EntreLeadership - I’m Making Millions but I’m Worn Out

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Today we’ll hear about:  A business owner who’s making millions trying to decide whether to grow his business or pay off personal debt  A financial advisor wondering if he should start his own business using his employer’s client list  The keys to successful delegation—straight from Dave Ramsey  A CEO wondering how he should prioritize his time in his business    Next Steps  📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message: https://bit.ly/3HUgAgi  🏅 Help us make the show better! Please fill out this quick survey form: https://ramsey.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_01hjJ6UN8mnQPNI  4 FREE Lessons on Delegation: https://ter.li/jc4rew    👣 Find out what stage of business you’re in: https://ter.li/axd39b  ✉️ Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/y8qdo7     🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/fcazl2     🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/wcjhpu     ☎️ Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: https://ter.li/ycznhl    💵 Learn more about Ramsey SmartDollar: https://ter.li/4imot0    Offers From Today's Sponsors  NetSuite: https://ter.li/x1t20q   BELAY: https://ter.li/yohiu6  Payority: https://ter.li/fh2oau  Trainual: https://ter.li/a8zexl  Found: https://ter.li/ggwmrv    Listen to more from Ramsey Network  🎙️ The Ramsey Show    🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour  💡 The Rachel Cruze Show  💰 George Kamel  💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights  🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show  💼 The Ken Coleman Show    Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy  https://www.ramseysolutions.com/compa…  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders just like you about what it takes to win in any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 35 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. I'm not a broke finance professor who's never made payroll with an opinion. I've actually done this crap. So I've grown a business, run a business, made the decision. decisions you've got to make today, and I'm here to help you. That's what we're doing. If you got a question, jump in and be part of the program at entreleadership.com slash ask. You can leave your question. The team will get with you and put you on as a caller,

or you can call and leave a voicemail at 844-944-1070. 844-944-1070. Also, by the way, if you want to help us make the show better, take our two-minute survey so we can better serve you. Just click the link in the show notes. We'd like to know about you so that we'd like to know about you so that we can help you a little better. It's simple. David's with us in Providence, Rhode Island. Hi, David. Welcome to the Entry Leadership Podcast. Dave, thanks for having me, man. Really appreciate it. Huge fan. And thank you for everything you do. Thank you. So I'm the owner of a landscape maintenance and construction company as well as a dumpster rental company.

between the two companies. I have seven employees and two part-time office staff members. Our gross revenue between the two companies is around $2 million per year, about 1.2 from the dumpster rental company. Been a huge fan of the baby steps, practiced them for all of my businesses and personal. It paid off about $940,000 in the past four years. Way to go. Thank you.

Yeah. Both businesses, completely debt-free. And I have a net profit between the two of somewhere between 400 and 500K. Way to go, man. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you seriously for you've taught me so much. So the problem that I'm having is I'm exhausted and I feel like I'm working harder now than I've ever worked ever in my life.

and I have room to grow my businesses, but getting the employees to do so has been hurting me. So I'm just confused as to what I should do. Do I stay the same or do I start using my profits to keep growing or can I use them towards paying off the rest of, I have debt on two investment properties. and my personal residence were very low balances. Okay. Well, there's two separate issues going on here. One, yes, I would clear the debt as quick as I can,

but it's not an either or it's a both-and. I mean, you're basically sitting at the treadmill operator stage almost into Pathfinder stage. Treadmill is where you're on the treadmill. It all depends on you. If you don't show up, not much happens. Right. And that's the treadmill operator,

but you've almost gotten up over that a couple times, and then you kind of fell back and it was based on your hiring model because you were hiring people that you couldn't delegate to. Well, I have them. I just can't get... You can't delegate to them.

You can't delegate to them. You don't trust them. Right. It's not that you think they're stealing, but you don't trust their competency. They can't get it done if you're not there pushing everything. I agree with that.

Now, that's where I was when I had 10 people, 11 people. people. It was, you know, it was like herding cats. It was, you know, and I discovered a couple things. The biggest thing that killed me, and it's going to kill you, too, because you're doing so good, by the way, I'm proud of you. But I realized that I was the problem. I thought they were the problem, and then I realized I was the idiot that hired them. And worse than that, I kept them. so if you hire people that you can't delegate to that's your fault if you keep them it's your fault and that's not that's not to say you're dumb because you're not dumb you've done an amazing thing

but it's the natural progression of the stage of business that you're in to upgrade the quality of your team member so can i ask you a question off of that sure all right so like i pay my between the two companies between 250 and 300k a year. Am I paying myself too much money? And how do I justify knocking myself down a little bit and put that revenue towards better people cost more? They just do. I mean, it's part of the equation. You're not going to win the Kentucky Derby with the donkey.

Thoroughbreds cost more than... How do you swallow going? How do you swallow going? Well, because it's a step back to take ten steps forward. So the most beautiful thing that I ever learned to do was one of the hardest things was to build a business that was not dependent on me, to where stuff gets done when I'm not in the room. And it gets done in such a way that it makes me smile,

that our team oftentimes does a better job of serving the customer than I would. would have personally because our team is that high quality. They're thinking at a different level. They're right on the front line. They're real excited and pumped up. I might not be that day. And they get things done and they're thinking ahead and they're focusing on their position and so forth. But it took a while to build that. So this is a very strenuous exercise to go from 10 team members at $2 million to 20 team members at $5 million. But you're going to like your business a lot better when you've got people in there that are doing things that you trust and the customers come up and go, hey, that gal that does someone so there in the office, she's the reason we do

business with you is people like her. When you start hearing stuff like that, that's when you know you're on the right track. And that can be either training up the people you've got on learning to care, learning to do things with excellence, learning to play through the details, just like you do, or get new ones. It's probably some of both. You're probably going to lose some of the donkeys because you can't shine them up. They won't ever be a thoroughbred.

And when you try to get them to move at thoroughbred speed, they just kick and carry on and run out the door. And then some of them are beautiful thoroughbreds, but they're just babies, and you hadn't grown them up into a full racehorse yet. And so you just got to coach them along and show them what to do. they've never had anybody care about.

But we require if you're going to work at Ramsey that you care. If you don't care. That's hard to find. Oh, it is hard to find. It's very hard to find. And here's what's worse. If you get here and you care and then you quit caring, we will move you on.

You have to care. Because I care and I'm giving you my money. So I care if you care. You know, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. And so if you lose your enthusiasm and you, you say, well, you know, I don't know. Well, you can go to heaven and not work here.

So, you know, we'll go somewhere else. Something else will happen, you know? And so you got to care. That's a start. And then once you care, then you can learn to do better. You can learn to get shinier. You know, put some shining eyes out there, as one guy says. And so, you know, that's the process you're going to go through.

You're going to have to look at your staffing and say, All right, you said to me, I'm exhausted. And the way you get your life back is you quit doing everything yourself. And you move from treadmill operator up to that. And so I'm going to plug you in with the Entry Leadership Elite team. And they're the ones that can help you with the Entry Leadership Elite product with some online coaching and help you move through the whole process of delegation. But delegation cannot occur until hiring and firing.

occurs. And so proper hiring, proper firing sets you up to move from the treadmill operator up to the pathfinder stage. That's what it is. Because you can't delegate to a donkey. You just can't. And you can't win the Kentucky Derby with the donkey. You've got to have a thoroughbred. And so it works, guys. It works. But it's painful because here's the other thing. When you're interviewing them day, but here's what's so difficult. It drives me nuts. It still drives me nuts to this day. when you're interviewing them, donkeys dress up like thoroughbreds for the interview. They look just like them.

And if you don't spend a little more time in the interview, if you keep talking to them eventually, they'll go, I heard that. It sneaks right out, right out below that nice tie and that nice suit, right? And you'll hear it. If you'll sit there and listen and spend time with them, instead of just believing the packaging that comes in the door in the interview process, you can hire incredible people that love other people that will love your customers and that care deeply.

They're out there. There are good ones. I got a thousand people in the building, and we don't keep them if they don't. And we try not to hire them if they don't. So it's that simple. It's that simple, but it's that hard. All of that goes together in the process. So you're a good guy, David. You got it going. If you solve this, if you'll do the stuff that we're going to set you up with and follow what the entrepreneur. leadership team tells you to do, you, my man, are going to double this business and you're not going to be exhausted anymore. Isn't that fun? This is the Entree Leadership Podcast.

Well, are you done waiting for things to improve on their own? Yeah, that ain't going to happen. You know that, right? Your business is not going to grow faster. It's not going to become healthier if all you do is listen to Entree Leadership Podcasts. You actually have to do this stuff. And the Entry Leadership System is the roadmap that'll help you do exactly that. You'll finally scale your processes, unify your team, build a business that you love to run,

and you're not, as the last guy said, exhausted. The system is how I built Ramsey and it's how we've coached tens of thousands of small business owners as they transform not only their lives, but their businesses. Go to Entryleadership.com to get started, download the free, free, did I mention it's free? Getting Started Guide. This guide will walk you through the step-by-step plan that we used to build Ramsey Solutions from a card table in my living room

to a $300 million business. That's entreleadership.com slash get started to download the free, did I mention it's free, getting started guide. Jason is in Miami. Hey, Jason, what's up in your world, man?

Hey, Dave, how you doing today? Better than I deserve. How can I help? same here. I'm a financial advisor with $1.3 million in trailing 12 months revenue to employees. I see a fork in the road coming in the next few years with our financial advising branch going much more independent than we already are, and I'm not sure what to do because I do not want to go that route. What would Dave do if he woke up in my shoes five to six years ago? The owner of the company brought me in, taught me the ropes. Two years later, the owner,

borrowed money to buy a retiring advisor out and gave me the client. That took me from like 12 million in assets to 100 million. Two years after that, he did it again. So, you know, here we are two years later again. And total assets that I'm in charge over 160 million. Total revenues, like I said, are 1.3 million. There's 12 people on the team overall to work for me. The team has about 900 million in assets. There's illusions that the company would get more revenues. If we go very independent, I just don't think that's realistic. Very independent of your current broker-dealer or what?

Exactly, of our current broker-dealer, yeah. They were missing out on something. Well, what is the broker-dealer providing from your perspective that an independent can't get? Because you're going to have to have a broker-dealer, right? Exactly. They provide cybersecurity. They provide IT.

Yeah, but I mean, are you going to, when you say they go independent, they're going to be their own broker-dealer? An RIA. Yeah, but... Yeah, but... Typically, an RIA is going to have a broker-dealer also, aren't they? Well, we custody. We would custody at any broker-dealer.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay. The cheapest one, yeah. So, I just don't think there's much... There's not much the gain. There's a lot to lose by going to some R-A. you know, I think it would get, you know, maybe we get a pay date. You think the broker-dealer brand is giving you this much business

when all that you just explained to me that the business came from somewhere else. I'm confused. I think the broker-dealer brand does give us quite a bit of business, but I think that what we take home is very, very, very high in the industry. So what they're, what the current owner is complaining about is the cut. Yes. Ah. Okay.

But it's, I mean, it's a percentage term. It's very low single digits. Now, technically in your arrangement with your employer, do you own the book of business? So, yeah, in my mind, he borrowed the money to buy the client, you know. No, not in your mind. I mean, you should have an agreement who owns the book of business. You think he owns it? He owns.

I think he owns it. Yeah. Okay. So you're not trying to take that. the clients. You're not trying to take the book of business if you did something else. You would start from zero again. Exactly. Well, you desperately think this isn't going to work. I really don't. I think that... I mean, like a million dollars worth, you think this is not going to work. I think the book of business is worth, you know, 1.6 to, you know, or more million dollars.

And, you know, if we had to part ways, I would offer to buy the business. business from my portion of it. Yeah, but he might not sell it to you. Exactly, yeah. Which you would start from zero. Right. I'm very comfortable with that people would follow me. Well, that is unethical.

Okay. They're not your clients. You don't own them. The book of business we've established in this conversation is not yours. It's his. He bought it. He paid you to service it. Exactly.

Yeah, that's his clients, not yours. And so, you know, doing anything that allows those people to follow you is taking business that is his business away from him. Yeah, that's an ethics issue. Yeah, for sure it is. You've got to start with no clients if you leave. Not the ones that happen to wander over because you passively aggressive let them know where you're going.

Or they search you out or whatever. I mean, I, you know, the way I answer ethics questions to myself is I just switch moccasins. What if you bought this book of business and hired a guy to service it for you and blessed him with the ability to service it? And you're making good money. And you paid him a lot of money to service your book that you bought and let him become, build relationships with these clients. I mean, how would you feel if he left and those clients went to him? I would hope if we parted ways, he would just buy the book out from me. I know, but if he didn't, if you wanted to keep the business that you bought and paid for

and the guy leaves, and then he starts working your list, I don't think you'd feel good about that. I agree. It's why we shouldn't be borrowing money to buy books anymore. I agree. Well, and that's what I'm saying, though, is, yeah, I don't disagree with that either, but that's a different issue. You were talking about the ethics of it, and so when you leave, you're starting with zero

unless you have an ethics issue. If I'm understanding this right, I may be misunderstanding something. No, I think you're getting right. I just really don't see any point in us going more independent than we already are to the RAA channel. I don't see any benefit to me. I don't see it.

I just see a lot of, I think we would drop the ball. on something and it would be a disservice to the client. You know, the broker-dealer covers a lot of things for us. Okay. Well, I think you've got to emotionally, and as far as what we call stagegating, the critical thinking through the possible scenarios, okay, as if you were building a flow chart to build a piece of software or run a project. You've got a flow-chart this out, okay?

There's three possible things that happen when you go into his office. One is he says, okay, I'll relent. We won't go. And you stay and you're happy, okay? Two, he says, see you later, alligator. And you start from nothing. And you say, but I'll buy the book and he goes, no, I think I'll keep it. See you later, alligator.

And you start with nothing. And you start your career over, basically. That's a real possibility here. Three is, he says, okay, you know, you've been servicing these clients. they're going to be loyal to you. I'll sell you this book out for X. And then where are you going to get the money to buy that? Is that great question?

I'm on Baby Step 2 finishing up this month. Yeah, you don't have the money to buy the book of business then. Right. So that's kind of off the table, isn't it? Because I don't think he can afford to, you know, have me, you know, cash flow of back to him over the next two and a half years. Well, I don't know why he would. I mean, I've got, we've got SmartVistro's all over the nation.

We work with RAs. work with people in broker-dealer's all the time. I was just emailing with my SmartVestor pro about he's changing his broker-dealer. And he's telling me what was going on with it. Just because he and our friends, I was curious why, what his thinking was. I wasn't questioning him, but he's just telling me this. And, you know, he's been buying, he's like everybody else, he's been buying books from guys that are retiring and building his business. And same exact thing you guys are doing. And I don't know why if you're in that setting that you would sell to a person who's leaving and finance it for them.

No, exactly. For them to take, what, 40%, 30% of your business away? And I think he would just say, well, I'll take my chances that these people will work with the other alligator I've got because I just said, see you later, alligator to this one. Yeah, I don't think this is going to go well for you, Jason. I may be wrong.

Might be wrong. Your guy, you know your guy better than I know your guy, but I don't know how you're going to get this book and so I think you're starting from nothing and I don't think you ethically can take those clients that aren't yours I think that's wrong

and standard in your business and by the way if you aggressively try to take them you're probably going to get sued and lose I've seen that happen too where people just took a book they just went over and started marketing directly to them and started trying to take it and that's your client list, you know?

It's not okay. We've had people leave here and try to use our client list in different areas, and we shut them down because they didn't pay to build that client list. I paid to build that client list, and I've shut them down. So I, and I certainly wasn't going to send them with them. I paid to build it. I'm glad I have it and so on. So I think you're probably going to have to work on deciding what your career of track is here exactly.

and how, you know, if I'm in your shoes, I'm probably going to go on the ride and try the other thing before I walk out the door with zero. And let's just see if you're right or not about the customer being served. And let's give that a run or not. I mean, I, without getting into the actual name brands of what you're dealing with here,

I can't give you any advice as to whether you're what you're perceiving is accurate or not. It would depend on who you're talking about, and I, you know, so I can't, and I probably would have an opinion and wouldn't do either one of us any good to air that. So, yeah. All right. If I'm in your shoes, I'm going to try to write it with to the other thing and or have a discussion about figuring out some way that you can leave and under what, under what conditions would he feel good about some of the customers going with me? And he volunteers and serves that up.

But you're just leaving and hoping they wander over and find you? No, no, no, no, no, no. No. And they start wandering over too often. You're going to have a legal problem. And you know that because you know who owns the book. That's what. Who owns this client lives?

That's what in the mouse to do. So, wow. Wow. Tight stuff. Tight stuff. This is the Ontario Leadership Podcast. One of the most interesting things to me with a business degree, a degree in finance and real estate, I went to management class.

Now, it was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. We had to shoe them out of the classroom to be able to take management class. But it was how to manage people, which is something. When you just kind of say it that way, it sounds manipulative. You can boss people, bosses push, leaders pull. But one of the subjects that always came up back in the land of academia was delegation. And then as I've coached small businesses for a long, long time, one of the things that always comes up and always came up in my head was,

how do I delegate? How do I delegate? Delegation, delegation, delegation, delegation. And it's kind of getting, it's not kind of. It is getting the cart before the horse to say I want to delegate. Now, it is good to delegate. There's five benefits to delegating. You lighten your load.

You increase the team's ownership and loyalty because the person that's delegated to gets more dignity. It creates a growth plan. It activates momentum, and it shows your team that you believe in them. Delegation is good. I don't purport that you ought to be a micromanager. but we talk about delegating as if it is something that is a singular decision in a vacuum. And you simply cannot delegate until you can trust folks competence and their integrity. I don't want to lend the good name of Ramsey Solutions to one of our team members.

to one of our team members to screw it up because they don't have integrity or they don't have the competence to do the job. And so if you own a landscaping organization and one of your things is you've got a series of lawns that you keep, if you delegate it to a crew and the crew tears up everything and they don't do a good job with the lawn, they've torn up your good name and you lose a customer.

So you can't delegate because they're not competent. or they lie to the customer and say, we'll be there in the morning and they're not there. Well, we'll be there in the afternoon. We got held up for rain. And then they're still not there. We got held up because the sun came up. There's always something.

There's always a dad-blame excuse for people aren't getting their work done. And, you know, they lied. And that's an integrity thing, obviously. So you can't delegate to this person who lies and steals. You can't delegate somebody who can't, even though they want to, they don't have the capacity to, they're not competent to execute on the task that you're delegating them to them.

And so if you're going to delegate to a leader inside your organization to do hiring and they suck at it, then that's your fault. That's not delegation. Delegation is not take your hand off the wheel. Well, I mean, you hired me to do this job. you ought to leave me alone. I will leave you alone when you prove you can freak and do the job. I did hire you to the job and I'd prefer you do it so I don't have to. That's why I hired you. But I'm going to leave you alone. The training will continue. The mentoring will continue until you

provide competence and demonstrate integrity. When you do, I would love to delegate to you. It's why I'm freaking shelling out my money to you. It's why we brought you into the bill. building. We wanted to delegate to you. It was our great dream to delegate to you. So please get to where we can. That's how delegation works, right? So take inventory of what you're dealing with here when you start to deal with when you're thinking about delegating. Look at the work you're good at and you love, the work you're bad at and you hate, the work you're good at but don't love, the work you're bad at but you like. And your sweet spot is stuff you're good at and you love. And the rest of it, you ought to start talking about delegating. I'll give you an example. I'm very good at math.

Math comes easy to me. It always has. I hate details. I, the process of doing accounting would make me want to shoot myself. You people that do accounting, I think there's something wrong with you. I'm glad you're out there, but I do not understand you. You sit and you love the, you just bathe in these details and you think, and I love the reports you create and the conclusions you come to, because I love the math, the riddle of what's wrong with the revenue source. I love the math riddle about what's wrong with the expense ratio on this. I love the math riddle of looking at the P&Ls, but the detail of creating the KPI's of creating the PNLs, of creating the different accounting functions. If I had to do that, Ramsey would never have happened. So I delegated stuff I know how to do, but I hate. You delegate also things that you have no idea how to do. I have, at Ramsey, we have about 1,000 team members, a little more, almost 1,100, and somewhere around 400 and something of them are programmers.

And they're digital people. And I don't speak digital very well. I'm an old guy. And so I don't even know what the flip they do. I actually do. But I mean, I really, if I had to line, if the code that was written inside of Ramsey had to be written by me, you all never would have seen a website.

It wouldn't have happened. And so I have zero expertise in that. And so I have great appreciation for this group of nerds and the work that they do. They're absolutely amazing. They're fabulous. And the digital stuff that we put out at Ramsey is amazing. Now, I can manage the results and I can delegate the results,

but I have no way to get my hands down in that and write the code and show them what to do. So I have to delegate something I don't know how to do. I have to delegate something I know how to do, but I hate doing if I want my business to grow. Now, I don't have to delegate the things I'm good at, and I love doing. There's a lot of things at Ramsey that are here because I'm good at them, and I love doing them. and so one of those is being on this microphone right now. Okay.

And so there's other things that you've got to be careful of too, particularly in the early stages of your small business. If you're a treadmill or pathfinder in the first two stages, be careful of things you like doing, but you suck at it. So you kind of feel like you know how to do it. And because you're the boss, everybody lets you do it. You own the place after all. They've got to let you do it.

but they're all kind of standing back going, God, I hope he doesn't wreck that car. It's a nice car. He has no idea what he's doing. But boy, he likes to drive it, you know? And it's just like, whee. Yeah, so no.

Be careful that if you're not real good at it, but you still love doing it, that you just kind of hang out with the guys who are good at it, the gals who are good at it. And you get some of the thrill of the ride, but you're not the one doing the drive, You don't need to be driving something you're not good at. And that's an opportunity to delegate.

But again, in every one of these cases, I can only delegate to you to the extent I have mentored you and or have people on the team that have mentored you and have become convinced of your competency and your integrity. And then it's very easy to delegate. I used to think I was a micromanager. I'm not. I'm actually not a micromanager. I just have zero tolerance for a lack of excellence. And if you provide excellence, I will leave you alone. I will leave you so alone, you'll be lonely.

Because I got other stuff to do. But you've got to provide excellence for me to be able to do that. And, you know, you're like, where's Dave? I don't know. I haven't seen him a while. But, you know, we're over here bailing money. I know that. So, you know, it's a good thing, right?

So we're providing excellence. That's a good thing. So, you know, I will leave you so alone. You'll wish I didn't. But I'm truly, I thought I was a micromanager. But all it is is I just, I had no tolerance for people sucking up my brand. You know, half butt doing stuff, losing customers, I'd work my tail off to get. And they piss them off because they don't even care.

Or they don't know how to do their job. And that's not micromanaging. That's a demand of excellence. So we did the little quick read on delegation, and you can pick that up in the bookstore if you want, and it'll recap some of the things I just went over, but here's the best thing you can do. If you want to learn more about delegation,

you want to know more about how we teach it here inside of our company and how we teach it to the people we work with all through Entree Leadership and Entree Leadership Elite, in the Entree Leadership Elite product, we have the delegation course. It has four lessons completely free. So if this has piqued your interest and you're saying, yeah, I kind of relate to that.

I know I need to do it, but I don't know how to do it. Well, it starts with the hiring and firing, by the way. You got to get the right people in the seats, right people on the bus, right people on the right seats on the bus, according to Jim Collins, our friend, right? So he's right about that. So the elite delegation course, If you want to take the four lesson course on Elite, you can do that for free.

And just check the show notes. Click the show notes and you'll be able to find it and you'll get signed right up for that. And that'll put you in there. And go pick up that little quick read if you want to as well. But this four lessons is video lessons and they're me and others on the team teaching you delegation in detail that I didn't do in this little 12-minute segment here. Okay. So just click in the show notes.

and that'll get you the link for the free four lessons with Elite on the delegation process. So there we go, boys and girls. Be sure and check that out. You don't want to miss it. By the way, did I mention it's free? Hello. Free is good. Thanks for hanging out with us, America.

This is the Entry Leadership podcast. I could use your help. You are my only marketing plan. So I need you to share this show and to follow. and subscribe to this show and let people know that this show is here. You've been doing that because our numbers are way up. Thank you. And we know you've been doing it because you are our only marketing plan.

So there you go. Word of mouth, boys and girls. It's how the best products are sold. And we hope we're a good enough product that you will use your words in your mouth and share. Click the link, cut it out, send it to somebody. Say, listen to the show. Click the share button, the follow button, all those little buttons they've got on the different platforms that we put this thing out on. Thank you for doing that. Pat is with us in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hi, Pat, how are you? Hello, Dave. I'm fine. How are you today? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I started a home health company in 2017. We've grown multiple locations now, 150 employees. Last year we did 2.9. And so worked on getting the right people in the right seats. and delegation and getting it out to where it needs to go. The issue that I'm coming to now is... You have a $2.9 million revenue with 150 employees? Yes. Are some of them contract?

They are. Oh, okay. But your core employee base on W2 is nowhere near that large. No. So you've got folks coming into the home, and you've got them on 1099. And, yeah, okay. All right. That base, who, I was wondering how you were supporting them.

Okay. I got it. I got it. So that does not include the contract payroll. No, it does not. Okay. Now I don't see red ink. Okay, good.

All right, good. I'm caught up now. So your question then was what? So now that we've got the right people in the right seats, we've grown. And, you know, what do I do with my time as the CEO, as the leader? You know, once you've got everyone there, then what does the, I view myself as the athletic director. You know, I've got my head coaches in place, my assistant coaches.

Now what does the athletic director do? Good question. Okay. So your core team, what's the, of the 150, how many of them are 1099s in the home and how many of them are core corporate administrative staff? Administrative staff, 30. I mean corporate, how many are W-2? W-2 is 75.

Okay, so half of your team is in the office, and that's your core. Okay. Correct. All right. Well, I mean, there's a couple of things that come up. And what this means is you put some real talent in place that you do trust what I was just covering. You trust their competency. You trust their integrity. And so it's enabled you to take your hand off the wheel of some of these areas because you've got really good drivers in the other areas. Agreed? Correct. Okay. So at that point, you know, my job at that point is to, to check and keep my hands on the relationship wheel with the leadership team. I want to stay in relationship with them, be meeting with them, and I want to check their key performance indicators in their areas, their KPIs. I want to see, you know, what am I using to measure success in this area? And then I want to continue to check, okay, what three things are we going to say

when you hit these types of numbers, and what are the things? things that give you an indication there's a problem in the area or success is going good in a problem in an area. And you don't check those once a day, but you also don't check them once a year. You check in on them and I watch those things like crazy around here. And as long as everything's running well, you're never going to see me. I just looked at the report and I went, oh, good, okay, that's doing what it's supposed to do. They're continuing to drive. But I am checking. I don't expect what I don't inspect, as Zig Ziglar used to say. Okay? And so that's thing one. I'm checking in on that. I'm checking in on the morale and the health and the culture of the team and how folks are, how the air feels in the room.

I'm always checking that. I walk around the building. I call it, I tell my personal assistant, Patty, he's been with me 23 years, said, I'm going to leave. I'm going to walk around the building and spread hate and dissension. And so I'm going to walk around, I'm going to feel the air. I'm just going to stop and poke my head into a meeting and just see what, you know, see what happens and just sit down and just sit at the back of the room and listen and that kind of stuff. So that's just me kind of keeping my hand on the wheel. That's thing one. Thing two, in my case, and I don't know whether this will bring you joy or not, but I was about your size.

We might have been 100 team members and we might have been 10 million, but we weren't 10x of where you are. we were somewhere in your neighborhood. When I started realizing the same thing you're doing is that by being a great leader, I've almost worked myself out of a job. And so now what's my job? And I felt like God was telling me at that time to work on big things and broken things

and new things. So if an initiative is huge, I need to be down in the middle of it with my muddy boots on. If an initiative is broken, that's my job as the entrepreneur and the leader to get down in there and help them fix the broken things which by the way it gives me great joy i like working on things and if something's new now new i'll take my hands off of it pretty quick but i want to be there in the incubator stages

i want to be there when we're fighting through the basic principles of bringing that new idea to market because i want to make sure we've got our dna our ramsie dna on the product and on the idea and so we can measure failure. But as soon as new gets to working, what we call it around here, we say it becomes operational, meaning Dave gets out of it. People that run it, run it, the day to day.

I don't need to be down in it. But when we're birthing the baby, so to speak, I'm going to be in the room. I want to be there. I want to see that thing happen. And then the number four thing is to set the vision for the overall thing. Where do we want to be in five years

and what's it going to take to get there? as my friend Henry Cloud says, you know, name your desired future and then ask yourself, what must be true that's not true today to get to that. And that's setting vision and that's having vision. And very few people in your building can do that if you don't. That's kind of your job. You've got to be thinking about where are we going to be in five years and what are we got to be that we're not today to get there.

And sometimes you don't know, but at least somebody's thinking about it. And that's you. So, Pat, it sounds like you've done an incredible job with a team. Your team building skills must be awesome because it's not normal that I run into somebody at your stage that feels as comfortable taking their hand off the wheel as you've described. Well done, sir. Very well done. Yeah, good stuff.

Does that kind of answer your question? New things, big things, broken things, and vision are, and then other than that, I'm just checking the operations to make sure that none of them are broken. but if I see a problem, I'm going to poke on it, and if I find a soft spot, I'm going to poke on it again, and if it's soft again, I'm going to stick my fist in it. We're going to keep moving. I'm going to dig down.

If I see something moving this, because, you know, things can look okay on top, but you start poking on it, you start finding these soft spots, you go, uh-oh, there's the beginning of an end here. We've got to get down in this, and we've got to break it before it gets any more broken. And sometimes that's people stuff, sometimes it's other things. but that's the stuff I've been doing for, gosh, almost 20 years now. I've been most of my stuff. Now, I actually have one other thing.

I'm a stinking. I'm a product, too, so that's a problem. But I'm one of the products. So I get to do the Bramsey personality stuff, like this microphone. But in terms of functioning as CEO is the way I was answering the question before. So good stuff. Very, very well done. You're a stud.

You're killing it. Well done. Proud of you. Very proud of you. Hey folks, 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 Entree Leadership Podcast.