EntreLeadership - Key Decisions That Protect Company Culture

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Today we’ll hear about: •       How to address leaders that are no longer pulling their weight •       Important workplace stats to know and how to address them •       How to best invest in marketing to not waste your money  •       How to succeed when implementing and protecting company culture  Links mentioned in this episode: •       The EntreLeadership Podcast •       Free EntreLeader’s Guide to Business Finances •       Have a question for The EntreLeadership Podcast? Leave a voicemail at 844.944.1070 or submit your question for a chance to be on the show with Dave Ramsey: https://www.entreleadership.com/ask Start growing in business and leadership with the EntreLeadership Newsletter. Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://bit.ly/3IRWnsL   Support our sponsors: •       NetSuite •       BELAY •       Payority •       Trainual Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •       EntreLeadership Summit •       EntreLeadership Master Series Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •       Elite •       Advisory Groups •       Executive Coaching •       Workshops Find out what stage of business you’re in and what you can do to level up with our Stages of Business Assessment. Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/company/policies/privacy-policy 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 like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey. I've been actually running a freaking company for the last 30 years, and I've been running it all day to day. So if you want theory from a finance professor who's never made payroll, you'll have to go somewhere else. I'm a guy actually does it. I'm just like you. I've just been doing it a little longer than some of you, and I've got a few more bruises than some of you. So we're here to help you.

This is all based on the book that we did. That's the playbook of how we've grown Ramsey. It's called Entree Leadership. A number one best-selling book continues to be a big seller. And basically, it's how we've run our business. And a lot of scrapes and bruises and a lot of Ph.D. and D-U-M-B got a lot of degrees after us here. So we're here to help you. If you want to call in, this is your place.

We're one of you. We love small business people. We think you're amazing. We think you're heroes. We're one of you. The number's 844-944-1070. That's 844-944-1070. Or go to Entreeleadership.com slash ask and leave a nice voicemail.

The guys will set you up as a caller that way. Jared did that. He's in Poughkeepsie, New York. Hey, Jared. What's up? Hey, Dave. Thanks for having me on the show today. Sure, man.

How can we help? So I'm a second generation of a manufacturing business. We've got a top line of about 12 million, about 70 people. I worked in the business for the last 10 years of show, and after losing my father last year, who founded the company, now at the helm of the business. I've been working to improve the culture of the business, and I feel like some of our team members who've been with us for a long time or not

pulling their way in terms of work ethic and the culture that I want to build moving forward. How old are you? At what point do I? 27. Wow. At what point do I make the hard decision? You've been through a wild year.

You've been through a wild year. You must have been scared of death part of this year. Yep. We're doing it. So my question is at what point do I make the hard decisions to change some staff? This is probably a parallel longevity. Well, the good news is that your dad mentored you well. I can hear it in your voice that this is a painful thing.

Yeah. Am I right? You are. Yeah, because if you were just a punk kid that got Daddy's business, you wouldn't be worried about how you feel about this. You would have just executed someone, right? And so that means you're a good man and you're a good leader and you're a kind guy, but you're also strong enough young leader to say I might have to make some changes even though it hurts.

So just just verifying where you are. I'm hearing that already listening to you and the way you put the story together. So congratulations. There's nothing you're going to do here that's going to be easy or clean or that everybody's going to go along with or understand. You're going to be the only one on the planet that has all the information and can make the accurate judgment about your decision. other people are going to make judgments about your decision and their opinion doesn't count.

So be ready for that. Yeah, but the only thing I would concern me is rocking the boat too much to where I just, you know. Well, it doesn't rock the boat too much if you observe that someone isn't working hard and you confront them about working hard and saying, my dad loved you, he taught me to love you and I love you, but you can't stay here if you're not going to work hard. and I'm developing a new culture here where we're going to be a little harsher, not a harsher, harsher is not the right word, we're going to demand excellence of each other, myself included, and that includes a work ethic.

And so if you want to be part of this team going forward, your work ethic's going to improve and your attitude's going to improve. If you don't want to be a we, that's who we, we can work that out right now and I'll help you gracefully retire. Pretty much half the nail on the head. That's the conversation. And that's exactly how you say it. And it's, you know, I honor you.

My dad honored you. This makes this conversation hard, but it's still necessary because you're setting a standard that no one else, that I don't want everybody else to do here. And that's what I need. you know, I can't do that, even though I love you. I can't do that. I can't let you, I can't sanction this because it sends a signal to everyone else that you are in a separate class of people somehow and you're not. And I'm not. I have to do work too. And you have to do your work, you know. And so, but you may not want to work for me. You may, you may, you know, your time here

may be done because you don't want to work for the kid. And I can accept that too. You can just say that these are things you should say is what I'm saying. All right? So my son is a little bit older than you. He became the president of Ramsey last year. He and I are running this together right now. But that's the type of conversations he would have to have as well. And what's interesting is he sees things here that I don't see. My eyes are a little bit blinded by my loyalty to somebody who's been with me 20 years. But he's not as blinded by that. And that's the seat you're sitting in. And it doesn't make you wrong. And it doesn't make your dad soft. It just makes him loyal to the guys that he wants to dance with a girl that brought him to the party. He didn't

want to just chop people's heads off. And you don't either. But you're seeing this, you're seeing this clearer eyes than your dad did. Yeah, you take off the rose-colored glasses and things are a little different. Yeah, yeah. Well, you just don't have the, you know, you don't have the 20 years with this guy that you're talking about. Your dad did. And it just makes it, it makes it even harder. It's hard for you, but for your dad, if he were here, it'd be triple hard for him.

Yeah, I'm sure. For me, it's about building a place of teamwork where everyone wants to do the same thing. Or your dad would say the same thing. But it's just, man, our loyalty bone in small business is our greatest asset and our greatest liability. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, it's just, it's a wonderful thing to be loyal to people because corporate America just pisses on them, you know, and we don't do that.

We hurt when we talk about this kind of stuff. Your heart's hurting. My heart's hurting talking with you about it because I know how it feels. I've been there myself. I've been there this year making these kinds of decisions and walking with my son doing it. I can't imagine, you know, you're standing there at 27 doing this. So I think you're a stud.

I think you're going to do it right. But Alan Malalloy that ran Ford spoke to us in Entry leadership a couple of years ago, and I picked this up from him. It's the quintessential thing. He just said all the regional managers at Ford are going to, be in a meeting on Tuesday. And a guy called up that was regional manager and said, you know, Alan, I can't make it.

I got this and this and this going on. And he said, oh, that's okay. But all the regional managers at Ford are going to be at a meeting on Tuesday. And the guy goes, well, I can't do it. And he goes, I know it's fine. But you need to know that all the regional managers, meaning that you're not going to be one anymore if you're not here, you know. Because I just told you what the regional managers are going to do.

If you want to be a regional manager, you're going to be here Tuesday. That's what he was saying. And if you want to be on this team, we're going to strive for excellence and have a work ethic. And I don't know if you want to do that or not. With Dad's passing and me coming in, you may not want to be in this transition that we do where we turn up the heat about three notches on each other. I'm going to work super hard and I'm going to need everybody else in here to do that. And as one of the guys who's been here the longest, you've got to help me set the tone.

And you may not want to do that. If you don't want to do that, let me help you figure out a way. I'm going to bless you with some money and an announcement of your retirement and honor you as being one of the people who helped form this company and build it to this point. And I'm going to say wonderful things about you and you're going to leave. Yeah, that's to the point, huh? And, you know, he may not want to, but he might go, you know what? I have been screwing around. And I'm a better man than that.

And I'm going to quit screwing around and I'm going to step in here, Jared, and I'm going to help you. Because I loved your dad and I love this place and I'm going to do it. And I'm going to step up. He might step up. He might, his honor might stick out, you know? But if it doesn't, you're doing the right thing and one year later, not a soul on the planet will remember this transaction except you and the guy. No one on your team will remember it. Your mom won't remember it.

His mom won't remember it if she's alive, you know, and so on. right? I mean, no, the, the, what I always think of these things with more drama inside of my head, like it's going to have this lasting effect or something. It's like, it's amazing when you're gone, nobody notices. It's just, it's kind of sad. But we just go on to the next thing, you know? And you don't tell that guy that, but I mean, in your mind, don't let the drama get too big because a year from now, it'll be a distant, distant memory. Be kind, be firm. On severance, I'm always overly generous for someone like this.

And let me tell you why. It has nothing to do with the guy. It's selfish on my part. Because when I'm 82 or 92 laying on my deathbed, I don't want to think I should have been more generous. I always want to be overly generous, and then I don't have to worry about it. And so our severance over the years has kind of been done.

at times. It's been too much. But it's all just so I don't have to think about it again. Because it's not about what you pay this guy. It's about he needs to freaking do his work. Yeah, absolutely. The implications are not the dollars you give him. You give him an extra few thousand dollars more than he probably should have gotten in severance.

You're going to make that back in a month with increased productivity because everybody else is going to go, dead gum. Jared's letting people go that don't work. Right. because you're sending a message to the whole team because they know why he left when he leaves because they know he doesn't work. Mm-hmm.

They just wonder if you see it. I do. That's the team. Yeah. Does that help you? Yeah, it does. I guess it's a tough reality you have to face. I'm proud of you for facing it and your dad's proud of you.

Yeah, thanks. Hey, thanks for calling in, man. You're the kind of people run the kind of businesses that cause America to work. Well done, brother. Work literally and work metaphorically. Very, very well done. Good stuff. This is how it's done, boys and girls. This is how small business works. That guy right there, 27 years old, taking over for his dad, passing away a year ago. Wow. Wow. Wow. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. When I start doing what is now called the Ramsey Show about 30 years ago, People were deeply in debt with credit cards. Well, guess what? 30 years later, people are still deeply in debt with credit cards.

Turns out people can't seem to live on what they make. They can't act their wage. Some things never change. Same thing's true about leadership. When I started running Ramsey 30 years ago, started growing in from a cart table on my living room, there was all these leadership reports out that people were dissatisfied with their leaders in corporate America.

Well, they've always been. been dissatisfied with the leaders in corporate America because there's always a set of twerps running around out there doing it, right? And there's always some good people in corporate America, even though I pick on them all the time, but a bunch of good people running businesses all over America that do a good job with leadership. They're strong leaders, they're kind leaders, their servant leaders, they care about their team. They're always out there. But there's always, you know, enough people that don't lead well or don't lead at all that you have negative surveys coming in on the state of leadership in America today.

So gallop.com. Six worrying workplace numbers. Some things never change. And what you can do about them. Are the latest changes in the world of work keeping you up at night from faltering trust and managers to the potentials of robots replacing jobs, employees, and organizations alike may be concerned about what the future holds for the workplace? Here are some of the most concerning insights Gallup has discovered this year.

Well, let's go through them. Number one, 23% only 23% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization. Well, what we say around Ramsey is that we move at the speed of trust. And there's only two possible reasons why a team member would not trust the leadership. Number one, the leadership is not trust worthy. They're inconsistent. They're horrible communicators.

They're not worthy of trust. They're not predictable in their environment. If you want to trust that the chair is not going to break and throw you in the floor, then you check it. And if the legs are steady, you sit down on the chair. It doesn't collapse. You don't land in the floor. You trusted the integrity.

of the chair because you checked it. It was trustworthy. That's a leader. It has to be predictable environment. When I sit on the chair, it needs to sit. It doesn't need to go on the floor. Needs to be predictable. Integrity is predictable.

Lack of integrity is sadly predictable, but it's really not because you don't know where they're going to go. But if you know if I do X always Y is going to happen, positive or negative, But if I do X, 100% of the time, leadership around here does Y. As soon as we, if someone does that, they're gone. If someone does that, they get promoted. You know, that's a predictable environment.

That's integrity. Then the leadership is trustworthy. The other possible reason that an employee says they don't trust the leadership of the organization is, they're arrogant, immature. They were born on third base and thought they had a triple. just came out of college and have the answer to everything, and you don't know, spit. And so because someone's not going around with your arrogant but little 24-year-old idea, then they're not trustworthy.

Well, you're the idiot, not the leadership. And so sometimes it's not leadership's fault, right? Sometimes it's the little arrogant, immature idiot, right? And that's leadership's fault because they hired that person. but anyway, worse than that, they kept them. But that's, you know, but what these polls always indicate is that leaders are horrible. Well, most of the time leaders are medium. They don't have courage.

They don't communicate well, and they don't create predictable integrity patterns, values, and then they don't trust the leadership. And that's where leaders fall down. but it isn't like the leaders are crook. Now, I mean, you get trolled or whatever, and I always tell the young people, listen, everybody disagrees with he's not a narcissist. They just told you you're wrong, that's all. And you might be wrong. So you need to shut up and think about that.

But, I mean, so that's the trust issue with leadership. Leadership, leaders, if your team is not trusting you, it's probably because you're not telling them enough information. You're not giving them enough communication. and you're probably not consistent enough in the requirements of excellence through the organization. Number two, only 23% of employees strongly agree that they get the right amount of recognition for the work they do. The human need for affirmation is insatiable. There are two things that never get enough.

A bulldog needing to eat and a human being needing affirmation. I used to have a pug that would eat until it would die. The only way it would not quit, the only way it quit eating is we picked up the food or it died. There was no stopping it. And we're the same way with our need for affirmation. No one gets enough out of boys. I'm Dave Freaking Ramsey. When I walk around out there in public, one of two things happens if someone knows who I am.

They run up and they say, thank you for changing my life. Or they say, you're a complete idiot. I hate everything you do. I trash YouTube all the time because I hate you. One of two things happens. And most of the time that doesn't happen because most people don't have that kind of courage. They tend to do that in the comments

instead of in person, right? But anyway, I mean, that's the two reactions to me. But my point is I get a lot of affirmation. And even me, I could use some more. Everybody could use some more. So you can always, as leaders, the lesson from this one is, you can always give more recognition.

You can always say, that a boy, that a girl, way to go. You're awesome. You can never say it too much. For God's sakes, walk around the building and try to catch somebody doing something right. Instead of catching everybody doing something wrong. But it's, we have to, as leaders, we have to actually almost like put it on our calendar. Okay, I'm going to get up from my desk at 1115 and walk out of my office and find somebody doing something right. because we don't naturally do it.

We naturally gravitate towards fixing broken stuff instead of finding people doing something right and going, you are amazing. You're a stud. Stud at, get it done. Way to go. I'm so proud of you. More than half of employees, 53% say they don't feel prepared to work with AI.

Well, crap, where's the other 47%? None of us are prepared to work with AI. That should be 100%. If you think you're prepared to work with AI, you are AI. Oh my God, there's no possible way. We don't know. This thing scares the crap out of everybody. It's going to be there's going to be awesome opportunities with it.

And there's going to be so much piracy and theft, it's going to be unbelievable. We're going to have Abraham Lincoln on the Internet before we know it. 51% of currently employed, employed workers around the world say they are watching for or actively seeking a new job. well um we certainly have folks leave ramsie from time to time and um we try to do that with class when they do it with class and wish them the best because we love them and we want what's good for them and if they get an opportunity to make a lot more money or have to do something that they love more than they love here then you know i we try to help you do that um but if you're going to spend all your time while you're at work looking for another job yeah you probably ought to

just go you know so So it doesn't take that long to find a job in this economy. And so if 51% are looking for a job, that means some of them aren't looking real hard. They're just bitching, moaning, you know? They're not really, I mean, it's just like, ang, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just go do it then. I mean, why are you talking about it? Go do it.

You know, that's a thing. So our guys, I tell our guys all the time, listen, when your spirit leaves the building for God's sakes, take your body with it. That's the thing. I mean, we don't even, I don't work out two-week notices hardly. We work out a couple days of them sometimes to get some stuff transferred, but, you know, it's nice, it's classy for a team member to turn in a two-week notice, but you know what they do?

The last week of the two-week notice, nothing. So it's, it's, you know, other than talk about all the reasons they're leaving, which is kind of dumb, leaving the poison apple in the barrel, so let's get them on out of here. So we just help you move. Good, good, good. Just move on your way. Move on your way. When your spirit leaves, take your body with it.

Only two in ten employees, 20% feel connected to their organization's culture. Well, most of that is leadership. That is leadership breakdown. And you have to spend a certain amount of time in leadership building culture and communicating culture and encouraging culture. If you don't, you'll have a negative culture. Everybody has a culture. It's just whether it's negative. or positive.

The last one by Gallup, only four and ten employees. Only 40% report unethical behavior at work if they have first-hand knowledge of it. Hmm. Well, there would be two reasons that you wouldn't report unethical behavior. One is, as you think it's condoned, and reporting it is useless and might actually get you in trouble. They might give you an eye roll and go, oh, don't worry about it. you know, if you think they're going to do nothing about it because you think it's condoned,

then you wouldn't report it. Or the second reason is that you don't care enough about the organization, the good of the organization, to make sure that unethical behavior is removed. So like one of the examples around here at Ramsey is unethical behavior would be when a man speaks to a lady or treats a lady in a way that makes her feel uncomfortable. We don't tolerate that here. We don't do creepers. I'll fire your butt if you're a creeper.

Okay. And so, you know, my daughters work here. We're not going to have sexual harassment. We might have a murder, but we're not going to have sexual harassment, all right? We don't do creepers. And so the ladies here, if they identify that someone's doing that, I have to have an environment where they know we're going to act on them bringing that kind of behavior forward. word. And over 30 years, we've had it come up a few times. Nothing super serious, but, you know,

just people that don't seem to like they were raised by wolves and they don't know how to be a gentleman. You know, I don't know. They think it's appropriate to tell, say something. And you know, no, you don't say, you don't keep your hands to yourself, you goob. And so, um, but anyway, yeah, so you have to sit down and talk to some of these guys and go, look, you know, we don't do creepers. And so you can, you have to keep your eyes and your hands to yourself. And, and and certainly your mouth and your crude jokes or whatever it is you're doing. You're going to stop that stuff. So, but a lady has to feel a safe environment.

And I'm not talking about the legal aspects of this. I'm talking about building culture of trust. I want to have a place at Ramsey. I don't care. The federal law, we're going to abide by federal law. But this is way beyond federal law standard. This is a standard of my daughter's work here. If your daughter works here, she needs to be known she's going to be treated like a lady.

and she's going to be in a safe environment because that's the moral, principled, correct, spiritual thing to do, not because it's the law. It also happens to be the law, but that's a side issue. So I've got to create that environment. Our leadership team has to create that environment, and our ladies then have to be told, and our guys have to be told over and over and over again,

you need to love this place enough that if you see something going on that's wrong, that you need to bring it to somebody that can help us fix it. But we can't fix it if we don't know it's there. So you have to raise your hand and go, this is really awkward and uncomfortable, but I need to talk to you about this. This is bothering me.

And you go, what? You're going to find out stuff at your organization's going on. You can't believe it. What? Really? That guy, I wouldn't have never thought. Oh, well, all right. Well, sit down with him.

Sit down with him. He goes, oh, I didn't do that. Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. You're full of crap. You know, I don't believe that. I believe it for a minute. And it's not because I believe her over you.

It's just you're wrong. You know, there's that. So, you know, you just got to create the environment where you're going to act on the unethical behavior. And it's not whistleblower law. That's a bunch of crap as far as I'm concerned. It's not, I mean, we abide by the law. So we have to worry about all that. We're 92 degrees inside the law because we're more concerned about the

people than some lawsuit. That's not the issue. What we're concerned about is, are we going to treat the people right? And that's way before you get to legal standard. So create an environment where people want to create the workplace that they want to work in. And so if they see something that's wrong, they raise their hand, because that's what they would do if they owned it. you have a self-employed mentality. It's one of our core values here at Ramsey. Well, that's a pretty good little exercise to go through those. Those are standard things that come up.

And the one that reminded me the most, I don't know what you guys got out of this, but I think I need to recognize people, one. Come on, they're doing a good job. Will, you're doing a good job. Yeah. You're doing a good job, Will.

Good job. Right there on the board right now. He just brought the music up, right when he's supposed to. See how that recognition thing works is powerful. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Hey, this is fun. If I ask you what your profits and losses were this week, what you know?

The hard truth is if you don't stay on top of your numbers, your business is going to fail. The Bible says, be diligent to know the state of your flocks and herds. You can't out-earn disorganization or the need to handle your finances wisely, but you can use simple practices and wise decision-making to have a successful growing business. You don't even have to become a money expert. In the Entree Leaders Guide to Business Finances, you'll learn the profit principles and the key practices that we've used to grow Ramsey Solutions over the last 30 years. It's free.

That's a good financial guide right there. It's a free financial guide. Get it? See what I did there? This free guide will simplify the foundational components of managing your revenues. new expenses so you can build your business on some solid ground. A free Entree Leaders Guide to Business Finances. Go to Entryleadership.com slash finances and download it's a PDF, this free guide.

Entreeleadership.com slash finances. Teia is in Yakima. Man, I got all those names right. What's up, Taya? What's up, Dave? Thanks for having me. I'm honored. How can we?

we help? Well, we're in three years of business. We own a non-medical home care agency that serves our seniors and our veterans here in our area. And my question was, how can we set up our finances to create a marketing budget and build a sustainable business? I've listened to some of your podcast where you talk about how you should put certain percentages aside for different things. I just want to make sure we're doing that where we're able to market and pay ourselves and, you know, um, well, there's a couple of things. Yeah. Yeah. Um, if you're doing digital marketing, uh, where you're buying keywords or you're buying paid SEO, uh, that kind of stuff, then you can say you have a very clear, um, instant rate of return on, you.

on each one of those purchases. And so you spend $100 and you make X as $100 plus X, right? And we call that a ROAS. And what you're looking for is the ROAS. It's the return on your spend is what it amounts to. And so as long as you're putting out $100, as long as you're making more than $100, you can do that infinitely. Now, we like to get, you know, a substantial more than a $100.

one to one. We try to get a two to one ROAS where we can on those things. Very difficult to maintain that, depending on the size of the size of the campaign. But if you want to roll stuff out, you know, advertising that works is free. You follow me? It makes you more than it costs. And so if you're doing digital and you're getting a ROAS that's in positive, you know, you can do that mathematically in perpetuation. Now, what the problem with that is is that you can become too dependent on one type of marketing. For instance, if you're buying paid Facebook and you get really dependent on paid Facebook and then Facebook jacks it up, which happened last year, okay?

They jacked everybody up after 2020. Then, you know, all of a sudden, your cost of customer acquisition just doubled because you became too dependent on one. So you don't want to, just because there's a rate of return, go haul hog on one or the other. But as long as you've got a diversified, a whole series of different marketing initiatives, if each one of them are monetizing, then, you know, you don't have to limit it to a percentage. Because, again, as long as you're getting the $100 back quickly that you put out, then you can, as long as you can cash flow it, then that's what you're looking for more than

anything. Now, other types of advertising or marketing that are not as direct response as a digital ad where you've got a ROAS. I mean, if you put a Facebook ad or Google Word app by or something like that, you're going to know in 24 hours if you're making, you know, if you know what a lead is worth, I mean, we know when someone goes, for instance, to our budgeting software entre, every dollar. We know if a free user downloads every dollar, on average, we're going to make X number of dollars. Okay. And as long as that lead costs, us less than X, we're making money. Right?

But it might be 60 days or 90 days before that cash comes through back to us. So you've got to watch the cash flow on it. Now, the other types of advertising, like for instance, when I talk about percentages, that's like if you're doing more of a broadcast by where you don't have as closely tied direct response. So if you're advertising, say, on radio or television or something like that, you're just putting an ad out there. It's not like in 20 minutes or 24 hours,

you're going to know that that ad was worth what you spent, right? But if you do that over a series of years, then you know, well, if we spend 6% of our advertising on radio, we keep that allocated. As long as we're doing that and we're doing it and talk radio, we're going to be fine because we do get a return over a period of 12 months that's more than adequate to suggest that that that,

ad is a good ad buy. That's where you use percentages in your budget. But we don't use those in Ramsey as much today because we do more digital buys with our marketing stuff than we do anything else. Okay. Well, I guess my, like I was just wondering since we are a new business and like, you know, the percentages that I was talking about was like, say we put in 10% and that's going to be every time we get our income, we'll put 10% towards marketing. So we'll have a marketing budget is that different? Well, what that does when you're small is it keeps you from putting too much in marketing and it makes you be careful with what you're doing in marketing. Because if you only got 10%, you've got to be careful with it and make sure it's working. Yeah. Sometimes if you don't

put it. I was trying to structure that out. Yeah, if you don't put a stop on the thing where at 10% we stop, then you could look up and you spent 40% and you've blown your margins on your marketing budget. So you have to, the budget gives you a constraint that says, I can't go past this. And when you're limited, you know, so I only got, you know, $10,000 or only got 10%, whatever that represents, right? And so I've got to make that pay. And so it makes you very careful. Those are precious dollars rather than sloppy, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks, dollars. And that's what the, you know, the budget gives you that, that sense of constrained resources, limited resources. Limited resources of any kind always increase creativity.

People are never creative when they're fat, sloppy, and there's enough of everything. They're creative when there's not enough. And you have to make it work with bail and wire and fish hooks. You know, that's when you get scrappy. And you create a false sense of limited resources by creating a budget item. And it's a foe. It's not false. real limit because you created it, but you know, you force yourself to be judicial with every one

of those dollars. That's what we're facing. Good question. I like that. That's a good discussion. Sounds like you're running a wonderful business. Congratulations. Thanks for calling in. Love it. This is the Entry Leadership Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Entry Leadership Podcast. I could use your help. Do you want to help us? Thanks. Subscribe. Push the little subscribe button thingy. Push the little follow button thingy. Share the link with a friend. Tell them you're listening to this podcast. Tell them to tune in.

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Thank you very much. We appreciate you. Ah, Aaron is with us, Bloomington, Illinois. What's up, Aaron? Hey, Dave, how you doing? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Well, real excited about this.

Thanks for taking some time for me. Sure. I work with a solar company. And we have just been on a growth trajectory ever since I've been a part of the company for the last five, six years. Mm-hmm. And we're now getting to about 80, 90 people. We're at about 20 to $25 million. a year. So, and again, I was the first employee. I remember when it was nothing like that.

That's fun. So how many years ago was it 10 people? Ten, we would have been probably by the end of the second year. So maybe like four years ago. Oh, wow. That's a pretty heavy curve. Okay. So there's more of them than you. Oh, yeah. So quickly. Yeah. Yeah, quickly. Like we had a quarterly meeting today, and I just, I'm kind of odd by all the people in the room now. Yeah. You're there. old guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's kind of how it feels some days, and it's really not been that long. But yeah, so we're playing in a bigger boy league and kind of feeling our way through it. And what's happened is I've gone from being employee number one. Now I manage the sales department.

That was kind of the side of the company I've always stayed on. And just, maybe it's new to me, maybe it's just new to our level of things. You know, we've really tried to push on. We need to have core values and we've got some written down. Those are crystallized on kind of an executive level. And what I'm just thinking is, man, there's people. It feels like constantly coming in the door to jump in. And some of them are seasonal, but on my side, they're not. They're all salespeople and the administrators accordingly that just make the ship run

in my corner of things. And I just, what have you guys found in your growth? I'm maintaining some of the cultural pieces that these are non-negotiables while you've just got, again, just things and work kind of coming in the door, and that can kind of overwhelm sometimes the cultural values, because after a while it's like, you've got to get stuff done. Yeah, if you don't, you're very wise, because if you don't start looking at it the way you're looking at it right now, you're probably a little bit late, actually, to do it, but you're very wise to recognize this need because what happens is you have this neat culture and everything's

purring along. Everybody trusts each other. There's a family. feeling with 20 people, and then you add 30 more. There's more of them than you. That's what I was talking about. And all of a sudden, they are dictating culture instead of you dictating culture. And so all the new people are bringing the culture in rather than accepting the old people, becoming acclimated to the old, right? So what you've got to do is get around in front of it, which is what you're describing, and what can we do proactively to maintain? or reinsert, in your case, you may have lost somebody, reinsert the values and the culture that got us here. Okay. So it's, number one, the leadership team needs to huddle up and be in

agreement on this. We need alignment with the leadership team. And then we need to implement, you know, culture mandates, so to speak. Now, that starts with the hire. We're not going to hire people who do not want to engage and align themselves with our values. In the interview process, these are our, at Ramsey, we have 14 values, or the principles are who we are. And if you do not want to align with those, you don't want to be here because you won't be here. We're going to move, we'll move you out if you don't quit.

Right. This is who we are. And if you're going to be a we, that's at the interview. And then it's again on the onboarding. We onboarded eight people on Monday here just a couple days ago, all right? And all eight of them in the two-day onboarding they're going through. One of the things they're going through is the core values. So they know who we are.

They don't get to bring their culture to us. We have a culture and they are joining it. This is a very, very clear distinction. And what happens is if you just hire people left and right, they just bring in their stuff if you don't demand they adhere to yours. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So let's get alignment on what's important here and who we are. And then in the hire, in the onboarding, and even in the discussion with some of the people you've hired in the last two years that didn't have the benefit of the new onboarding and hiring, where you say this is who we are.

do you want to be a we? You know, our culture is we, you know, we have a level of customer service. You don't seem to care about the customer. You just want to make the sale. That's not okay. We do this. This is what we do. Do you want to be a we?

And we talk like that around here every day at Ramsey all day long. And anytime we have to have a difficult conflict conversation with someone on a performance issue, it always has to do with that kind of a thing. It's a we thing. We don't do that here, or we do this here. And you need to align with what we do if you want to be a we. And then you can create, what you've got is a uniform culture expectation that you're measuring against, just like you were measuring against a sales metric.

You know, if you say, okay, here's your key performance indicators on sales, you have to make this many cold calls, have this many actual contacts, You have to have an average order value of this size. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about. You're working through the rejection ratios. It's what you do as a sales leader right now. You show them how to do that. And then if they're making half that number of calls, you know they're going to fail.

And it's because they're not aligning to the metric. And in this case, the metric is a soft skill called a value. And they need to align to the metric. And then the last piece of it is, I told our team this last night, At every 90 days, we have a final welcome to the people who have been here 90 days. Because during the first 90 days, you're on probation, and we are on probation. And the end of 90 days, we have a little celebration that you've been here for 90 days. Now you're part of the family, okay?

We used to bring in raps from Chick-fil-A, and I would just sit and answer questions and talk to them. We call it rap with Dave. Nowadays, it's a little more complicated than that. We did this thing, but we had about 50 people last night that were at their 90 days. And my son, the president, and I both got up, talked to him, welcome through what it means to be Ramsey. Again, this is our values. Again, this is who we are.

And I'll tell you how we capped it off. It's what's fresh on my mind. And so it's a great question. What we do now is I sit and explain to those 50 people, when we were a company of 50 people, people told me you will never be able to. to maintain the culture that you've got now when you get to 100. And then when we got to 100, we did. And they said, oh, well, you got it at 100, but you'll never be able to do it at 200.

And then we got to 200, it was even better. Now we're at 1,000. It's the best culture we've ever had. How is that possible? Well, we spend some money on it. We eat together. We talk together. We laugh together.

We play together. We communicate a lot. We're very intentional about it. But you can do those two things and still have a screwed up culture. if you allow everyone in the building to not function to the values. You've got to function and align your behaviors and your belief system to those values. And if you don't want to adhere to that, you don't need to be in our building. So what I tell the team is, I have figured out the secret to having a world-class culture

with a thousand people in one building. You want to hear it? Yeah. We're not the creator of culture. They are. And I tell those people sitting in front of the world. of me, a lot of them young people, of course, right now, if you go create the place that you want to work in, if you say, I'm going to be kind because I want to work in a place with kind people,

I'm going to pray with my friend who's sick because I want to work in a place where it's okay to pray with my friend who's sick. I want to perform with a level of excellence and a desire to win because I want to be around a bunch of people who drive the ball and put it in the end zone and win the Super Bowl. I want to, you need to go be the kind of person that creates the place that you want to work in. And if you guys don't all create the culture that you want to work in, we're going to be one of those sucky corporate America companies. And then I'm just going to shut it down because I don't want to own one of those.

I can't do it. I can't run around like a little bee pollinating culture for a thousand people all through this building. It's logistically, physically impossible. If you don't create the place you want it to be, it won't be, and they got it. And then we hand them a little glass. We have a glass that's etched. It says culture creator. So every time you take a drink out of this glass, you remember your job is to create culture

while you're here. Create the culture of the place you want to work in. And deputize them as culture creators. Everyone in here, make this the kind of place you would. want to work in. If you owned it, how would you want it to look? How would you want people treating each other? How would you want people, you know, coming in late, leaving early? Would you want people working 90 hours? I don't. I want them going home and being with their families. But I don't want them coming in late and leaving early and sitting on Facebook all day, unless their job is to sit

on Facebook all day, like social media people or something, right? But I mean, you see what I'm saying? And so you've got to go through and first get the values clear, then create some of the positive things, and then tell everybody make more of that. That was the formula I just gave you. Yeah, got it. Helpful? Yeah, immensely. Thanks. Hey, man, we appreciate you.

You're amazing. I love the growth story on what you're doing. You guys are getting it done, man. The economy's bad. Not if you work with Aaron. He's not whining. He's getting it done, man. Hey, remember, better a wary 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.