate. I don't give a rip. All we needed to do was treat that young man and his family like I'd want to be treated if my family had just had my house torn down around my head with me hugging my three-year-old standing in the hallway by a tornado. We showed up in mass and took care of him. You treat other people like you want to be treated. We're not taking a poll on that. That's a principle. You know, it strikes me a lot of business owners, sadly, this year have lost everything. I've talked to a lot of them that were... It's been a hard year. Well, you know, the storm hit, but they were leveraged. They were doing some things that they maybe should not have done. In hindsight, they wouldn't have done.

And what I'm hearing you say that in your experience is at the bottom of a failure, you've got this unique window in time. You have a perspective and you have a season where you can really develop some of these principles, some of these no matter what things that you're going to go forward with the rest of your life. Yeah, and if that's you, and that happened to you, I mean, you're one of the three little pigs that built straw or sticks, maybe. I was that little three of pig. Mine was straw, or it was a house of cards, and it came down around my head. It was my fault because I didn't build a brick house. I wasn't the third pig, and that's how I went broke. And so, A, I learned that lesson. But B, you know, there's several versions of the Three Little Pigs story.

Some of them, they get eaten by the wolf. But I didn't get eaten. I didn't die. I didn't die. I got into the third pig's house and the wolf walked on by because he couldn't get in there. And so I got the chance to start again. And I looked around me and went, okay, the way that the wolf didn't get in is he built the house right.

And so there's some principles of how to build the house I'm going to go back and do. I'm going to be prepared the next time the big bad wolf comes around, whether he's 2008 or whether he's a pandemic or whether he's not. 911 or whether he's the bank gets sold to another bank or whatever it is it's going to take you out you have insulated yourself against that with good financial and business practices and that's the that's the one thing I learned but the other thing I learned that's magical for you if you're hurting out there and you're scared and you're beat up and you've it's been the year you lost everything it didn't kill me it didn't kill me which means I get another shot I got a really clean

whiteboard because everything else is gone. And now I get to reassess, okay, what did I, what, what, what things that I believe that weren't true that set me up to fail? It didn't kill me. And so when something comes at me now, over all these years, these 30 years since then, when something comes at us, it's like, this is going to be bad. It's going to hurt. It's not going to kill me.

I'm not going to die from it. It's not going to kill me. I'm not going to die from our live events department completely evaporating for 12 months, you know, or more. And, you know, what was a major business unit at Ramsey is just about completely gone. Now, we didn't lay anybody off. We were repurposing those people. We're learning the stream.

We're trying to pivot. We're trying to come up with other things. But the point is, not only did I not die from it, the live events people didn't die. Nobody came in here and lined everybody up in front of a firing squad. and shot them. We just lost some revenue. And we get a chance to figure out a way to do it again in a brave new world. And we're going to be the first one of the party by God.

And we're going to solve this thing. And we're going to get content out and love people with our information the way we always have in a different way. Or maybe back to the same way, if everybody decides to ever go back to an arena again. But we didn't die. Right. Nobody died. You know?

And so it didn't kill. kill you. And once I got that, it makes you incredibly brave after that. It's like, this sucks, but I'm not going to die. So I'm curious, because you've had 30 years of exercising these muscles, living by these principles. Early on, were you ever tempted to equivocate a little bit or to broaden your really tight? I'm more apt to equivocate now because I've gotten a little lazier and a little more prosperous and a little fatter. But when you're lean and battle tested and you're coming out and you're, you know, you're carrying four guns of bazooka on your back because you just come out of it and somebody comes near you with something.

You're like, no, I'm taking you. I'm just shoot you in the face, man. I mean, don't even come near me with something. No, I, when, because then you're like, you're depending on the principles as your path to get away from the pain. And now when there's no pain, it's like, well, maybe I ought to go along because I don't want to lose all this stuff I built. So maybe I ought to make the stinking mayor happy.

And it's like, hell no. This is stupid. I'm going to go, I'm going to remember what it was like to fight for the right thing and do the right thing. I'm going to be kind to the mayor, and I'm going to be kind to the governor, and I'm not going to be mean to them. But, but on the other hand, it's like, no, no, no. But it's easier to, you know, one guy said when it comes to a wealth as an example, and it kind of comes to, it goes along with success or wealthy. The one is sometimes you get with success or wealth only the fear of losing it. and that'll cause you to acquiesce on principles more than when you're lean and mean.

Isn't that funny how pain is more motivating than, like the only times I really start a diet is when my pants stop fitting. Like I should eat healthy all the time, you know, but there's a little pain, the skill. And it's like, why can't I just always do the right thing and stay in it? And there's something about maturity and leadership that we bring that burden on ourselves so that we stay there. Well, once you kind of can get the track record of when I act on principle, not optics, when I love people well, when I put mission and crusade out front, every time I do that, it works, and every time I don't do it, I bring crap into my life. Additional crap, more than just was coming at you to start with. It gets worse, not better. and then even if you're kind of fat and lazy a little bit and stuff starts happening,

your brain can activate and you remember from experience, I know what to do here. And so the inner warrior can come back out, you know, and, you know, you can get back on the horse and ride again and go because you go, look, there's the other alternative is I'm going to by not following principle, by following optics,

for example, you're going to make things worse, not better. I've noticed, I don't know if you did this by design, but you have a lot of accountability around you, especially with our operating board. We talk very transparently with each other. We push on each other. Anytime one of us is getting a little comfortable or equivocating a little bit, the group kind of sucks us back into, you know, our principle is. And we have some uncomfortable conversations, but the net result is we galvanize these principles in each other. And we hold each other to this is who we said we're going to be and how we're going to operate.

Many small business owners don't have that board. That's why we do masterminds and coaching. It's one of the biggest benefits. But say a little bit more about the importance of surrounding yourself with these people that are going to help you feel some of that pain even when you're not feeling it. Maybe you're about to make a stupid decision. Well, Turkey's flock, eagles don't. And so if you're an eagle, you've got to purposefully search out other eagles,

whether it's a mastermind group that you form or you get in one of ours in elite, or you get some guys from church and you call it a prayer group. I don't care what you do. But you're going to become who you hang around with. If you run around with a bunch of wusses who equivocate everything and just go along with whatever society tells them to do and shame-based decisions or politically correct decisions, you're going to be one of those.

If you won't be bold lying and be out strutting in the street and causing stuff to happen, then you need to be walking with other lions. Because you can't learn to roar from a canary. They can't teach you that. And so who are you going to, you know, the Bible says, be not deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits. You become who you hang around with. And if you want to be a person of integrity, you need to be running around people of integrity. I don't, my closest 15 or 20 friends, some of them are in this building and leadership,

some of them are out there, but none of them have integrity issues. None of them. of them think it's cute to run down their wife in conversation. None of them are mean, nasty to the people they interact with. None of them are unkind as a way of life. None of them have a filthy mouth. None of them don't read. They all read. Because it's who I want to be, I want to be that guy.

And so I'm going to run around with people that are that guy and that gal and put those people on your leadership team as soon as you can, as soon as you're growing your company. And then in the multitude of counsel, there is safety, the Bible says. And so you're not only going to become who you hang around with, but like during COVID, I would come in here and I would have been to the end of my emotions. And I'm ready to just kill somebody. And like Jen Sieverson, our CMO is always calm. She's the drama extractor.

And she's like, okay, Dave, you've vented, you feel better now, but you're you're not really going to do that. I know, but I needed to have somebody I could say I was going to, I was going to drop an atom bomb on these people. And they won't find the bodies, you know. I mean, I need to have somewhere I can say that. A safe place to let it out. And then she would just remind me, okay, we're really going to take a step back.

We're going to breathe and we're not going to act on that emotion because that would be rash and anger based. And, but I had to have a room of people and other people did the same thing. I wasn't the only one that was doing that stuff. But, yeah, we're going to take the same energy from that and exert it to be able to stand on principle, but instead of being rash. And so, yeah, put the people around you that can speak truth. And by the way, if you punish them for speaking truth, they'll quit. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Yeah, if you embarrass somebody when they tell the truth and all of a sudden you've got this emperor has no closed culture and nobody's going to say what they're actually thinking because you smack people every time they say something. And the group, I mean, our operating board is as close to a group of peers as I've ever been around in a business setting. But we've worked at it for 10 years to build that spirit in the room where it's permission to. There's no question that they know I own the place. There's no question Dave is in the room. It tilts the room still. But it doesn't tilt it anywhere near like it used to.

Yeah, but we've had to really balanced that table out. And when people have called me out and getting a good argument with me, in that room, sometimes they get to win the argument because they're right and stuff like that. You know, so that's, you know, and when that happens and I don't stand on my stupidity, instead, I go, you know what, I think you're right. I think we need, I think I saw that wrong. And then they, then that gives somebody else permission to stand up. Well, you've modeled it. And I think the, the owner and CEO does have to model this. The group will not get itself there. No, no. It doesn't, it doesn't even matter if they're right.

I've seen you do this where somebody else say something that is attacking your idea. We never attack each other as people, but I mean, they're being brutal about, no, I don't see it the way you see it. And they may be wrong, but you never shame that person for speaking up. In fact, there's times you go, hey, I don't like what you said. I'd appreciate it. You know, you went and did your research before you argue with my point. But I'm glad you said it. Thank you for speaking up.

I mean, you've created a culture where you thank people for telling the truth. And I know from where I sit, I feel very. comfortable saying anything I'm thinking to you. Yeah. And it's not going to be a personal, you sometimes you put me in my place. I put you in your place on the facts. But there's not like this, this other personal shaming thing going on. Well, you know, Pat Lynch-ioni talks about it in the book, The Advantage, which is one of the best thesises of a book I've seen ever. And the book is awesome as well. And he's a good friend. But the thesis of the advantage is a company, an organization, whether it's a family, a company, a church that can do healthy,

conflict has a marketplace advantage way beyond product quality, way beyond smart people working on the team. Most people have some smart people on the team. Most people put out a pretty decent product. But you can whip all of them if your internal leadership team, and for that matter, the entire organization has a playbook to do healthy conflict. And healthy conflict is the only way you create real accountability. It's the only way you can, it's the only way I can dial in Which of these things that I'm sensing, that I'm feeling are accurate, which of these things this place needs to act on. I've done a lot of stuff by myself and a lot of it was wrong, you know? And so I quit doing it.

It just didn't work. The principle is in the multitude of counsel, there's safety. As we're thinking about 2021, one thing we know for sure is you need a plan for your success. We planned really well all the way through COVID. And as a result, we were up year over year. Yep. We didn't just stumble into being up year over year. And we had entire segments of our revenue disappear.

And other segments more than made up for it. We were up year over year. Matter of fact, we were up over what we projected budget to be for the 12 months beginning before COVID. Yeah. It's bizarre. But you know, it didn't happen because we were one of those unique businesses that happened to benefit from everything going on. We were running like somebody was chasing us, man. We launched new things.

We tried stuff. We shipped stuff sooner. But we came into our war room as an executive team every two days for 90 days in a row. And we had a battle plan. Yep. And we knew how to do that because we have been an organization that has valued and built plans. You got to have a freaking plan. And it's one of the six drivers of an entree leadership company is planning.

What would you say to business owners, as there may be kind of stumbling out of 2020, Maybe they didn't have a plan or maybe they're still licking their wounds. This is the time to plan your year out. This is the time in January to look out and go, where do we want to be in a year from now? And how are we going to get there? Well, I didn't, you know, when I started for the first several years, we didn't do any planning. We certainly didn't do any strategic planning. Someone said something about stratops one time.

I don't even know what that is in the early days. And so I just always figured we could out earn our stupidity. if we just go sell some more stuff, it'll all work out, you know. And so we didn't, you know, there wasn't a plan. Plan was make payroll Friday. Well, and that works to a point. Yeah, it's, it, no. You can get a business moving with just some raw sales.

You can do a lot of stuff that works to a point, but it's not necessarily the shortest distance between two points. It's not the most efficient way to get there. If you want to get from where you are to a better place, that's not the best way to get there. You can get there that way, but you're, you know, you're making it hard on yourself. So what I always said that was the lie that I believe was I don't have time. I got too much to do.

You want me to take my time. I mean, planning to me was not working. Working was talking to a customer making some money. Working was negotiating with a vendor. Working was being on stage producing the product. Working was work. But planning was like, that's what you do like on Sunday. I don't know.

I mean, when you're not working. We just perceived it as just talking. I proceeded as a waste of time. you know, like it was a, and of course, that's stupid. I was stupid, but I said I didn't have time to plan. And of course, what that made us was highly inefficient because if you, if you figure out how you're going to go to Florida from Tennessee, you'll get there faster than just taking off in the car and hoping you go south, you know, and which highway, and I don't know where that is

and make this up and, you know, people put it in their phone now with the GPS or whatever, but, I mean, You need a plan. If I want to go from Nashville to Daytona, I need to think about how I'm going to get there. And that's a plan. And that's going to be more efficient than just going on a Sunday afternoon drive and hoping I end up on a pretty beach someday. That's ridiculous. And that's what I was doing. And I was driving really fast, but in lots of different directions.

And if I had just gone down the highway, I could have gone slower, more carefully, and still gotten there quicker by having a plan. So the point is you don't have time not to plan. the proof that we believe that is in the biggest crisis this business has ever faced in 2020. We sent everyone home, 40 of us, 30 of us working every day. The top leadership tier of 20 was in a room every morning, and what were we doing? Planning. We were planning and executing. We were planning and by the afternoon executing.

That's right. And planning by Friday executing. And planning and by the end of the month executing. We didn't just plan. So I think the misnomer is, if you get stuck on these, extremes because the reason there's a stigma around planning is there are some people who don't work and they call it planning as an excuse. They're called dreamers. You hope they don't marry your dollars. So there's this constant ebb and flow between. We need a plan, we need to execute a little and

execute a little. And, you know, the faster, you know, we were in crisis, so we had to, we had to plan that morning and execute that afternoon or plan that morning and execute by Friday, and that's literally what we did. And then plan that morning, execute by the following Wednesday, and that's what we did. And we started putting, you know, what are the near-term things, the next things out, the next thing's out, the next thing's out, but we didn't just run out in the street flailing around, hoping we would work this out, and kept working and, you know, they're sucking your thumb sitting in the corner, but there's also flailing around rash without a, without a map. Yeah. And so we've just found the most efficient way. The shortest distance between you,

where you are and greater success is a plan. And it gives you. And it gives you. you efficiencies that exceed the time it takes to build the plan. Stephen Covey and the Seven Habits tells the story of the crew that's chopping down the trees in the forest and nobody ever climbed up to the top of the tallest tree to look out and figure out if they're in the right forest. And they chopped down the wrong forest. And so the next day they had to go chop down the forest they were supposed to chop down to begin with. And I mean, it's just that's leadership. Like you have to take the time to get above the problem and say, are we doing the right things the right way. And if you're just executing all the time, you can waste a lot of effort,

do a lot of the wrong things, and then you've got to come back and do it later. Exactly. Exactly. And what I now know that I didn't know when I was the young guy just run around flailing is that I actually get there faster if I don't work all the time or I consider planning part of the work. And so if I stop and go, we're going to once a quarter shut down the entire operating board, the 15 most highly paid team members out of a thousand, and we're going to not do any work, tactical work, and we're going to get in a room, and we're going to plan two days four times a year. Oh, and we're also going to go once a year to a really nice resort and just hang out together and hardly do any planning or anything because the quality of relationships are increased and things move at the speed of

trust and we've got a great plan. And so we spend actual productive hours and money producing the plan and building relationships. And the efficiencies that those two things create far outpace, far outpace, 10x the time we took to do them. It takes a lot of maturity. as a leader to realize that the best leaders spend a lot of time, an inordinate amount of time, thinking. But if you try to put your finger on what is thinking, you're right. You can't quantify it the way you can. Like, I just called a vendor and we got this deal negotiated. Yeah, I just made a million dollars on that thing. I just made $100,000. I just made $10,000. I can make payroll Friday.

Because I picked a phone and clicked that payable, you know, this guy wasn't paying me. So I get on the phone and he paid me. All right, I got that's going to make payroll Friday. I've done that a bunch of times in my life. And you need to do those things. Those are operational, tactical habits that you've got to have in running a business or somebody inside the business has got to have or that you're not going to be there. If all you do sit around and plan, you're a dreamer. But if all you do is work, you're chopping on the wrong forest. You've got to do both. You got to do both.

Dave, as leaders listening to this are thinking about 2021. Many of them had a really tough year last year. I believe this is going to be the best year for so many business owners out there. there's so much to go harvest. There's so much that's been cleansed out. There's still some real problems. We're going to face those things all the time. But as we wrap up today, what would you say to encourage the hearts and minds of leaders as we go forward together in 2021?

You know, we've told you this before, but maybe it takes on a little different light in light of what we've all just come through. You as a leader, listening to this, are the solution. you're the secret sauce. It's not a better mouse trap. It's not a perfect person. It's not the hire that you haven't made yet, that you've been trying to hire, you've been trying to find this guy,

trying to find this gal. It's not, you know, this breakthrough in technology. It's you. You're the solution. You're the problem. And I've seen that over. and over and over again. Some of you, your competitors, have been wiped out,

and you just about have, and you're going to end up buying and owning all of them before you're done. I got off the plane in another city. Back in the summer when very few people were moving around, I went to speak to this technology group in person, and the car service guy pulls up, and we get in the car service. And I sit in the front, because I love. car service guys. They're all small business guys, just about. There's a few of them that work for

big companies, but we don't usually use them. We use the little guy if we can find him. And I'm driving along. Turns out the guy was a fan, and he was the owner of this five-person car service. They had five cars, five sedans, five SUVs out there rolling, and one sprinter, one Mercedes sprinter, but we were in the, whatever, suburban is SUV, ride along. And I'm like, so how's your year? Because I'm figuring there's nobody. riding around in car services, right? Because the corporate guys are all at home. The people doing events are all at home.

Who gets off a plane and gets in a car service in this pandemic environment in August of 2020? Nobody. I'm figuring this guy's getting ready to cry river. He's going to tell me how bad things are and how he's just barely holding on. And he breaks out on the biggest grin. He goes, the best year of my life. Really? I'm going, how is it the best year in your life?

Nobody's renting car services. Dude, come on. You got to tell the truth here. I start messing with him. He goes, no, really. He goes, there were three other companies in this. It was a fairly small town, medium-sized town. He said, there were three other companies, and they're all gone.

I'm the only one left. I've got all the business. I said, well, all the business couldn't amount to squat. He goes, not a lot, but it's more than I had last year. He said, I'm up year over year. And oh, by, I said, so what happened to all of them? He goes, most of them are pretty good guys. I was friends with him.

A lot of them working for me now. And I bought several of their cars. and so he's actually taken market share, probably tripled, quadrupled his market share, and all he did was just keep moving. He didn't do anything. There was no magic to the guy. All he did was he just, he led, he just kept moving. He realized he was the secret sauce, and whatever position he put himself in,

allowed him to do that financially or whatever else. I didn't get into his finances. I don't know if he's debt-free or what he did. A lot of those guys borrow money on their cars. so I don't push them on that, embarrass them. But, you know, the point was, I just thought, I love this guy. He not only survived, and I'm kind of, you know, August was a, that was a bad month for folks, you know. And not only survived, but he now owns all these old competitors.

Some of them will pop back up, but they'll, it'll take years for someone to whittle or that way at the market share that he added in one six-month period of time, because he kept pushing, kept driving, kept scrambling, kept pivoting, kept scrappy. And all of those things are just leadership decisions. Yes, it's a decision. You are the secret sauce, baby, if you're listening to this. Listen, even if you got knocked down and you're one of them that went out of business and you're listening to this, it ain't over. You didn't die.

And you get to go again. You get another shot, man. And you're going to be better next time because you've learned some stuff. And you didn't die. Well, you didn't do it again. You didn't lose most of the assets that you really need, which is what you know. No one can take. Your ability to work with people.

Your relationships. I mean, it's your business was just your business. It's just a thing. It's just a thing. Just a thing. Go do another thing, man. And, you know, or go do that thing again. And this time do it better and smarter.

But, you know, it is not over. And the thing that made you successful before is not gone. That's right. And that is you. And what you got the. stuff, man, inside of you. And that's not gone. No one can steal your hope.

You have to surrender that. You have to turn that over and go, I quit. I give up. I quit. That's a personal act of surrender. You have to wave the white flag. Don't wave the white flag. Because, you know, I was talking to a guy the other day on the radio, and he lost his job.

And he said, you know, I made, I said, how much did you make? And he said, I made $110,000 a year in sales. I said, that's awesome. I said, you're going to make so much money in your life. I'm so glad you lost your job. You know, what do you mean? I go, listen, man, if you can make six figures in sales, number one, you can do almost anything.

But number two, if you've ridden that bicycle, you know what it feels like to ride that bicycle? The chances of you getting back to six figures in the next 90 days or getting back on a six figure trajectory in the next 90 to 120 days is so high. Now, if you call me up and you said, I used to be in sales. I made $10,000 a year. I'd be going, you need a new career, man. because you suck at sales.

You know, or you were in a bad product or a bad company or something. You need something different. But, dude, once you've made six figures in sales, you know what it feels like to ride that bicycle at that speed.

Yeah. And you're never going to, it's not going to be comfortable for you to ride a bicycle at the $25,000 of your speed because you've done it before. You know, you ever get a car up to 140,

150 miles an hour ever, which I won't say I know anybody's done that. But then when you slow down to 80, it feels like you stopped. because your brain gets used to moving at that speed. You've still got that inside of you if you went down this year, and this is an event. It is not a death sentence.

That's right. Well, it's going to be an exciting year. I think there's so much to look forward to, and it's an honor to have built this thing with you to get to lead alongside you. We got through a battle last year, and I'm excited to go out and harvest with you in this coming year. So thank you for your leadership.

Thank you for your belief in small business everywhere. That's what makes this thing tick. And it's always good to have you back in the Entry Leadership Studio. Love doing it. Love doing it. I love this brand. I love small business people. You deserve to win out there, guys, and we're here to help you.

Well, I hope in today's conversation you were reminded of something that you already know, and that is that leadership takes courage. It takes courage to face the storm. It takes courage to push forward when it's not popular, when there's rules. when there's rules we have to break, when there's decisions that are not always clear. But you know what? That's what it means to be a leader. That's our job description.

It's difficult, but you can do it. And you know what? It's super gratifying. I mean, what better thing is there than solving problems, going first on the hard things, so that other people don't have to feel as much pain? It's truly an act. of service. That's what leadership is about. And so as you're thinking about your success this year as a leader, and you're thinking about the team that you want to serve, and you're thinking about

the difference that you want to make in the marketplace with your product or service, what's your game plan? What's your plan for success? Because you know what? There's going to be more storms. I mean, 2020's over, but 2021's got a whole new set of challenges and problems for anybody in leadership. That's just how it works. So what's your plan? And who's your team? We talked about it with Dave. In a multitude of counsel, their safety.

Who's your board of advisors? Who's the group that you're going to bounce the big decisions off of? Who's that group that meets regularly with you and tells the truth even when it's uncomfortable so that you don't make fatal mistakes? At Entree Leadership, we design these groups into our coaching program. because we believe so much in that principle of the multitude of counsel. Our Entry Leadership Advisory Groups are full of, well, they're men and women just like you running businesses who are going to give you advice, work with our coaching team, get answers, get solutions to the biggest problems you're facing so that you can drive your business forth. That's what they're all about.

And they're about to open up. This is exciting. So they're not always open, but our new advisory groups are going to open up soon and you can get on the wait list to get more. more information about how you can jump in one of these groups. Just text the phrase, waitlist 2021 to 33444. That's waitlist, 201, no spaces to 33444. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. Hey, do you know somebody else that would also enjoy this episode? We'd love it if you would share and send them a link. That's how this thing grows. Thank you for doing that. So many of you guys have introduced your friends, your family, your business colleagues, and we hear all the time,

man, somebody shared this with me, and now I'm in it, and I'm winning in my business, and it's because you guys are the heroes and help get the word out, so thank you. Also, if you didn't know, this is cool, you can now watch interviews and highlights from the Entree Leadership podcast on YouTube. Those are fun ways to share this as well, so check it out. Now, look, if you're a small business owner between two and 200 team members, our production team would love to talk with you and get your feedback on how we can make the show even better for you. If you'd like to help us out with that and schedule a call, just click on the link in the show notes to fill out a brief survey

to set up a call with our producer Tim. Also, follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. You can follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. We'd love to hang out with you over there. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rudder. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team,

thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning. and keep leading.