EntreLeadership - How to Stabilize Your Team and Your Profits

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

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From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win in business and in leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 30 years of experience in the trenches doing what you do. Today, I've done what you do as the CEO running this business that I started on a card table in my living room 30 years ago. So you can do it, America. This is how it's done. Small business is the backbone of America, and we're here to help you with your leadership and your business ideas and your questions and your challenges. The phone number if you want to call in is 844-944-1070, 844-9-4-1070, or you can call and leave what you'd like to talk about on the website at ontaryleadership.com slash ask, and we will make you a caller on this show. Luke is with us in Phoenix.

Hey, Luke, what's up? Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can I help? I'm a custom rifle builder in Phoenix, Arizona. We've got two and a half employees plus myself. And we did 3.1 million in revenue last year.

Goodness. Gracious, nice rifles. Thanks. Yeah, we were killing it. I started in my basement. Yeah, right? I started in my basement. 12 years ago and just kept on growing,

did the, you know, kind of like Ken Coleman talks about. Yeah. Well, I'm proud of it, man. That's great. So $3 million worth last year. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you.

What's your average unit cost? Average unit retail for? Before Optic, we're in the $4 to $6,000 range. You're making a bunch of rifles. Wow. We sell a lot of components as well. Okay. Wow.

Good. Yeah, we do a fair number of rifles. All right. Two and a half team members, so two full-time, one part-time. How can I help? So since I've submitted the question, you've talked about some in the podcast, but I'm wondering recommendations for bringing on a smart money program benefit for my employees without targeting, especially with this small team, targeting someone who really needs

the budgeting help and baby step guidance in their life. Yeah, I would just say, hey, guys, I'm going to furnish financial peace university for both of you. And I want you to go through it because it changed my life. And I want you to go through it because I want you to be able to, we're winning here at the business. And I want you to be winning at home with your money. And it'll show you how to get out of debt, how to get on a budget, how to agree with your spouse on money, and how to get rich, how to become wealthy. And I'm going to give it to you as an employee benefit. The only thing I ask is that you actually go to the class.

Okay. It costs you like $80 a person. It's not anything. Right, right. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That's a good idea. And then, you know, open up some lunchroom discussions about what they're learning.

Okay. And let them talk about it and see if your guy that you're concerned about is plugging in emotionally. Okay. A little follow-up to make sure he's going to class and that he's plugging in emotionally. He's actually starting to do some of the stuff. And, you know, offer to, if you want to, If I were in your situation, I'm not above offering to help somebody. Meaning, you know, if he gets to talking about it and he's enthused about it, go,

hey, if you ever want me to look at your stuff with you, I'll look at it, I'll coach you. Because I've been doing this stuff, and I used to mess it up all the time, and it really changed my life when I got a hold of it. And I'm excited that you're starting to do it, and I'll help you with it any way I can. Okay. And so he's mainly got a budgeting issue, but he's not overwhelmed with that. I'm not entirely sure. I think there's some debt there too. Some, but I mean, it's not like he's like he's about to lose his house or something.

No. Okay. All right. Because we will step in, if they'll do financial counseling with us, we'll step in and help them financially if we need to. But, you know, we're now able to. When we were two people, we weren't able to. You're making a lot more money than I was on. Had two people.

but yeah, you can consider that part as well. If you can get it, if you can get down in their lives and just mentor the person, it's very helpful. That changed. Yeah, because it's not a money. It's not a money issue. It never is. No, no. So, okay.

So, man, well done. I'm glad you care about your people. You're a great guy. That's the kind of people. Listen to you folks out there listening. Luke is everywhere in America. he actually cares about his team. And most corporate America doesn't.

We know that because they lay off 10% of their employees, 7,000 people, to increase stock price in Q1. And Luke would never do that. He loves his people. He's taking care of his people. See, that's a whole different way of looking at running a business. So those of you that are looking for a job out there, you need to know that the best place in the world to work is not big business.

It's small business because it's the best opportunity you have to actually get to work with people who know you, your family, your dreams, your fears, and care about you. And a good small business operator will do that. And Luke is doing just exactly that right now. That's how it's done. Oh, and by the way, he's financially killing it. He's making a lot of money. And that's great.

Making some really nice rifles over there in Phoenix. Yeah. There you go. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. If you're a business owner, you know your team is your biggest asset, your biggest expense, but sometimes they can be your biggest plane in the butt. Getting them all on the same page, getting the ducks in a row is often mind-blowingly frustrating. No matter how many times you tell them how to do something, sometimes they don't do it.

and you wonder, why aren't they getting it? Well, I felt this too. I get this frustration. I get it. Because here's the deal. The truth is business is easy until people get involved. Your team can only be as strong as your ability to lead them. Getting them to get it is on you.

It's your job to build a relationship with your team, to be the chief reminding officer, and to lead by example, and to love them. and that's why I want you to join Entree Leadership for a free two-day master class called Unbreakable Leadership. Ramsey Personality Ken Coleman and some of my top senior leaders will teach you how real business owners empower and equip their teams to win in any season. If you have a team, you can't miss this live stream on February 26th and 27th. Sign up right now at entreleadership.com slash unbreakable leadership. Oh, by the way, it's free.

Do it. Entreleadership.com slash unbreakable leadership. Brian is with us. Brian is in Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, Brian, welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast. Hey, Dave, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

So I've got a question for you. I'm 28. I'm a Lodd Engineer at the family business, and we do pulp paper mill production work, and it's parts since going to mill. But I'm really interested on finding more work for the business because we're not at the size of our competitors. Our competitors are way beyond us. But also keeping it small. and there's 14 of us and we had about

we'd have about 4 million in revenue last year good okay and so what is it you actually do tell me again and paper mills the paper mill process

there's parts that go in tubs and everything that all the papers push through and process through and over time it wears and we we when they wear we get them out

and rebuild them back to regular specs and everything that they at when they're made and then ship them back. So you're doing manufacturing, renovation and repair? Basically, yes, sir. Okay.

And the people that do exactly what you do, you have competitors? Well, yeah, they're competitors, but they're way over us. They do everything involved in the paper mills, like from very first processes to the finish, and we don't do that. All we do is one product in the whole process.

Why don't they use you for that product? Most of them do, but the other ones, but we just don't offer it. I mean, they do, our other competitors, I mean, they're doing billions in work a year. I mean, they're doing all kinds of stuff, and they can basically build a paper mill from the ground up, and we can't. Right. So they're not really a competitor. You're more like a subcontractor to them. Yes, sir.

but they don't see you as a competitor. Yeah, that's exactly right. But at the same time, they're taking, they're doing the work that we could be doing if they weren't in there. But they're in there doing everything else in the middle. So it's something I've thought about just ways of being able to get that work from them. Yeah. Because they've got so much other work to worry about,

but I'm just, I haven't figured out how to do it yet. And I've only been back at the family business about four months now. I've worked here prior, but I went on the road and got my engineering and everything and then came back because family's getting old. But, and I'm just, I'm not stuck because, I mean, we do good, but it's just I want more than what we have. Yeah, good for you. Well, you're trying to figure out a way to keep growing because anything's not growing is dying, right?

Exactly. That's exactly right. You're smart. There's no panic here. There's nothing on fire. But you may get squeezed completely out if you don't solve this, right? That's what's came to mind. Yeah.

That's what you're describing. That's what it sounds like. So either you're going to find smaller paper mills that don't use these big conglomerates to come in, and they use people like you as one-to-one customer, or you're going to do subwork for these big operations. And when you're going to convince them that it is more economical and more professional and a better product end for you to handle what you do for them when they're doing the whole mill. Yes, sir.

Sub out, in other words, you become a sub to them. And there's no harm in that at all. That's not a bad gig at all because then you're not having to really go get the business. Every time they get a mill to do, you're automatic. You're in there. And see, that's one thing, too. Like our biggest customers, I mean, our top three biggest customers, I mean, when we do we're going to go in there for shutdowns, our competitors are also in there.

I mean, we talk to them and everything like that. And it's just, I mean, they want us out of it, but they're not trying to run us out of it. But at the same time, I'm not sure how we could go about getting them to sub it out to us. Yeah. Well, they're doing 19 things, and you're doing one thing. So it appears to me that it'd be easier for them if they did 18 things and hired you to do one of them. And you made that worth their while. I don't know.

I don't know how the business works. but that's it's either that or you go head to head with them and it doesn't sound like you're really prepared to do that. No, sir. Or you find people that aren't their potential customers because they're too small and you do their work. Okay. You know, and I don't know the spectrum of size of paper mills and I would, my guess is that

the smaller ones are probably drying up, no pun intended, that you're probably moving on, You know, probably a lot of them are rolling, a lot of the works rolling into the big boys. It's consolidated, the business of consolidating, I assume. I don't know. And I guess the third piece of it is what's the international product line look like and how often are you going overseas to do this work? Because I'm well aware that a lot of paper stuff is moving overseas. So, you know, what's the international aspect of what you're offering and what can you do to get there?

So I wish I was a little better at manufacturing than I am, but that's just, I'm just entrepreneurally thinking. with you here and agreeing with you that they could look up one day and if all the business is big boys and all the big boys are doing all your big competitors are doing soup to nuts for the whole thing and they won't let you in you could be done that might happen gradually and it might happen all at once if they decided to get vicious so I'm thinking I want to play nice with them become their sub become something that they count on and that they're that they're glad I'm around and they want to keep me healthy. And that and pick up some smaller ones.

And that's probably where your upside is from what I'm understanding of what you do. I could be way off. But from what I understood of our conversation, that's where I would end up. And so good thinking. The good news is you're actually looking at it and not just standing around letting it happen to you. And so that entrepreneurial zeal you have is going to take you a long way. Way to go, dude. Very cool.

Excellent job. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for being with us. If you want to help us out here on the Entree Leadership Podcast, we could use your help, please. How can you do that? Well, you can subscribe to the show.

You can click the follow button, the subscribe button. You can share the show, either share a link and tell people this podcast is out there or tell them about it vocally, verbally, send them an email with a link in it. I don't care how you do. Some of these platforms have a share button. Just click the share button.

it out. That's how you do it. It's very easy. So thank you for doing that. And leave a five-star review. If you ain't getting anything nice to say, say it's somewhere else. One-star reviews aren't helpful. But thank you. When a bunch of you are doing that and the popularity and the rankings on this show have gone up dramatically in the last 12 months. And it's because of you sharing this and subscribing and following and leaving five-star reviews. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Deacon is with us in Lexington, Kentucky. Hi, Deacon. How are you? I'm doing good. Thank you for having me on here, Dave. Sure, man. What's up?

So I own a pre-owned mower dealership in Lexington, Kentucky. Last year, we did $326,000 in sales, and during our busiest time of year, we got up to eight employees. And the problem we're having is where we list all of our equipment. It's all through one sales avenue on Facebook, and we're wanting to diversify that and grow our sales channels. Do you have any recommendations or thoughts on that? Because it seems like it's very all my eggs are in one basket. And when stuff goes wrong, everything comes to a halt. Yep.

Yep. And if Facebook decides to screw with you, they will. That's dangerous. It's dangerous. You're very wise to diversify and not count on a company like Facebook or Google to be your entire future. They're a tool and you can use them, but I wouldn't have the whole thing beating down. So where else can you sell lawnmowers? How else do you do it?

How do you find the customers? You tell me. We buy our equipment directly from consumer as of our model right now through Facebook on marketplace. But the big thing that has changed over the past two weeks is we started going to dealerships and buying equipment from them. And then we're looking into supplying them with equipment. So they can essentially order our mowers since they don't carry them. But we still, that's just one sales avenue. but we want to diversify more than just that one in Facebook.

Yeah, that's a wholesale purchase and sale when you're dealing with other dealers, right? Correct. And where you were buying mowers from a consumer that's sick of it, doesn't need it, whatever, a garage sale lawnmower, so to speak, and then you're fixing those up and retailing them back to consumers, was your old model, right? Well, but our equipment isn't like small ones like, you know, people with little yards use. Okay, so this is commercial equipment. Correct, yeah, anywhere between 2000 and 10,000 per unit.

Okay, so big zero turns and that kind of stuff. Correct, yeah. All right, I got you. Hmm, interesting. It's a very unique business model, so it's just basically starting it from scratch. So where do people like your customers hang out other than Facebook marketplace? That's the question I'm asking if I'm you. I'm not sure I know the answer.

36 months ago we would have said Craigslist. Maybe we wouldn't say that now. Would we say LinkedIn? That's a potential one. Is there a, I mean, small business guys want to be. to start a lawn mowing business might come and buy some of your equipment to get started, right? Yeah, we get a lot of that.

Yeah, that might be linked in. Where are they advertising to get their customers to do lawn? How are they finding their customers, the guy who's doing landscaping in your area? He wants to open a lawn cutting business. How does he get customers? Word of mouth only? I'm asking. That's a good question.

A bunch of the smaller guys, yes, it is word of mouth and like through apps like the Next Door app. Okay. All right. Yeah, I might try a real Next Door app test. Okay. Dump a bunch of, you know, take 20% of your Facebook effort and drop it into next door. Okay. And five or 10% and drop it into LinkedIn.

And let's see if we can move some of that business out of Facebook land. I'm not mad at Facebook. I just don't want to stand on one leg because somebody will kick you in the knee. Yeah. That lack of diversification is bad, you know. So how much of your budget do you recommend allocating towards testing new things? I'm taking some of the budget that I have now in repositioning it to testing if I'm you. Okay.

I'm not going to allocate new dollars unless you feel like you have to. And it could be, you could start small. I mean, for a month or two, but we got a year and a half, two years ago, we got too dependent on Google paid ads and Google words and paid ads on Facebook. And we were spending way too much on paid SEO. And when I actually looked down and saw company-wide what we were spending, I had a face plant, man. My face melted.

And so we started aggressively trying to not be so dependent on paid advertising in two companies because those two companies will come get you eventually. As soon as they figure out you're making money, they'll want some of it. You know, they're not bashful about it at all. And so they'll put something out that's free and easy and all that for a little while, and then all of a sudden they start charging for it. So it's okay. It's just life, but I just don't want to depend on the whole thing.

And I mean, I just don't want to pin my whole thing on them. So, in orange, if you're spending, what are you spending on Facebook a month? Right now, we're spending anywhere between 1,500 to 2,000. Okay. Take a couple of hundred out of that, reduce it a little bit, and throw it at some next door tries and some LinkedIn tries or something else. Okay. And let's try to figure out, are there any apps in your area that are doing well for the, customer that's looking for help like neighborly.com.

Neighborly's a customer of ours. We advertise for them, but they've got people that do all kinds of work in an area. I'm trying to think of what some of them are. Angie's list, that kind of thing, where if somebody's looking for, they may have marketplace situations in those that you can find. So, yeah, and again, I'm not afraid of using. Facebook marketplace for your thing. I just don't want it to be the, I don't want 50 to 80% of your business and one,

any one channel because that's the way you're going to get your head taken off eventually. Because I can promise you they don't care about your business. They'll turn left on you and leave you standing the road so fast. It's unbelievable. So I'm not, I'm not saying they're evil. They're not. They're just, they're just a monolith. so anyway

gosh I'm stumbling around Deakin because I just don't have a real clear thing go do this, this or this. Well, I like the story you shared about your SEO and I believe I can use those same frameworks that you guys use and relate that to my problem and help solve it. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, and I

hmm, where are what types of content do your customers consume? Where are they consuming content? A podcast? Are they reading blogs about repairs? Where is that information sitting that's real popular with this group? Well, our normal customer is farmers and smaller lands. And those smaller landscapers will post content about their day-to-day work showing off, like, their project that they're working on with the piece of equipment.

So, you know. Yeah, their Instagram accounts, that kind of thing. Yeah, correct. Yeah. I might jump into that feed and create an Instagram that interacts with them. But, you know, I'll tell you, the reason in the old days, and it might even still be true, it might be fun to try it. an old school farmer would listen to AM radio to find out what's going on in the day with the weather or whatever, right? And, you know, if you're a John Deer dealer selling combines, you might in the old days have advertised,

you would have advertised on the ag radio. And it's very niche. Nobody listens to it except farmers, you know. That's a good. Yeah. They didn't even then. Nobody listened to it. because it was boring as crud for people that weren't farmers, you know.

But if you're a farmer, it was like, it was essential to get up and get plugged into that. And so it was, but, you know, like when we were in talk, you know, when we're in talk radio now, but in the old days in talk radio, we knew exactly who the listener was. And, you know, we knew that if you're looking for, you know, a Rush Limbaugh listener in the old days, it would have been a 55-year-old white guy, you know? And so if that's your customer, you don't advertise on the rap station, you know? And that's kind of what I'm trying to feel through with you here is how do we find your customer? My guess is if you're going to, if you're going to music, it'd be country radio, obviously,

particularly old school country, if you found that, that classic, classic stuff. I don't know. I'm just going to poke or keep poking around. The beautiful thing about what you're doing, Deakin, is you're smart enough to ask the question and you're smart enough to realize you're vulnerable by having all your eggs in one marketing basket because Facebook is, you know, they're going down the yellow brick road holding you in a basket. And that's a little scary. So, yeah, you're smart to ask that question, not to necessarily run.

We haven't run away from Facebook and Google. We still use them. And we still get decent results in most of the time. But we just were scared that we were becoming too dependent. on crack. And we got addicted to crack, man. Because you put out that money, more money comes back. It's boom, just like that. It works. And so, yeah, you could do that. You could try some Google keywords and see what pops up, like lawnmower repair or, you know, used lawnmower or something like that and see what buying those in your area. You can geotarget those on Google. You could try some of that as well.

But the good news is I didn't give you any real answers, but I'm going to encourage you to try some of those different things, reallocate some of your budget and re-diversify so that at the end of this calendar year, you're not as dependent on a single source of marketing leads. You don't want to be tied to a single source of marketing leads. That's what will get your burnt, man. It'll get you a pain in the butt right there. It's bad.

So that's a, you're asking the right questions. I don't have the exact tactical answer for you, but I'm going to encourage you to keep pushing on. the buttons you're pushing on. And you're going to have to try a bunch of different things until you find the one thing that works, or the five things that work. And that's what's happened with us.

We found a bunch of different ways to get people into the Ramsey tribe without using Facebook or Google to do it. We found a bunch of different ways last year to do that. And we just had to trial a bunch of things we hadn't thought about trying because we woke up with a little bit of fear like you did. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Thanks for hanging out with us, America. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host.

If you want to be part of this show, we'd love to have you as a caller. Eboo, we call her. She's our phone screener. She'll get back to you when you leave a message at 844-944-1070, and you'll be one of the callers on this show, and I'll try to help you with your situation if I can. It's what I do. 844-9-4-1070.

If you leave a message at ontraryleadership.com slash have, on the website, Eboo will also get in touch with you. And you'll have the pleasure of talking to her, and you'll get to be put on the air, and that's how this thing works around here. Tim is with us in Wilmington, North Carolina. Hey, Tim. Hey, Dave, how are you? Better than I deserve, sir.

I am the owner-operator of an on-site furniture repair company. I've got two guys working for me. this is my first full year in business and top line was I want to say right around 190 this year. One employee started in May, the last one started in November, so I still don't have a full year of employees under my belt. And my question is, how do I deal with fear about, you know, the unknown day-to-day things of running a business and not,

letting an attitude of scarcity kind of overtake me and adopt an attitude of abundance instead of living in fear. Well, my dad used to say 90% of solving a problem is realizing there is one. And the very fact that you can vocalize this means you've already started to attack what you're dealing with before you even call me. So it is normal to have these, you know, John Johnson, the famous quote is, The entrepreneur is the only person can go from sheer terror to sheer exhilaration and back every 24 hours. I heard you say that not too long ago on a show, and I was like, I identify that. I'm that guy. Yeah, we all are.

I mean, it's a normal thing. The only thing that helps fear go away is a more predictable environment, right? And the more predictable environment comes from a couple of things. One is just some length of track record. So you've got a very short track record with this. and so you've got a, you know, it's less predictable. If you've been doing this 10 years and you went from, you know, 190 to 210 to 280 to, and, you know, you had moderate growth along the way, but you had steady growth.

And you could look back at that. That takes some fear away, right? Sure, it does. So track record does that. Some time in the saddle does that. The other thing that does that is systems, putting in place some systems. that keep you, you know, from going over the cliff on something, taking on too much business that you can't afford

or getting over your skis on something, you know, or, you know, spending too much time in the shop and not enough marketing, so no new business is coming in. So you've got some systems watching new business. You've got some accounting metrics that are helping you with that. And you're going, I'm watching my cash flow here. I'm watching my cash to make sure I'm not running low on cash. Oh, I've got to get, I got to turn around.

I've got to take care of this. Making sure expenses don't get out of control that you don't have something that you end up selling, you know, some of your services at a loss because you're not paying attention to pricing versus your cost to do that particular service on the repair. Those kinds of things. So they don't have to be complicated systems, but just something that keeps your finger on the pulse of more than just working on the furniture. Your job is to work on the business. And that's where I'm trying to get. but if I don't work on furniture, we don't make money.

Oh, I know. You're in the treadmill. You're in the treadmill stage. I like to say I'm the chief everything treadmill operating off. Yeah, you are. You're definitely in the treadmill stage. If you take a vacation, production goes way down. Way down.

Yeah. Way down. And so one of your first goals to get rid of the fear is to move out of the treadmill stage up to the Pathfinder stage. And, you know, that's going to be the thing. And so basically the way you do that is you get the business built in such a way that you're working on it more rather than just in it. Gerber talks about that in the book E-Meth. And the way you do that, you just hired a guy in November. You know, you hired a guy in May.

And so the more people you've got doing production and then you've got somebody doing marketing later, you've got five people doing production. Then if you go on vacation, marketing is still happening, new business is coming in and production, you know, creating the cash is still happening. you know, the furniture is getting repaired and going back out the back door, then, you know, now we've got something that's running without you physically touching it all the time. And that's the goal you need to head towards in the next 36 months. It may take you a little while to get there because you've got to get your volume up enough to afford to do these hires. Right. So you've got some marketing work to do.

So that's marketing, that's a great question that I have because the way my business is, is kind of set up like Johnny down the street didn't call me. It's furniture stores and like moving companies and then protection plans that furniture stores sell. So getting my foot in the door with them is very arduous. And believe it or not, I know it's kind of a niche thing that I'm doing, but there's some big players in the country that do this that have long since been established. So getting in the door, I think that's where the fear comes in because it feels like I'm hitting

a brick wall. a lot of times just to get someone to talk to me. Yeah, but that's only the big stores and stuff. If you developed a whole line of direct-to-consumer business as well, you found a way to let people know. I mean, we were just talking to the other guy about using Facebook Marketplace, but you could jump on Facebook Marketplace and say, I fix furniture. And, you know, you get my wife, you know, the decorator that's not the furniture store,

but the decorator on the new house remodel is bringing you some stuff. local home builders are telling people about it. You know, I'm dealing with a furniture builder right now for Sharon and I on something, a guy building a table for us. It's local. He's an excellent craftsman. And the way it took a while to find the guy. I didn't even know he was there.

You know, I'm hunting around begging for somebody to do this work. And so there's a direct-to-consumer business line out there if you could tap into it. And if you had 25 or 30 percent of your business come from that and, you know, 70% or so coming from these wholesale outlets, meaning the stores and the manufacturers and the moving companies, then that's fine. But I think you just keep making those phone calls to those big boys and you start to develop, how can I get the word out on direct to consumer? And that could be custom home builders. It could be the local decorators. I talk to every decorator in town. Tell them what you're doing. I let them off the list. Yeah,

interior designers. They're big. They're big. They're huge. Yep. Yep. Yep. I'll let those off the list. I have probably 15 of those. Okay. Call me occasionally. And yeah, I go get more of those. And then, you know, two, where do people find somebody that wants their furniture repaired these days?

If an individual, again, a Google Word search that's geotargeted into the Wilmington area, it's not that expensive to buy furniture repair for Wilmington, North Carolina. That word is not going to be expensive. because there's nobody competing for that word. So I'm on Google, but I didn't know that you could actually, like, pay Google to be... You can pay to be the number one thing that shows up when someone searches it in your neighborhood. And see, that's why I call people like you, because I didn't even know that. Yeah, that's a Google Word search purchase.

But let me tell you, it'll work, and it's like crack and you'll get addicted. Be careful. Okay. I'm telling you, I just talked to the other guy about that a few minutes ago. Just be careful with this stuff. And, you know, I'd put some stuff out there on Facebook marketplace. You know, the other thing you could do that would be fun is you could start an Instagram account and show the work being done. Yep.

And get some of the decorators to follow you and like what you're doing and get to where just the community around the furniture builders. Maybe the moving companies start sharing your Instagram account because it's kind of cool to see behind the scenes how you actually fix a piece of furniture. Sure, sure. Yeah, we have that thought too. We had that thought too. Yeah, I don't know that I put a lot into that. That sounds a little bit chipping Joanna to me. It does.

It does. But the question about legality, since I'm in people's, like, I'm going into homes, do I need waivers and stuff to take pictures of people's stuff and put it on social media? Uh, you know, at first, at first probably what I'd do is I would just ask. Um, and if it's something super expensive or if it's a celebrity's house, I definitely would. Oh, 100%. If it's Joe Smith down the road and you're fixing his freaking kitchen table, hey, Joe, can I put this on my Instagram account? Yeah, I'd go ahead.

Because they're not going to bother you. If it was me doing it, I'll guarantee you we get a release because they're looking for an excuse to turn Dave Ramsey into a law. suit, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I made a lot of money on that. Yeah. You know, I don't need that. So we're, we release everything now because we're just freaks.

But, but that's because I got such a target on my butt. In your case, I just asked Joe, is it okay, man, if I put this on, if he says no, then don't do it, you know? Sure. But the only time I've ever had somebody, uh, give us any issue, really was if it was some kind of celebrity and we're sharing the inside of something, they don't want that out there, then that's understandable. Well, all the dang film went to Georgia from Wilmington, so we don't have to worry about

that much anymore. We really don't. I've done it. I've been in houses before in the past, but they're all in Atlanta now. Well, I doubt it. But there's probably somebody around there that doesn't want the IRS to know where they are or something. I don't know.

Just to ask, and if it comes up a lot and people start getting creepy on you, then just get you a little one page. release and do it. But I really wouldn't spend much of my emotional or time bandwidth on Instagram stuff if I were you because I don't, my gut tells me that's probably not where you're going to get your business. It's going to be stuff like decorators and real estate agents and moving companies and home remodels and stuff like that. Right, right. where you can do something like that, and, you know, that's the whole thing. So I love what you're doing, though.

And I'll tell you, the trajectory that you're on and the questions, you're asking the exact right questions as a treadmill operator on how to get off the treadmill. How do I get? The treadmill is, it's fraught with fear because it's so dependent on you. And when you can get off the treadmill and move up to Pathfinder, where the whole, meaning the whole business doesn't count on you for revenue and for production, then you've really made a huge move emotionally in your business. And your fear goes down. And then the years in the saddle, the fear will go down some more. If the fear ever goes away completely,

that's probably right before you blow the whole thing up accidentally. So a healthy dose of fear is part of running a business. You run a healthy scare is a good thing. But we don't want to live in terror and anxiety all the time. and that's really where you are a lot more at the treadmill stage. So it's a healthy thing that you're asking to get out of that. I'm proud of you. You're doing good work, Tim.

Very, very, very, very well done, sir. Hey, folks. Thanks to Eboo, our phone screener, Will Rudder, our board operator, Austin Selby, our producer. Our associate producer is Taylor Neamy, and camera op is Andrew Holmes, Homes, whatever Andrew's name is. Sorry about that, Andrew. Hey, remember, better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high-quality leaders.

So take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Entry Leadership Podcast.