EntreLeadership - Make Better Decisions With These Key Principles with Dave Ramsey

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Tune in for exclusive access to an incredible talk from last year's EntreLeadership Master Series event. You'll hear from our host George Kamel, and then you'll learn about decision-making from Dave Ramsey, the founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. Dave unpacks how to be sure you’re making the best decisions for your business and shares the key principles he uses to make decisions—so you can use them too. You’ll learn: •      Why you can’t afford to be an indecisive leader •      A simple but effective tip to finally stop procrastinating •      How to stop letting other people make decisions for you •      The quickest way to eliminate fear in decision-making Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Learn more about EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/3zR6zNB Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, why decision-making is essential for leaders and how to make sure the decisions you make are good ones. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast from the Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. My guest today is Dave Ramsey, founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. Now, today's a special episode because I want to give you exclusive access to a part of a talk he gave at Entree Leadership Master's Series last fall that's all about decision-making for leaders. And Dave is joining me now to help me set up the episode. Thanks for being here, Dave. I'm honored to be with you, George.

So, this content is extremely valuable for anyone on leadership. But before we jump in, Dave, what in the world is Master Series for those that don't know? Master Series was the first place we taught the whole Entree Leadership Playbook. And over the years it's evolved, it's the meat and potatoes. I mean, we opened up the playbook that's fueled the Ramsey business growth for the last 25 years. And honestly, it's all the stuff I wish I knew when I started. And it's what we taught our leaders as we went along to grow our business. It's not theory.

We've actually lived it. Master Series started as a way to train the team in leadership. principles, but now it's exploded and it's become really one of our premier events. Oh, absolutely. This is business wisdom from the trenches, and this year's master series is local. It's right here in Nashville, Tennessee, September 25th, through the 29th, and it's only a month away. It's pretty wild. Well, and the good news is for us, we've only got a few spots left, but that's bad news for you. If you're interested in joining us, you better hurry, because the train is leaving the station. So if you guys

want to learn more and register, you can use the link in the show notes. But today with this special episode, we wanted to give away a part of your Master Series talk on decision making for free. And I think it's priceless. That's just me, though. We think it's so essential that every single business leader needs to hear it. So, enjoy this talk from Entree Leadership Master's series from Dave Ramsey. Decision making is a process. There's a lot of decision making frameworks, a lot of decision making paradigms, but the idea that the decision has to be made when you're the leader, have to be decisive. It does not have to be instantaneous, but I have to be decisive to put my name, my picture under the word leader. Passivity is not an option. You must make decisions to lead.

Passive leader is an oxymoron. Calm, gentle, slow leader is not an oxymoron. Wild, Git'em leader is not an oxymoron. That's fine. I don't care what your style is, but passively sitting and letting everything happen to you and happen to your organization while you should be making the call is not okay.

Your business, your ideas, and your team will be paralyzed by an indecisive leader. I have leaders on my team that are very deliberate. They need all the details. They need time emotionally to process. process it and they make decisions very slowly and I am fine with that as long as they make the freaking decision. I have leaders on my team that are like me. I'm a super high D.

I make a decision. If I don't like it or it's wrong, I'll just make another one. Like in the next 13 seconds, you know? I'm fine with that. So that's just the speed at which you're doing it. Neither one is correct. The only thing that's incorrect is simply not doing it. That's not okay.

an indecision in general, the paralysis of a decision facing you and you're not doing anything is only caused by one thing, fear. We all have things come out of us that we fear, that we don't understand, we don't know what to do with. And not dealing with them means the fear won the argument. And fear is not a fruit of the spirit. The Bible says a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Sometimes people are like that squirrel on the road.

Y'all got squirrels in your area? and they run out in the road and they go, Blum, bum, bum. That's a double-minded man. You're going to get run over. I don't care if you're left or right, just be it. That way you don't get hit by the truck. Just be what you is.

Somebody's not going to like whatever you do, and you're going to be dead in the road if you decide to try to, you're going to try to please everybody. So just get out of the road. Make a decision. Blum, blum, right? Criticism comes with the territory. The only way to avoid critical,

criticism Aristotle said is to do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. These are not options. My friend Max Lakato says his daddy used to say, dogs don't bark at parked cars. The trolls are there. The criticism's going to be there. You're going to make mistakes and people are going to misunderstand your motives. Oh, well. Criticism is going to come. If you are, if it is necessary in your personality for you to keep everyone happy, you will destroy. your mental health. You simply cannot keep everyone happy. I don't want to be unkind to someone. I don't want to purposefully pick fights unless it's for the entertainment value.

But in general, I'm not trying to go out here and just rough people up. That's not the point. But the point is, I am well aware that as long as I do anything of scale, the scale of criticism is going to continue to stay with it. It goes with the territory. some of it's close to you it's your mother the lady earlier it some of it's you know team members or former team members or sometimes it's a customer sometimes it's a competitor and sometimes people that just make up crap and so just count on it trolls cancel culture

fear of COVID mandates of one kind or another this is all managing, if you manage to the optics, if you lead to keep everybody happy, you're one of these companies that leads to make everybody happy. You want to look like you like that you did the right thing, you love everybody, you're going to get nothing done. You have no value. You've completely neutered your whole process because you have no soul left. You become agnostic to everything. Anything is okay. Everything is okay. So nothing is okay. And that's what a lot of these publicly traded companies have done. They're trying to take these stands where all the little groups and all of their little problems are all addressed

when they're supposed to just be selling stuff at their store. And instead, they've gotten in the political business and in the political correct business, politically correct business, trying to keep from getting canceled by somebody. Well, there's a good way to keep from getting canceled, by the way. Own it. A little tough to cancel me on the network. Now, I'm not trying to be offensive to some group or whatever. I'm not setting out to do that.

But I'm also not going to live in fear of that. We're going to get business done. We're going to love people well. We're going to be kind and we're going to be excellent in what we do. And because we're moving things around, somebody's pissed all the time. Just get used to it. It's part of the process. Elements of good decision making.

Deciding not to decide can be the right decision. Sometimes you don't have enough information. Sometimes it's in the heat of the moment. You need to calm down. So sometimes just saying, not right now. That is a decision. It's an intentional act. It's proactive.

It's not passive. And you're simply saying, not right now. Not right now. Not right now. Not right now. Not ready to pull the plug. Not ready to pull the plug. We're not doing that.

When everything was melting down last year, and we're losing events moment by moment by moment. Every day another event was getting, we were having to cancel it. Suddenly we had people out there five, six months out from the current situation with COVID stuff stirring up, right? We got people five, six, seven months out trying to cancel something. I'm like, how the crap do you know what's going to be happening in seven months? I'm not canceling that today.

When we get a little closer, if the same kind of environment exists, we may have to to cancel it. But today I'm not canceling stuff. The whole thing may be over out there in seven months. I don't know. And, you know, what kind of looking glass have you got that you can look eight months in the future and know exactly what is going to happen? You know, no. So we didn't cancel stuff and it made everybody nervous and they would like be in my office every day. Can we cancel it now? No, it's still seven months in one day. You know, it's like, good Lord, just no, just calm down. Not now, not now, not now. We'll wait. We'll watch this. Procrastination can be avoided, on the other hand, if you're procrastinating and not making a decision,

by setting a self-imposed deadline and writing it on your calendar. I'm not going to decide now, I'm going to let this cook a little bit inside my soul. I'm going to gather some more information. I'm going to watch the marketplace move, see how rough the waters are and what's going on. And by Friday, two weeks from today, I'm going to make the call and just put it on the calendar. and when you wake up that morning you'll be free and you'll be going yeah i think i think i can make oh by the way if i don't want to make it that day i can purposefully move the date but at least you've got something bearing down on you where you are not going to kick the can down the road indefinitely

so you put a date on the calendar and that pops up on ding ding okay today's the day i got to make a decision am i going to keep this person i gave him a little time here i want to make sure it It wasn't just me being emotional about it. And I think my initial thing was right. I think we're going to have to go ahead and deal with this. And I don't just put it off and put it off because of the pain. The pain that is inflicted with the decision is usually short-term. The pain of not making a decision and letting things just languish is long-term and devastating

to an organization. Take time proportionate to the size of the decision. The more important the decision is, the bigger the impact of the decision, the more money is involved, the more people are involved. The more important it is, the more time you should take. And here's what's interesting. People do, they flip-flop this. They spend a lot of time deciding which flavor of gum to buy. And they impulse a new Porsche. You got that backwards.

You want to spend a lot of time and a lot of time. an expensive purchase. You'll spend a lot of time analyzing a five-year lease that you're negotiating that you're going to enter into on a building. That's a big deal. That's going to be with you for a long time. But don't spend the same amount of time analyzing copier paper. So short, easy little baby decisions, make them close the loop, get that out of your life. That lowers your stress level and opens up your bandwidth to spend the proper amount of time on the big things. So make the little decisions quick and get them off the plate, get rid of the mosquitoes so we can shoot bear. Get after the big stuff.

The bigger the decision, the more information you're going to need. Information is king. There's a saying, Roger Uri, who wrote the book Getting to Yes, talks about the negotiation for the ending of the war at Vietnam, some peace talks that were done, he talks about the Camp David Accord, and he talks about several major negotiations. and one of his key things in any negotiation, it's the consummate book on negotiating, his key thing is he with the most information and he with the most patience in a negotiation generally wins.

If you can sit back and let the thing drag out a little bit longer emotionally than the other person can and you understand their side almost better than they do, you can generally win that negotiation. And the same is true with decision making. If you'll slow down enough that you're very wise, and the more information you gather, obviously the more knowledgeable you are about the situation, the better the decision's going to be. If there's a way to minimize the risk, make each part of the decision bite-sized, make small parts of the decision, to test the decision, or to move into it gradually,

that's an easier decision than biting off the whole thing. So is there a way to iterate this product? Is there a way to introduce this product to a small group? We're working on a product right now that we're in beta on and getting ready to go into beta, our alpha, and then we're going to go into beta after the first of the year. And so we're going to start with a little group of about 300 people, and then we're going to go to about 3,000 people. And once we kind of get all the bugs worked out, then we'll take it all the way. Now we've got a lot invested in it at this point, but before we go with several more million dollars of investment into it, we will have worked through the kinks, and we will have looked at the,

we will have made the decision several times again to go forward based on the information we're gathering out of these alpha and beta groups. Scope of the decision matters. What are the financial implications of the decision? The biggest mistake people make in business, particularly small businesses, they do a James Bond decision, I call it. In every James Bond movie, at some point during the movie, he, he, is at the card table with the evil villain and they're playing cards and the entire, you know,

the entire planet, the existence of the world, as we know it, is dependent upon him winning this hand of cards and he slides all of his chips to the center of the table. No one in the real world should ever do that. If your bet on this product line, this idea, this launch is going to break your company and close you down, if it doesn't work, you shouldn't do it. You should make lots of mistakes in business, but they should all be course correction mistakes, not fatal errors. And a fatal error is when I put it all on the line, and somebody then will write a book about that someday, yeah, they'll write a book about how dumb you were. Don't put it all on the line for one deal, for one thing. Don't risk the whole thing for this one move. You work too hard to get to this point

to lose it all on one stinking decision. You don't need to be James Vaughn. Play the hand, play the hand, play the hand. A little bit at a time, a little bit of time. So we've had people come at us, especially in the past when we were smaller and they would bring us these wonderful opportunities. only if the deal didn't work, the stuff was going to come back on us. We'd get all the products back, and we would lose all of that money because they were all custom design products, and we couldn't swallow that. It would have closed us. And so this huge blessing with this huge company that was going to be our benefactor, they were

going to be this angel that comes in and gives us this amazing deal, would have also been the company that bankrupted us. if we were stupid enough to take that deal. So I've turned down wonderful deals that if they didn't work would have closed us. No thanks. I don't need one single deal to make us who we are. We would rather win death by a thousand cuts.

Ask the experts if you're making a decision. Find people who know more about something than you do. Do not get confused that they are making the decision. decision, though. Sometimes they get confused that they're making the decision. If you're a business person, you should never say I'm doing this because my accountant told me to. Your accountant works for you. You should understand it and you say, the accountant taught me this, so this makes sense, and that's why I'm doing this. But you don't work for your accountant. The lawyer or the legal department said we had to do this. The HR department said we had to do this. No, we don't. They work.

for me. I don't work for them. They can come in and teach us what's going on, but we're going to make the decision based on the information we gather from the expert. Don't acquiesce the decision-making rights, but gather information from people about subjects you don't know. And that's a wonderful way to do it. Get lots of information. And so what you're looking for with professionals is not someone who is arrogant. You're looking for someone that has the heart of a teacher. It's going to teach you about what's going on with this. I've got amazing amount of money spent on estate planning, and it's unbelievably complicated. But he doesn't tell us what we're going to do. We tell him what we're going to do, and then he figures out a way

that we get to do it. And what's a mechanism, what's a process we can use to get to that? An expert, by the way, is someone who has actually done the thing or has super specialized information in a certain area, not just someone that has an opinion. Now, some of you are in here, you're in the business, you're in a consulting role, your consultants. And in many industries, there are wonderful consultants that are excellent at what they do. And in a lot of industries, consultants simply means I'm unemployed. And now I'm a damn expert.

Drive me nuts. Radio consultants are the world's worst. They're guys that want to make it on the air, never did. So they tell everybody what the on-air talent should be doing. and they've never gotten a rating point in their life, but they're a radio consultant. Shoot me. So, again, there's valid consultants,

and I laughed with a guy out here than that. He goes, I know how you feel about consultants? I don't hate all consultants. That's not the point. But if you're going to deal with a consultant, make sure they actually know something. A marketing consultant is someone who's actually done some marketing, not read a book once and then bought business cards.

So, you know, digital consulting is a big deal. I mean, it's a problem. In the creative world, it can be a real problem. And so just make real sure that these consultants are people that have actual hands-on experience and they actually do know more than you know because it's not always the case. But try to get those in your corner of the good ones and try to get people in your corner that are pouring into you. And not just has an opinion. In the multitude of counsel, there's safety.

Scripture says that. So get counsel. So get experts around you, get people around you, we'll talk it through. We're going to get lots of opinions. And again, in no case am I handing off my right to make the decision or my responsibility to make the decision, but I'm gathering info and input. And I know that I'm not all, I don't have all the answers just within myself. And so I want to gather all this stuff up, put it all out on the table, and the weird

thing is the decision will just stick its head up and tell you what to do. It'll just go, it'll just be right there, and you'll see it. if you gather information you get the experts you get other people involved you you work it through in the multitude of counsel and that includes your spouse ask your spouse about major decisions i've talked about that quite about quite a bit this week from spousal interviews to the sharing fund our retained earnings account in the who can find a virtuous wife for her worth is far above rubies the heart of her husband safely trusts her and he will have no lack of gain talk to your spouse about it now that's different than just dumping and

whining on your spouse. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about they are one of your counselors on this issue and they understand in this discussion. In this particular conversation, what we're doing here is we're looking at a very big decision and the two of us need to look at this together because it's going to affect our marriage, our family for a long time. This is a big deal. What do you think? What do you feel? And this is not just, you know, some little drive-by thing. You frame the conversation in such a way that your participation in this decision

with your spouse's participation is vital because I want no lack of gain. I like that principle. It tells me what's going to happen, right? I'm going to get no lack of gain if I do this. So I want to frame it up in such a way that I end up with that benefit. Gather options, options, and more options.

The more options you have, the better decision you're going to make. One of the most frustrating radio calls I get is people who have fatalistically painted themselves into a corner. And they have two stupid options, and they want me to pick the one they like. Dave, we are in a house that has mold all in the house, and our children are going to die if we stay in the house. But there's no rental properties in the entire area that aren't.

75% of our income. So do we take a rental property with a house, but with a payment of $2,000 when we make $3,000 a month, it means we're going to go bankrupt, or do we stay in the house and kill our children? Which one should we do, Dave? I'm like, uh, both are bad ideas. You don't have enough options. You act like there's two potential places in the entire universe. You could live in with your family. You could leave that town. You could move to the country. You could move into an apartment. You could do buy a pop-up tent camper that doesn't have mold. You could do a lot of stuff that you've not put on the table as a discussion. But, you know, it's like, okay, you have to choose between the death of my children and my bankruptcy. Which should I choose? Because this is all there is.

It's all there is. It's all there is. And that's just complete horse crap. It's just not true. you need to gather more options. So anytime you feel like you're forced into a decision between two dumb things, it means you don't have enough options. You need more options. And more and more and more options gives you power. It changes everything. So we get ready to lease a building, you know, years ago,

I would look at every single piece of property that was for lease or that I could find that anybody would talk to me about possibly leasing. And I would spreadsheet at all. I knew more about that rental market before I rented a building in it. than any commercial real estate agent did, because I had worked every detail and every possible option, and most of the options sucked. They weren't good, but I knew they were there, and I could use them to set my tone with the 10 or 5 that were reasonable, and I then begin to prioritize those and get down to the one, two, or three. But if you think there's only one

possible thing you can do, you're about to get burned. You're about to make a bad decision, and you've lost all the power in your negotiation, because you've got no, walkaway power. Well, in our business, there's only one, oh, horse crap. That is just not true. Stop that. That's, that all you're doing is saying to yourself, it's okay that I'm doing something stupid. There's only one, you know, there's only one way you can get, no, it's not. There may be one dominant player that's so dominant that they've got 98% of the market, but there's 2% over here, there's some little weirdo in a garage somewhere you can work with. There's something you can do. Or by God, maybe that business and that industry needs another

player in it. Maybe you need to open up. If there's only one player and they're screwing everybody, maybe it's time to open up. There's a whole other way to get at this thing. So, you know, options, options, options, options, options, always look for another way. You're entrepreneurs. Don't say stuff like, there's only, yeah, let's. walking through your worst case scenario can eliminate fear. We had a major radio company come to us many years ago, and we had six major cities that we were on the air with them, and that's millions and millions and millions of dollars a year.

Not that they pay us or we pay them. The way radio works and mainstream radio is, when you go into a commercial break, they own the local station has 70% of the spots. We've got 30% of spots. So if there's four spots in that break, they would have three local spots that they sell to make money. I have one national spot that I sell to make money over the whole network. I make my money there.

They make their money on the locals. They don't pay me anything. I don't pay them anything. And that's the way Hannity or Ramsey or whoever, whichever talk radio host you want to pick out, does it in mainstream radio. Christian radio, you buy the time. But in mainstream radio, we barter it. We split the revenues up. And they have zero payroll cost.

And I've got zero expense. Well, this company comes to us and says, well, you guys are making so much money as a result of being on our radio stations that you are now going to pay us $6 million a year. I said, I really don't think that's fair. You don't charge any of the other shows on you. Yeah, but they don't monetize like you do. And I said, so because I'm actually a good business person, instead of a radio guy, you're thinking you're going to milk me. Well, it just seems like it seems right that you should share that revenue. And I said, no, it doesn't seem right to me.

So we had a unfriendly discussion, and I said, well, I guess we'll just have to get back to you. You want to give us a little time to kind of process this? Yeah, but this is the way it's going to be. You're going to pay us. Well, probably not, but we'll talk about it. Okay. So I was pretty pissed off. I'm about to lose six big cities, or I'm about to write some checks that I really shouldn't have to write.

This is pretty much extortion. I was pretty angry. And I was angry partly because I was afraid. I didn't want to lose all those cities and all that revenue and all that impact and all those people's lives that we could touch. And it was, it just, phew. And so I just said, well, all right, what's the worst case scenario? Worst case scenario is we say, no, thank you, and they take us off the air. And we don't have those sick cities anymore, and we just go on with our lives and we figure out the way to it.

That's our worst case. And you know, we sat on that a little bit and kind of got used to it. life without them. And, you know, it took about three or four days, and after three or four days emotionally, I was already working without them. It eliminated the fear. Once I said, what's the worst case scenario is? I lose the markets completely and never go back on again in my life, you know, which is not true. That's over, that's melodrama. And so once I decided that, then I took the next three weeks and went to other radio groups in those six cities and found a new home in four of the cities. And then I went back to the guy and I said, well, we're going to

have to pass on your generous offer. And he said, we're going to take you off the air. And I said, I know, you told me that. And he goes, you're kidding. You're just not, you're just going to walk away. And I said, what do you really thought that Dave Ramsey? I mean, what part of knowing me did you think this was going to work? And he goes, I just can't believe. You're just going to You're just going to give this up. And I said, no, I'm not giving it up. I'm actually going on your competitor. I'm going to kick your ass.

Eight years later, we spoke again at a radio convention. We're friends again now. He's a good guy, but he made a mistake on that one. So you walk through your worst case scenario and it eliminates fear. People call me up there like, I'm losing my house. What do I do? The foreclosure is going to happen. I'm like, when?

I just lost my job today. Are you current on your payments? Yeah, well, you're not going to lose your house. I'm willing to foreclosed on. No, you're not. You mean, you just lost your job today? Go get out of the job. You're not even late on your... If you don't pay a payment for nine months, maybe you can call me and we'll talk about you being foreclosed on. That's probably about how long it's going to take before they get around to it.

That's the normal with an FHA or a conventional loan. So you're not going to get foreclosed on, but let's just pretend for a second that it was Friday and you were going to get foreclosed on Friday. What would you do if you were going to lose your house Friday? Calm down. What would you do if you're going to lose your house Friday? Calm down. What would you do if you're going to lose your house Friday, I guess I would just go find some place to rent that would rent to somebody that'd been foreclosed on. Yeah, that's what you'd do. There's another house and you'd start again and you'd build your credit back up and pay your landlord on time and then you'd go buy you another house, right? Yeah. So it's going to be okay. So you're not going to get foreclosed

on, but if you do, it's still going to be okay. And the fear just goes, just drops. Once you work through emotionally the worst case scenario and you go, the worst case scenario is this client that we really like is a huge client, we're going to lose them. And we're going to lose all that revenue. Once you align yourself to that emotionally, you set yourself in a completely different decision-making paradigm. Because here's what happens. When you're in fight or flight like Deloney was talking about with his bricks talk, your brain gets coated with chemicals and your critical thinking skills disappear. Fear is not your friend for critical thinking skills. You have got to slow down and step back from fear in order for your creative thoughts to kick in and your ways to solve,

your problem solving skills to show up again. And so you've got to push that stuff back in order to make good, clean decisions. Train your team to bring you several possibilities. solutions, not just problems. This is actually a training a trainable skill, this decision-making thing. So what happens is, a guy comes into your office and he brings you an emergency. He brings you, she brings you a problem and she sets it on your desk and turns to walk out. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. One of the rules is you bring the problem, you get to participate in the solution. What do you mean?

Well, let's look at the problem for a minute. Here's what we're going to do. You tell me, what should we do with this problem? I have no idea. That's why I brought it in here. Well, let's look at it. Because I'm not going to do this all day long. So you need to learn to deal with this.

So what should we do with this? Well, we could do this. We could do A. Okay, that's pretty good. And we maybe could do B. Yeah, that would work. And what about this? What about C?

Yeah, that's good. There's three ideas. Now, I want you to leave for a few minutes, and I want you to look at those A, B, and C, ideas, and I want you to decide which of those you think is the best one. I want you to come back in and tell me how you're going to solve this. And they come back in, they go, well, I really think that A is the best way, and da-da-da-da-da-da. And I think, you know, A's pretty good, and I like your thinking on that, but actually, here's what you should do. You should do B. And here's

why we're going to do B instead of A, and here's how it works, and here's why we're doing this, and here's what you're going to do. Now, take the problem and go do B. And don't come in here again like that. You can come in here with problems, but don't come in here with just the problem. Okay. Now the smart one will come back in the next time and go, okay, here's a problem, but I got A and I got B. What do you think?

Those are pretty good. Here's C. You could do that. Yeah. Here's D. You could do that. Yeah. Now, let's talk through it.

Which one? Based on what we did last time when we saw the same kind of thing, what did we do? And you're training them to come to the same conclusion. conclusions you would have come to. You following me? And so, then they come back in the office later and they go, okay, here's a problem, and here's A, B, C, and D, and I've already looked at it. And based on what you taught me the last six times I was in here, we're going to do B, and you go, very good. Excellent. Leave my office and go do B. The next time there's a problem, they'll walk by your office and go, we had a problem, I fixed it, and they'll keep walking. Steve Brown's an old motivator from the 70s, and he used to talk about this.

When they come into your office with a problem, you need to visualize they have a monkey on their shoulder. And when they say, we have a problem, you have a problem, you need to visualize that monkey jumps off their shoulder in the middle of your desk. Your job, if you want to run a business and not a zoo, is to make sure when they leave your office, they take their monkey. Otherwise, at the end of the day, you're going to be having monkeys all in your office. And you can't get nothing done. You're running a zoo. And so every time somebody walks in and goes, I just see monkey in the middle of my desk. And I'm going to go, okay, we're going to talk about this, but I'm going to keep my eye on the monkey

because I want to be sure that when he leaves, the monkey goes with him. So that I can get back to doing what I was doing for he came in here and interrupted my day. So this is what we're doing. We're teaching decision-making paradigm. You need to be able to finish my sentences, if you're going to be one of my leaders. You need to know this is the way we're going to react and act. These are the principles by which we make decisions. Here's the things we don't do.

Here's the things we do do. And that leads us into these four possibilities, not 18 possibilities. And you're going to know the general direction that we're going to go with those most of the time. And the leaders have been with me 10, 20 years. We can just finish each other's sentences. just as smooth as silk. And some of the things I've learned from them, by the way. So I've adjusted what I do to the stuff they have taught me,

and that's fine too. Skills and things that they've brought to the process. Let your values guide you, follow the golden rule. That's one of the things we're always going to do. Treat other people like you'd want to be treated. When you're 72 and you're on your deathbed, are you going to be glad you did it this way? That'll keep you calm,

keep you from doing something when you're frustrated. keep you generous. You know, just kind of think long term with this. Ten years from today, who's going to care about this? Okay. Or is this a ten-minute emergency? Don't let your principles change, but frequently change your processes. You have key things that are who you are.

These are principles. We never change these principles, but we change processes, how we do it all the time. Now, if you never change processes, but you change your principles frequently, you're what's known as a bureaucrat, quite the opposite. A frustrating process. So processes, I mean, when I started, Al Gore hadn't even invented the Internet yet. So I got this whole new thing. By the time I'm gone, we'll be doing this with holograms or something, right?

So, but the process, I don't give a crap, whether it's a podcast or a radio show or a YouTube channel. I don't care. It's still the same stupid thing. I'm saying over and over and over again, live on less than you make. Get out of debt. Live on a budget. But I can do that in a whole bunch of different mediums and medias and settings. I'm agnostic to that. We can do whatever the process is. What's the most effective process? What's the best way to do this? How do we negotiate with XM? How do we work with YouTube? How do you do all this stuff? So the processes are change all the time. We live in a high rate of change world, but the principles that drive you into those processes cannot change, and that'll help you make decisions. Like, you know, here's an

example. I made the decision a long time ago. Our organization has adopted that decision and codified that decision that we have this principle. If you steal, we're not going to bother with you. You're leaving. That day. That's a principle. And so when someone comes in and they go, hey, this guy that we all love and he's a great guy and he's really doing a good job, but, you know, here he is, he's leaving with stuff every night. He's taking stuff to the car. He's just stealing stuff. You go, yeah, it's awful, sad. Because the decision's already made now. The only pain now is executing on the decision. Because now I've got to go to this guy I love who's a thief and go, you're gone. And I've got to have to have this hard conversation and you're out of here, right? But I'm not going to change the principle. The decision was already made as soon as we discover the mess instantaneously. But now I've got to go through the whole thing and figure it out. Oh, man, it's awful. If all else fails, write yourself a report describing the problem,

and by the time you finish writing yourself a report, you'll probably have the answer. As if you were reporting to someone else. Again, when you transfer general jumbled up chaotic thoughts into written form, there's something that happens there that makes you process. the information more thoroughly, refine it more thoroughly, distill it more thoroughly, and therefore you'll come quickly to a much better decision. Here's the interesting thing. If you are a person who struggles to make decisions,

if you'll use these processes we talked about and encourage yourself to start making decisions, people who make decisions at the speed that their personality style asks them to, but they are decisive at slow or fast speed, There are people who make decisions have much less anxiety and stress. Unmade decisions are stressful. Problems in front of you not being addressed are more stressful than a problem that has been dealt with. Even if the outcome is negative, it's still less stressful to deal with it and close the loop.

You've got to close the loop in your brain. Making decisions sets you free. Man, great stuff there from Dave Ramsey. Hope you all enjoyed that special episode and talk from Entree Leadership Master Series. As Dave said, the buck stops with you. Passivity is not an option, and you've got to be decisive if you want to be a leader.

So if you're a business owner, and you'd like to take your leadership to the next level, click the link in the show notes to learn more about Entree Leadership Master Series. If you enjoy today's episode of the show, do us a quick favor, follow or subscribe wherever you listen, and leave us a review. And if you're feeling extra generous,

share this episode with your team, with your friends, or on social media. All of that helps us impact more people and more leaders like you. Be sure to follow us at Entree Leadership, wherever you hang out on social media. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.