EntreLeadership - My Office Manager Is Getting Taken Advantage Of

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Today, we’ll hear about: •             A business owner dealing with his office manager taking on too much •             A man considering whether he should hire his own team or stay with contractors •             A leader struggling with how to delegate to his team •             A business owner seeking advice on how to compete for talented employees   Next Steps: ·      📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message: https://ter.li/ask-us ·      📚 Learn about the EntreLeadership System: https://ter.li/system-p ·      💻 Get EntreLeadership Elite for your business: https://ter.li/elite-p ·      ✉️ Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/enl ·      🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/summit  ·      🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/masterseries  ·      📖 Order Dave’s new book, Build a Business You Love: https://ter.li/b4kru2 ·      📃 Build your KRA for free: https://ter.li/ks4jnp   Connect With Our Sponsors: 💼 Go to Belay Solutions or text ENTRE to 55123 for their free resource! 💻 Visit NetSuite today to learn more. 🧾 Visit Payority for a free consultation! 📈 Grab ⁠Sales Gravy's⁠ free resource to help you hire and lead better. 📝 Use code ENTRE15 to get 15% off your first year of Trainual.   Listen to More From Ramsey Network: 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show💰 George Kamel   Ramsey Solutions 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, your host, with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. If you want to submit a question, go to Entraryleadership.com slash ask, or you can leave a voicemail, and either way, we'll get you set up to be a caller here. voice mail numbers 844-944-1070. That's 844-944-1070. Jason is in Canada. Hi, Jason. How are you?

Excellent, Dave. Cool. How can we help today? Well, Dave, after learning the hard way about not to hire and hiring mistakes, we've carefully followed your advice and we're able to are happy about that. However, I'm hoping you can help us with how to coach a thoroughbred through challenges without squashing their ambition. Such as? Well, the individual we have is a real problem solver and it's been a great asset.

And when they see a problem in the company, they're eager to go out and solve. What we've noticed is sometimes they're stepping into other folks' responsibilities. and I'm worried about them both taking on other people's roles inadvertently and risking burnout. Additionally, I've noticed they've had some little patient with younger staff and junior staff in the learning phase. So I'm hoping you can help to guide us on how to get them through this phase. Okay, what is this person's role? What is their job title? What do they do?

They're an office manager. Okay, so their job is to manage the office. and so the things that they're working on then fall under office management or outside of office management. 15 people. So some specific rules, they do have some operational titles as well. So they would handle things such as maintenance requests and service and repair requests. But I mean, the problem that they jumped over into somebody else's area to solve, was it under their management or was it under their management?

Or was it, and they just didn't let the subordinate have time to fix it? and they went and fixed it for them, or is this something outside of their job description? You could say that the subordinate would report to them, rather than letting the subordinate do it, they would go and do it for them. Okay, so that's not, okay. All right. And so, but you hired them very clearly, and they know that their job is to be a leader and to run the office. Yes.

Okay. All right. So I think we just sit down and have some clarification. and go, look, your problem-solving skills are amazing and your initiative and your ambition is amazing. I'm real happy with that. But we hired you to lead this team, not do all their work. And so, you know, when you do something for someone

rather than teach them how to do it, the next time it comes up, you get to do it again. And that's not your job. Your job is to teach them how to do it. And part of being a teacher is having patience and bringing people along, part of being a teacher, part of being a leader is being a teacher. And you teach someone how to do something and then you hold them accountable to that series of behaviors. And that's your job. And so it's not your job to do all the work. Your job is to

make sure the work gets done through the people. And so this is a leadership discussion we're having here now. And so how you're leading is you're not leading. You're doing it for people. and because you're so driven and that's awesome and we're getting the work done but the problem is we're setting up a system here a set of processes that aren't working because the goal of that subordinate being there is for them to do the work.

Exactly, we want to grow and we can't. Yeah, we can't because you're doing everything. You've got the whole world in your hand. I mean, you're like, come on. I mean, that's not, you can't do the whole thing. The whole purpose of leadership is learning how to delegate. And if the subordinate, is incompetent, we can talk about that.

But if they just haven't been trained yet, because you haven't trained them, then that's a different thing. So I think you just open up a dialogue and say, okay, you and I are going to start working on this together, because just like I'm asking you to show them how to do their job, I'm going to show you how to do yours. Yeah. And I'm going to walk alongside you, and we're going to talk about how we process that because it's not as important that the work get done as it is how it got.

done. How it got done is you taught the person to do it and they did it, not you did it for them, because that's not scalable. If you learn how to teach people how to do work, you can't do, don't know how to do or won't do or whatever, then now we've got a scalable, delegatable environment. And yes, that requires some patience with them. And so what you've got is someone who execute tasks well and their people's skills are low. Yeah, I agree with that, for sure. Yeah, and that's a good person. That's a trainable person. If they, you know, if they have enough humility to listen to you when you're doing this, you do have a thoroughbred. Now, if they're arrogant about it and they're like, no, it's not, it's not, they're just don't know what they're done. Then you really don't have a thoroughbred. You just got to go get her. And so, yeah, Pat Lynch-Lencioni talks about this in the book, The Ideal Team Player. If you've got someone who is hungry, but they're not people smart and they're not humble, they'll run over everybody.

And we mistake them for being a high-producing person because they're so hungry and so driven. But that's just one of the elements. You've got to be people smart and have a sense of humility as well. And the humility's not lacking in confidence. It's that you're other-centered rather than self-centered. That's all humility is.

And so we're going to, your job is to be the mother hen or your job is to be the coach. or your job is to lovingly lead and teach and cause this work to get done through these people, not in spite of these people. These people that we've hired that work on your team are not an impediment. They're not a problem to be worked around.

They're the answer to the equation. And so our job as leaders is to lift them up, get them into the saddle, get them going, and, you know, that's the direction I would go with that. So, hey, really, really good question. And I love the way you phrased it. So, well done. Sounds like you got a good business going there.

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And start setting clear expectations for the team. Everybody will be happier. Tyler's in Boise, Idaho. Hey, Tyler, what's up? Hey, Dave, thanks for taking my call. Sure, man. How can we help? My wife and I run an e-commerce business

that started as a side hustle six years ago. We have four employees, including ourselves, and last year we grossed $9 million. Wow. Yeah, thanks. As our business grew, I found partners and vendors to delegate tasks to rather than hiring internal employees. The partners are doing a decent enough job handling the work, but after reading your book, specifically the driver of people, I am wondering if using partners and vendors is a good way to continue growing our business, or should I invest in building our own team? Typically, and I won't say it's an always rule, but most of the time bringing some of the tasks in-house, if you have a steady, predictable cash flow environment where you can do that, bringing the task in-house is cheaper. Typically, it'll save you money.

For instance, if you were hiring a programmer to write some code for a website, you can outsource that pretty easily. and we did and have off and on for years done that, but it's close to double of what it would cost me to hire that person and bring them in and keep them as a full-time team member. But I have to have a steady flow of work, no ebb and flow of work, and I have to have a steady flow of cash to be able to pay them, right? So once we had enough work demand to start hiring wealth,

programmers. We started hiring software engineers and web programmers and it versus contracting it out. It saved us a ton of money. And we've got a lot more quality control and we have a hundred percent focus on us. When you're dealing with outside freelancers, they have other customers. When you're dealing with an employee, they got one customer, me, right? And so total focus. And you've got cultural alignment and mission alignment and stuff versus, you know, we don't tell other people how to run their businesses. So with a vendor, they get to do whatever they want to do with their culture and their other stuff. And so we don't know that.

But again, it would require a steady flow of cash, which you're making a ton of money, so that's not an issue, as long as that cash is fairly steady and you can make payroll. And I would just analyze it and go, okay, what is it I'm doing? I mean, is it SEO work, or is it code, or are we doing creative? or, you know, what would be an example of one you might bring in house and could you do a cost comparison on it? Yeah, I think that's kind of the other half of why I'm bringing this up. You know, when we were smaller, it kind of was irrelevant.

But now, you know, I did a cost analysis on fulfillment. Yeah. And we would save about half. And then our marketing placement, I don't think we'd save, money, but the person, like you said, would be fully dedicated to us, which right now they probably have a dozen other clients. So I'm thinking that makes a lot of sense. The focus of that on a marketing campaign executed flawlessly because of 100% focus is probably worth its weight and gold. Okay. That's one I would definitely, definitely look at. Fulfillment, I don't know. I mean,

Now, I outsource, we outsource the bulk of our fulfillment. We do some, we have a shipping department internally that does a lot of specialty and custom stuff and small order stuff and that kind of thing. But stuff that runs high volume, like if you want to buy, if you buy a total money makeover or an entree leadership book on our website, that's coming out of an outside fulfillment company. Because we found the opposite there that we could execute a contract with them cheaper than try to build a whole warehouse and bring them up, bring all that stuff in. but we're doing massive volume and the physical infrastructure needed to do it didn't make sense for us. And so that put a different spin on it where it was actually cheaper to outsource it than it is to, I mean, our break even on having warehouse and tow trucks and, you know,

forklifts and, man, not tow trucks, forklifts and OSHA regulations and all that, Bull crap, man. It was just, no thank you. So for us, but again, that's a huge, we're talking about a massive warehouse operation. So it's not a small thing, but, you know, but you're most of your stuff's digital, isn't it? No, we ship a lot of physical products. Okay, all right. All right, cool. Yeah, so we, we, if you can, that's exactly the way to look at it, though. You're doing it correctly. If you've done the analysis and it's cheaper for you to keep it in-house,

do it because we kept ours in-house for a long, long time. It had to get to ridiculous volume stuff before it made sense to take it out. And we actually looked at it in this last contract renewal whether we're going to bring it all in. We looked at it again as one of the possibilities. We were looking at two different vendors and the possibility of bringing it back in-house. It was a cost analysis, just like you're doing. So the cost analysis will be the answer to your question. there's no thing that you're doing wrong just because you're using outside vendors. It's not wrong.

Okay. It's not to say, oh, no, you always should build a huge team. No, no. We only build a huge team if it's the best, most efficient way to get the work done. Okay, that's good to know. Because, you know, I'm not the best at finding qualified people, and that's probably what's kept me from growing the team,

is it just easier to push it to someone else. But now that our scale has increased so much, I'm looking at it. I'm like, man, this maybe doesn't make sense to be more. Well, that may be a skill you need to develop anyway. Yeah, I would agree. Where you don't feel that way about yourself. And because you are going to need some key people to scale. You've done an amazing.

Your team ratio to your gross is four to nine millions. Pretty impressive. And yet, you know, if you had two or three other people pouring in rocket fuel in there, what else would happen. Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, I would challenge you to work on that skill and get comfortable with your competency in that, but it is not to say that, oh, no,

we'll always have everything outsourced. Because the same skill you're using to hire and bring on thoroughbreds is the same skill you'd be using to select a high-quality vendor. It's still a human being executing this stuff. Yeah, which I learned mostly through trial and error. Yeah, well, we all have.

me too and so that's why the hiring and firing lesson in entree leadership or if you go into the elite materials and the you know the elite members and they get in these advisory groups with our coaches and all it's the number one thing that comes up is hiring and firing it's the number one pain point in business by all of us all of us when i teach that lesson at entree leadership events it always gets the higher scores than if i teach something else and so and just because it's a felt need and meaning that we all are trying to build that competency. So I think you're probably doing better than you feel like you are,

but I would, I would, you know, I would push it on through and, you know, get comfortable with the whole idea. Charlie is in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Hey, Charlie, what's up, man? Hey, Dave, how you doing today?

Better than I deserve. How can I help? Yeah, thanks to taking a call, big fan. I'm the CEO of a vertically integrated cannabis company with between 32 and 36 employees, depending on the time of year, doing about $8 million in revenue each year. And my question for you is I'm having difficulty creating an effective delegation and follow-up system for my team of managers across a couple different facilities. essentially I got a lot of young guys working for me who are hungry and super knowledgeable but nobody really has any true experience with management and delegation and I'm trying to not bog my life down in follow-up meetings every single week essentially how many direct reports have you

got uh I've got six okay that's not too many um if those six people are basically running this business and that's how it should be structured. You're not bogging your life down by meeting with them. If you don't meet with them once a week, you need to meet with them once every two weeks. And it doesn't need to be but an hour meeting. And it's an update on personal things. You need a standard meeting rhythm with them. It's an update on personal things. It's an update on company things, and it's an update on accountability to their direct position and to whatever projects you talked about the last time you got together. And so, you know, like the one guy's needing to hire two people in the store. Next week we talk, okay, how's the hiring going? Right? Right. Or something

like that. And so you need that rhythm. The structure around it is a couple of things. We'll pan back for a second and say delegation philosophically from a principal standpoint cannot occur until you trust someone's competency and their integrity. Now that does not mean you take your hand off the wheel and they go drive the car by themselves, but it does mean that they have shown the ability to drive while you sit in the passenger seat. Yeah. They're not going to kill both of you, okay? Right.

And so competency is the ability to do it. integrity is to do it the way that you all teach to do it at your place. What does your brand values and your brand differentiation require them to be in order to be a we? And so that's your basics. If you don't have that, if you've got an incompetence store manager, there's no system or accountability. Or if you've got someone that you can't trust, not only to not steal, but also to not, just to simply not implement the way we've discussed, then we've started from a a bad foundation and no accountability system or templates or process will guide you through that. Nothing will work because you're dealing with, you know, some weak players.

And the weak players can't play no matter how much you delegate. Yeah, and that's not the problem. The players are actually pretty strong. Okay. You know, I think the issue in it, and it probably stems from me to a certain degree, is, you know, the attempt at delegation. And then when things don't happen, the, like, innate or, like, natural gravitation is just going back to the idea of, like, okay, it's not getting done, so I just must do it myself, which just kind of creates that, like, intense bogged down workload. Yeah, that's, what you're doing there is your confusing delegation with training.

Okay. So you're not micromanaging when someone's not able to do a particular task at the speed you want it done. Now it's time for you to step in and train them. And that may involve you doing it, but it may involve you holding their hand while they do it two times. And so the third time they can do it partially by themselves, whether you're looking closely over their shoulder, and the sixth time you can do it without.

And the story we always tell is the guy shows up in my office, and he says, we've got a problem. And I'm like, what's our problem? And he says, well, this, this, this and this. And I'm like, well, we don't have a problem. You got a problem. You need to go back and give me three solutions on how to fix that problem. And when he comes back in, he and I go over the three solutions, A, B, or C, and say, okay, which one do you think we ought to do?

I think we ought to do A. Well, that's a good one, but C's better in this case, and here's why, and I teach him. And then I send him back out. The next time he comes in, he goes, we got a problem, and I know you want three solutions. Here's the three solutions. And I know you're going to want to know which one. And I think B in this case, and I'm like, yeah, that looks pretty good. Yeah, that's okay.

Go do B. And then he comes back in the next day and says, we got a problem, A, B, and C, and he goes, and in this case, C is the one. And I'm going to go do that. Is that okay? And I'm like, yeah, go do it. And the next day he walks by my office and waves and said, we had a problem when I fixed it. Amazing.

That's training. Okay. That's true. But I taught him the implication or the application of our values, the principles that we use, and decision-making paradigms at Ramsey. And it gets that dialed in, and then he is constantly. competent to execute, and I don't feel the need to come in and put out the fire for him because he knows where the fire extinguisher is.

And so, but he did it in a way that I'm comfortable with, which is a type of competency. See, someone can actually know how to run a retail store and not know how to run a retail store the way you want yours run. Right. There are two different types of competency there. There's one within a culture and one that's just general skill set. and general skill set has to be adapted to be within your culture to be competent. And so when you have one of these guys on fire and you have the temptation to jump in,

yeah, you are the problem here. You're right. You need to not jump in and do it for them unless you hold, make them, you know, place their hand on the back of your hand as you're guiding the car. And let them feel what it feels like this time. So next time I'm going to take my hand off, put your hand on, and stand here while you do it. And so, um, you know, minor course corrections and minor course corrections. It is not micromanaging to not let someone who's not competent or doesn't have integrity do business. Right.

That's just smart. Yeah. And so you are training until then. You're training and training and training and training and training. Then I'll add to that some communication tools. Go to the elite site at Entree Leadership. and download the free template for the KRA. It's called Key Results Area.

And it lays out exactly what their job is. It's a job description of sorts. And then the two of you sit and go over it. And so what you're saying is when you do these three things, you are winning. By definition, if you are doing something else, you're not winning. If you're not doing all three of them, you're not winning. And if you're not doing all three of them the way we teach here at our company, you're not winning. Winning looks like this.

But sometimes we take people out and we just point over there and we say, hey, go bowling, and then we turn out the lights. And there's noise, but nobody knows if we're winning. Yeah, definitely. And so you need stuff like a KRA template to be able to do this. And then you've got something to manage to through the week. And so if you have, you know, these meetings are very, very quick for, especially for people that are eager. And it sounds like you've got good solid raw material to work with. You've just got to polish up the flow of information and the flow of productivity.

If I'm running, because I've got a separate retail store and a separate warehouse and a separate manufacturing facility and a satellite office, all within 15 minutes of each other. You know, is it effective, is it more effective to be doing these meetings in person and driving around? Yes. It's only 15 minutes. I kind of knew that as you're going to be your answer. But here's the thing. If you set them as a fixed point on the calendar, I've done this for 30 years. I've got fixed meetings every single week. Okay. My son, Daniel, is the president of Ramsey.

At 11 o'clock on Thursday, he and I have our one-on-ones. At 7 o'clock on Tuesday morning, we have a father's. son breakfast. And we have for 20 years. Wow. But our one-on-one meeting as president to CEO's only happened since he's been in that president's seat. That's the first time he's ever reported to me directly. And that's only happened for four years. But it's 11 o'clock every Thursday. Now, he's out of town this week at the beach with his family, so we're not doing it this week. Okay. But if we're here in the office, my assistant, his assistant, doesn't book anything across that. That's sacred territory.

Yeah, no, that makes sense for sure. And so, you know, you just set up and go, warehouse guy, and you could make the rounds. You don't even have to make them do it. You can say on Monday morning, I'm going to be at the warehouse, which is probably good anyway, because you could spend 10 minutes walking through the place and smell the air, feel the...

I don't want to smell the air at a cannabis place, but anyway, too many jokes you left on the table with your job, okay? I know, I'm sorry. You said they were hungry, too, and I thought about that, but yeah. But yeah, you walk through the air, you know, since the presence, since the spirit of the warehouse and what's going on with the people, you're going to see stock that's being mishandled, things that are disorganized.

And, you know, then you pop into the meeting and you go, hey, man, that corner back there has got to be cleaned up. This disorganization's killing me, you know. And would you suggest like having kind of like a set agenda for each one of those? Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, you need to spend 15, 20 minutes just making sure they're okay. Wife and kids, husband and kids, whatever, all that's okay. Your grandma's got cancer.

You know, we need check on everybody, right? And you got to remember to do that. These are human beings. Treat them like family. They are. You're running a small business. It's a benefit of that. And then the, yeah.

But anyway, you do that, and then you go, okay, I need to see what is it you need help from me on? Because some things you need to knock down for them to make them, you know, you need to be the guy, the door kicker in some kind. cases, right? Right. You know, because only, there's some stuff only you can do to help their job happen. And then you go, okay, those three things we talked about last week, about getting that guy hired, getting that corner cleaned up, you know, we got to get that front door fixed. It's weird when people walk in. It sounds funny. I don't, whatever, you know, it's stupid little stuff,

but it's driving you nuts. And if you'll download it, you're not burning calories carrying it around. Totally. And it actually, the productivity goes through the root. Really? Yeah. Amazing. So good, good stuff, man. Yeah, you're a great young leader. I can sense that you've got your people's heart and that you are really self-aware that you've got a little bit of a growth curve here that's awesome in front of you.

And I think this stuff's going to help you a bunch. So I appreciate you calling in, man. Good stuff. Very, very, very well done. You can't hold your team accountable to expectations you didn't set. When you try, everyone's confused. You need a way to clearly define roles and responsibilities for every member of your team and our free, that I mentioned is free, key results area template will make it easy.

Go to entreleadership.com slash KRA right now to download it for free. Or if you're listening on Spotify or podcast, click the link in the description. Thanks for hanging out with us, America. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. If you like what you're hearing, we need your help. Share the show. Tell people about the show. Click the like button, the follow button, the subscribe button,

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Thank you. If you like what you hear, let people know about it. Please. Thank you. Thank you. And five-star reviews, all that stuff helps to you. Ken is in Huntsville, Alabama. Hi, Ken. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast. What's up? Hey, Dave. Good to finally talk to you. You too. Hey, so have a commercial drywall company here in Huntsville. Last year, our revenue was $5.6 million with a net profit of $1.3, which does it sounds bad, but my question to you is, I'm looking to grow it even more. This is year number nine.

It's starting to feel a little stagnant. I have a total of 12 employees plus 30 plus subcontractors. And drawing in talent has been an issue for us. So I guess should I look for a recruiter, some sort of agency outside of us to bring these people in or just let it happen organically? No and no. No? No, I wouldn't let it happen organically.

And you're not big enough to bring in a recruiter. And outside recruiters I've not had very much luck with. There are a few that you can use here and there, but in the construction world is particularly hard. Where we did at that stage was that we became internally very proactive. And so out of your 12 team, that's office people or what? Are supervisors or jobs?

So there's five, let's see, six in the office, the rest are foreman. Okay, so six former and six office. Okay, so you've got an office manager then. Yes. So what is it you're needing? You're needing more foreman and more subs? Well, I feel like I would need more people internally to handle the load that we could possibly pick up. I don't want to do that until I know for sure I can handle it internally.

I don't want to outgrow ourselves. I agree. I agree. So what areas would you need to, what positions would you need to fill to do the growth you're talking about? estimators and project managers. Okay. All right, good, good, good. And you have estimators on staff now. I do. And you have one.

And you have project managers on staff now? Yes. Okay. All right. We still to this day pay a bounty to our team. And we say we need estimators and we need project managers. And if we hire one and they stay with us 90 days, meaning they work it out. and they come through the onboarding process,

and you referred them here. They came here because you brought them here. We will pay you $500. And for a while, and we may still do it, I have to go back and look, but for a while we were so desperate for programmers in our place, people writing code on the Internet and so forth, building digital products,

that we were paying $2,000 bounties for a tech person hire. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And that's cheaper than paying a recruiter, number one. Number two, the speech to our team sounds like this in staff meeting. Hey, we've got these types of positions to fill. If you know someone that is a thoroughbred that you would hire if you own the company, only bring the best because you're going to end up working beside them and you don't want to doof us. Right. And everybody has friends that are doofuses and crazies. And you know, know who your doofs and crazy friends are, keep them out of here. Right. You know, and the construction world, the good news about it is, it's a grapevine. Everybody knows. Mm-hmm. And your estimator knows guys at other places that are doing this.

And he knows project managers or project managers knows guys. I'd talk to your subs and ask them who some good supervisors are out there, who some good project managers are, who some good estimators are. And if they send you one, I'd pay them a bounty. Right. Well, the problem we have here is there is a large company here that is paying 40 plus percent more than the rest of us are to these positions. And, you know, it's hard to entice someone that, you know, that you can't compete with the company they're working for. And it's it's from estimators to build supermarkets.

Well, that's a different issue. Yeah. I mean, if the only labor you have available for these slots, you're getting outbid by 40%. That's different than how do I recruit. A recruiter can't solve that problem. Mm-hmm. Well, right.

So my thought was, was reaching outside of this area, maybe even to Nashville, getting someone to move in, you know. But these days, where do you broadcast that from? LinkedIn. Okay. Yeah. ZipRecruiter, those kinds of things.

You can drop it in there. You need to be real careful to put the filters on it so you don't get overwhelmed with a bunch of junk resumes. I have tried that before. You've got an inbox full of trash. Yes. Yes. Been there, done that. So you've got to put the filters on it and make it harder to get to.

and so forth. And, you know, to keep the crazy, again, keep the crazies away and everybody just, but. And I say I want to grow. How are those guys making a profit? They are owned by a larger firm that just want their revenue to borrow on credit lines. It's not even about that company. They just wanted to suck that money out of that company to invest in something else. Well, there's not any money in that company if they're paying it all out in payroll.

That's kind of the problem with them. I guess it's just kind of moving money around to... Now, that's not sustainable. Nobody's going to leave a division that's not profitable because they're overpaying for labor. Well, when you're $300 plus million a year... You still don't do that. You don't get to be $3 million a year by being stupid. Right.

And running an area, an entire area of your company into the dirt because you're overpaying payroll, overpaying the market by 40% is not logical. Well, they moved into the area, said for two years they're going to build relationships and take losses on jobs if they have to just to build those relationships. and then they sucked in all of these key components that we need and have just paid them ungodly money. Yeah, I think you just had outlast that. That's not your career problem. I mean, you've still got to hire the right people at the right price. Yes.

And that's just noise over there to the side. Yep, yep. That can't be your motivator. It can't be what's driving your decision making. Because what they're doing is not sustainable. In five years, they'll be gone. Or they will have adjusted their sales to the prevailing. Yeah. There's some of that going on.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the two. And, you know, like we had a local employer here that was, they came in, moved to corporate office here, and they were doing the same thing. They were going around to all the other people like us, and they were offering more money and stealing people. They were poaching all over the place. And we kept telling our folks, guys, this is not going to last. And everything, grass is not always greener over the septic tank, hello.

And so, you know, and I mean, we had six or seven people out of our 1100 go over there, and they're all gone now. They didn't stay. I think there's one over there still. Well, I have two of their players now. Yeah. Because it's not pleasant to work there. Right.

No, no, it is. It wasn't. Yeah. So anyway, so that's white noise to the side. We couldn't let the local poacher just determine what we pay. The marketplace determines what we pay, what the value of that position is. And so just because somebody wanted to overpay, I, ridiculously, just to fill a seat over there, that's a temporary play.

It doesn't play out. It doesn't work. It's not sustainable. So you have to, so anyway, that's side noise over here. I'm going to run an internal referral program. I'm going to run a sub-referral program. And for that matter, if you know anybody in adjoining cities that you might talk to and just say, hey, if you know an estimator in Nashville, you mentioned Nashville, okay?

If you know an estimator there, say, you know, you might not be interested in moving down here, but anybody you send me, I'll give you a thousand bucks. Yeah, yeah. That kind of stuff. You just need to get your grapevine moving and, agrees it a little bit with some money. And that's not, there's nothing wrong with that. That's perfectly ethical and not that.

And, you know, if somebody sends you six good people, send them on a cruise with their wife, for God's sakes. That's not a bad idea. You know, that kind of stuff. I mean, because the word will get out then that Ken wants good people. And he has a really good way of saying, thank 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 Entry Leadership Podcast.