EntreLeadership - The Characteristics of a Quality Leader with Suzanne Simms

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Can your business outgrow your ability to lead? Maybe—if you’re not intentional! Suzanne Simms, senior executive vice president of business to consumer global at Ramsey Solutions, had to make sure this didn’t happen to her. Over the course of 20 years, she went from working as a part-time assistant to becoming one of the company’s most influential leaders. And as the company grew, she was challenged to grow too. In this episode, she talks about how vulnerability and intentionality are the catalysts for reinventing yourself and becoming the leader your growing business needs to stay successful.   entreleadership.com/podcast Ramsey Solutions' website The EntreLeader's Guide to Delegation EntreLeadership Toolkit - Top tools to help your business can grow and thrive Schedule a call with Tim, the Producer   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've been around the world of personal development for more than about 10 minutes, you've heard the quote by Marshall Goldsmith that says, what got you here won't get you there. And I think we all understand what that means. We can't keep doing the same things and expect different results. What worked for yesterday is not going to work for tomorrow. And as leaders, until we change, our organization doesn't change. But if we've got to change and do new things, as a leader, what are those things?

How should we be developing? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and my guest today is Suzanne Sims. You guys are going to love Suzanne. She's a longtime friend of mine. She and I have worked together here at Ramsey Solutions for almost two decades together. You know, she started pretty humble beginnings, but today she serves on our operating board.

She leads a huge area of our company. She's the senior executive vice president over all things business to consumer here at Ramsey Solution. and she's had to grow a lot. She's had to develop herself as a leader, and she's so passionate about transformation and developing and really leveling up as a leader. We're going to talk about reinventing yourself, becoming the leader that your team needs you,

not only for yesterday, but especially today and beyond, getting ready for tomorrow. Now, as I said, Suzanne Lee's one of the biggest portions of our business, but she started out as a part-time assistant. there were about 30 team members in 2001 and I just came in two days a week and did a lot of administrative stuff whatever needed to be done that wasn't getting done because it was kind of all hands on deck in that in that day did you early on think that you would be growing into

leadership this was something in your or did it kind of just happen it very much just happened as it did throughout the rest of my life but but for sure like it so it's the stage of life that I entered into Ramsey's Solutions. I was a young mom with two kids, a husband who had just graduated from law school and was taking the bar exam that summer. And this was like a means to an end. Like eventually my attorney husband's going to make enough money so I can go home and raise my kids because that was what I thought I was called to do. And that calling is on some people to do. But God had a different plan for me. And so. So here I am 20 years later. No kidding.

Well, it's been amazing. And what you've done here is just, it's inspiring. I've gotten to see and do a lot of it with you. And it's just you're one of the most competent and well-respected leaders in this organization. And very responsible for building it into what it's become. And I think it's interesting that at the time you thought, well, I'm just, eventually I'm going to go home and, you know, raise my kids. And you didn't see all this. Was there a day that it clicked?

Was there a defining mom? Or did you just kind of over a season realize, no, this is something you're called to to do with your life? People ask me that. When I was pregnant with my third, he was born in 2000. He's 15 now, whenever that was. I made a decision, my husband and I made a decision, okay, after this baby, I'll stay at home. And so I went to my leader at the time and told him, hey, this is it. I'm going to stay home after I have this baby.

And I didn't have a peace about it. And so what I would do, you know, if you work with pregnant women and a lot of them, they go walk during the day because they need some sort of exercise and they're just uncomfortable all the time. So I did a lot of walking, like at lunchtime around our parking lot. And I would just go out there every day and walk and just pray because I didn't feel a peace about leaving, even though I'd made the decision to do that. And I felt like the Lord just kind of said, hey, like this is. It's not time for you to leave. And it was around that time I felt like I was actually called to do this. And so I started approaching things very differently from that point forward.

And it hasn't made things easy. I mean, raising a family and working full time for men or women is a challenge. But it's been very rich and very rewarding. And I've been super intentional with my kids. And they're amazing people to, this day. So that's how I answer that. I think it's not a stretch to say if we go back to when 17 years ago, 20 years ago when we were just kids here, those individuals who now sit on our operating board and lead this company alongside Dave were no way qualified to do what we're doing

today. There's had to be tremendous growth and change and transformation. And I know one of your kind of your big themes when you talk about leadership is reinventing yourself. What does that mean to you? It means that instead of being comfortable in becoming better at what you're naturally good at, it means, which there's nothing wrong with that. You should strive to do that. But reinvention's different. Reinvention means you actually build muscle that you've not used before. You actually become a different version of yourself, not just a better version of yourself. that's key. Why is that, like you think about leadership, many business owners are going, okay, I got a lot of things I'm not good at.

We could delegate, we could find people that could do it, I could get good at it. Why is it so key that we take on the responsibility of owning those things as leaders? Well, to me, there's one specific thing that you should reinvent yourself if you're not good at, or maybe a couple. If you are, if you're a leadership at a high level in your organization or you're the owner or the CEO, you need to be able to cast vision for your organization. If you are the type of leader who is overseeing operational things that are crucial to your business growing, then you've got to be good at details and operational things. for me, I was a very operational behind the scenes leader for years. I don't like the limelight. I don't. I've never seen myself as a visioncaster. And I was lucky enough that the leaders who reported up to me were very confident, competent, good leaders who I was more than happy to let them get the credit for everything.

Like they were out front. Now, I was behind the scenes very much. directing them and giving them advice and growing them, but like they were the ones out front that the company saw leading their areas. And in 2018, my story is that Dave challenged me and our operating board as a whole really challenged me during our annual assessment time, that because what I lead, the areas of Ramsey solutions I lead are the tip of spear into the marketplace. The things I lead are like the entry point. It's the first touch point consumers have with us. So we call it the tip of spear for the rest of the organization.

Because I lead those areas, I need to be out in front of the company telling the company where we're going. So for me, that's something I'd never done before. So I realized in that moment, I have to reinvent myself. I have to go from being just an operational directing leader to a visionary out front. That's not me being better at who I already am. That's me being a different version of myself. It sounds like you're saying at that point you were becoming the bottleneck. You realized as a leader you were kind of limiting the vision or was it? Yeah, yes. But you know what? When I look back on it, what I think was happening, I don't know if Dave even fully realized it when he said it or others. But Dave's got this succession plan he's building. Like there's a, there's a date somewhere in the future where he's not the vision caster for this company anymore.

And he's looking around at us going, who's going to be doing that? Who's going to be wearing my various hats? Well, and he's looking at me going, you lead tip of spear. Vision needs to come out of you, not just, you know, the people below you. It needs to come out of you. You're on the operating board. You are the next generation of leader once I retire, theoretically. And so I think a lot of that was going on in his head because he was the one that called it out the most blatantly that day.

I think it's a big misnomer to say that vision is a personality trait. You hear it thrown around a lot. I'm not a visionary. That's just not how I think. It's not how I'm wired. There are certainly, I believe, personalities that yield towards being more visionary. But I really think it's something everybody can develop. I agree completely.

How did you develop this? You mentioned new muscles that you hadn't grown before. especially with vision. I'm a very collaborative person. I like to roll with a posse everywhere I go. I find there's safety in numbers, but I also find there's wisdom and counsel. And so I immediately pulled a big group of leaders together.

There were 13 of us total. And I put them in a room, and I said, hey, the operating board said, I need to flex this new muscle. I need to cast vision for this company. I don't know how to do that. So you guys, most of you don't do that well either, so we're going to all figure this out together.

And I started putting together a meeting series with that group of people, and we named ourselves the B to C board. And Luke Lefevre became my partner in crime. He's our chief creative officer. And he was really good at journaling and getting introspective

and having quiet times and reading. And so he was like, hey, let's teach this group how to do that. So we just all put our hands in the middle and committed. We're going to go on this journey. And we are in our personal time going to really dedicate time to reading and praying and journaling and ask God to really give us this gift of vision. And there was nothing magical about it other than we carved out time to do it. And we did it as, we would do it as a group. Like when we had our quarterly meetings where we would go off site for half a day or a full day, we would talk about a subject, then we would all go off individually and just journal about that for a while. And if you start writing things down

on paper or typing them into a laptop, it doesn't matter either way, you just brained up and you don't filter it, you don't worry about who's going to read it. That's when things come out that you didn't even know we're in your head. If you follow Christ like I do, you do sense that like he's giving you things that he wants to give you when you start writing things down. But regardless, when you start brain dumping and you don't filter, that's when ideas come out that you never would have had if you didn't stop and take the time to have the thought. It's about time, honestly. We're just, we're so busy and so distracted. And if all, All of your quiet time has spent scrolling on your phone or even reading.

There's nothing wrong with reading. But you're not allowing an empty space for you to just dump your own thoughts down. There is something magical about that without it being magical, if that makes sense. A lot of people that have not done that or experienced that, I know this because I've talked with them and I've been them. There was a day when I didn't do this. it's very awkward at first to sit with your own thoughts. I think we're so addicted to scrolling, listening to the news,

having something on to listen, whether it's music or whatever. I mean, it's just, we're just inundated with content. It's everywhere now. And you can literally, from the time you get out of bed

until the time you crash at night, have something going in your ears and never really be thinking. And that's how most people live today. And so it's really uncomfortable to pause that and to stop and think and listen and pray, how do you early on kind of develop this habit and push through that? And also, how do you quantify the value of that? Because it's very foreign for a lot of people.

I have a good friend Jake Smith who does a lot of counseling and teaching people how to do stuff like this. And like, he encourages people just to start with one minute. If you can just get in a quiet space before the rest of the family wakes up and just set a timer on your phone. And, And maybe it's one minute, maybe it's two minutes, and just sit in complete silence and just focus on your breathing. Just get familiar with how your body is relating to the space. There's nothing new age or weird about that. It's just you becoming aware. And the interesting thing about being aware of your breathing is some of us, most of us, I think, deal with so much anxiety from all the influx of distraction and communication and things like that, that when we actually pause and get quiet and,

pay attention to our breathing, we realize that's what's going on because our breathing's very shallow and your mind's going 100 miles an hour. And that's okay. Give yourself permission. Don't get upset with yourself. And then just start writing what those things are that are swirling around in your head. If it's just all the things you feel like you're supposed to do that day, if it's things you're worried about your kids, whatever it is. Just get it out. Just get it out. So doing it for a minute, it's kind of like you're just establishing a habit. It's more about just getting into this routine. I think habits are huge. You know what? I know in a season in my life where I was hyper performance oriented every new year, I would set these huge goals and I wanted them to be epic and impressive. Well, here's what I figured out.

A couple months into pursuing these big ambitious goals that oftentimes were trying to impress people. They weren't really me growing and just being a better version. who I am. I felt shame about the fact that I was trying to impress people. I would get so burned out on how hard I was working to chase these big goals. And then I would just go all the way off the wagon. A lot of people I know, they feel like they've got to set a goal or a new habit, and they don't give themselves permission to mess up or miss a day or what have you. And I think that's very important because life has to be able to happen. Otherwise, you become too structured and too robotic, and then your kids suffer, your marriage suffers or whatever, and what you're

actually trying to achieve is a good thing. Yeah. It took a while for me, and I actually work with a coach who's a fitness and nutrition coach, and they're amazing on this stuff, and they help me with my relationship to exercise and food to not beat myself up if I kind of go off the wagon. And it's taken me, do I eat bread? Do I eat bread? I don't do well with gluten, but I like bread. It kind of messes with it. That's what the audience wants to know. That's why I asked. Here's the thing. What I've gotten most from working with my coach is figure out how to eat in a way that you feel good in the moment and later. You know, and so there's things that makes it feel good in the moment, but then you feel like crap later.

Why don't we dedicate the rest of this podcast to our diet and exercise routines? You know, I mean, they're a good metaphor, right, for transformation. But here's coming back to the way that I used to. approach this stuff early in the year I would set these huge goals and I didn't I didn't understand the value of habits I didn't understand the value of just each day just do a little better and have some things that if you'll have a morning routine and you'll just start getting up at the same time like you said if you'll just have one minute per day what naturally happens is eventually that time you love the value of it and it grows into now you've got an hour every morning and it's not weird and awkward it's kind of like how you set your day up for success you know and so I've really tried

to get away from this sounds so weird but I've tried to get away from goals and get more focused on habits and rituals. I like that. I like that. I think goals are important, you know, like we teach in Entry leadership. You should have goals. Of course they are. But you can get so hyper trying to engineer your whole life and use goals to do it that you just become a robot. Yep. And it's, it's not real. It's not how we actually work as humans. You know what's interesting. So I grew up in a home without a television. I spent 12 years of my childhood with no television. Really? home. My husband grew up in a home where the TV was on 24-7. If they left the house,

they would leave the TV on for the dog. Okay? So what's interesting is I am super comfortable with silence. Like if I'm getting ready in the morning or sometimes when I'm in the car, I actually prefer that. It's just a, it's a safe, peaceful place for me. He can't stand it. So what I'm saying, and he's working on that, like he recognizes that about himself. So think about your family and how much noise you allow on in the house all the time. If you learn, like if you're one of those homes that has something going all the time, just start just turning it off or just during dinner or whatever that means, you know, for you guys. And just start to plant that seed a little bit and see how that changes things. Because we do get addicted to always having noise on

around us and then we're uncomfortable without it. Yeah, it's really hard to think deep thoughts. As leaders especially, you've got to be thinking about your team. You've got to be, and especially, we'll tie this back to vision in a second. But I don't know how you can really excel with vision if you don't have time where you're thinking about the vision. You can't. I mean, if you're just going meeting to meeting and scrolling your feet all the time and you never pause and you'll have other people's thoughts and you'll try to replicate those or steal those. And sometimes that's okay. But there is, there is, there is. unique vision in your mind that needs to come out, that your team needs, and they know the difference? You said earlier when you formed the B2C board, there was nothing magical about it. You just created the time. It also occurs to me, one, you had the humility to say, guys, I need your help with this. You also created a kind of a structure for accountability and then also some community. We've talked about prioritizing the time. Say more about the humility, the community, bringing other people into it with you. I know,

So many business owners struggle with feeling like they have to be the lone ranger on this. I'm the most miserable when I'm a lone ranger. Like I said, I like to roll with a posse. Let me tell you something. It makes life so much more fun. For me, one of my core values as a person is just fun. And so I think that was a big part of it. Like most of the people that I put in that room that day and still hang out with are, we're already my friends.

and that's a whole different subject for a different day, but I believe strongly in being friends with the people you lead and the people that you work with. Life's too short for anything other than that, but we'll talk about that another day. But I just told them, I said, I by nature, am very vulnerable. I don't have a good filter.

If I think something or feel something, I tend to overshare. That is who people know me as. and so I basically forced that on all of them, and I said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to dump thoughts out on paper, and then we're going to share them with each other. And one of the exercises we did early on was everyone took a turn, and keep in mind there's 13 of us, it took a while. But we met weekly, and everyone took a turn, and they had to come in, and they had to share with their peers. And sometimes there were people in there that were above them or at peer level.

they had to share three things. One is they had to share the thing going on with their team they were the most proud of. The thing going on with their team, they were the most concerned about or maybe had shame around or whatever. And they had to share the people on their team, who was the standout rock star and who was the one person struggling the most? Now, around our organization, that's a big deal because we have such high standards for ourselves and for each other. if you walk into a room of leaders and you talk about someone on your team struggling, your fear is they will get labeled a certain way and not be able to overcome that. But we taught each other that we were going to have a safe place where we could talk about what was struggling in our area, who was struggling in our area. And it was amazing the insight that came out around the table.

Someone would share about someone on their team struggling and someone else would pipe in and go, oh, yeah. Like, I've been in a couple meetings with them. I've seen what you're talking about. I had that same thing happen on my team last year with so-and-so, and here's how we worked through that. And so there was a lot of just natural collaboration that happened. And what happened too was the minute the first person shared something they were ashamed of that wasn't winning, it just relaxed the whole room and it built a trust that went from zero to 10 in five seconds, that you cannot manufacture any other way.

And that just built and built and built over time. It's super disarming. Like when you own your crap, no one feels like they need to tell you about your crap because you're just like, oh, well, you called yourself out there. I agree it builds trust. It sounds like it also built a kind of a think tank is the wrong phrase. That sounds weird. But, you know, when you get other people to see that same problem, you get new insights, I imagine some of the people that were struggling ended up being developed and kind of resolved those issues and grew as a result of you have a nice. access to this group. Yeah, absolutely. And we would follow up the next time it was your turn. You would,

you would say, hey, I told you guys back a few months ago that so-and-so was struggling, well, they're actually doing great now. And here's the story. Here's what's going on. See, that's what it's about. I love that. Yeah, because, I mean, when team members, we've all struggled at certain points. And I believe most people are probably doing the best they can with what they have. And more than judgment and being written off, if you can start with developing them, checking in, letting them know there's a problem, a lot of people will rise to the occasion. Yes. You know, it's interesting. I don't know if everybody caught this. You form this B2C board and many of the

people in that group report to you. So this is not like an outside counsel where it's, you know, it's totally objective. I mean, some of these people are looking at you as their leader going, can I really, is it safe to share everything that you're asking me to share? That's weird for a lot of people. I mean, a lot of business owners would go, I can't be that vulnerable with my team or they're going to say more about this. It would change everything for you. How do you get into it? You just do it. I was so nervous the first year of leading those meetings. I would spend hours trying to, well, not hours, but I would spend a lot of time trying to prepare for the meetings. And I would walk in the room so anxiety-ridden, like, how are they going to accept this? And how are they going to perceive me? And it was, oh, it was so anxious for me, but I just did it. I'm the type of person, if something makes me really nervous or anxious, I just, I bite the bullet and I just do it to get it over with.

I don't procrastinate. And so I say, one of my big phrases that people laugh about me saying all the time is put your big boy bridges on, put your big girl bridges on, just do it. And Christy Wright always says, do it scared. I love that. And so no matter how scared you are, how uncomfortable it is, just do it. Because I promise you and you can call me, you can email me if it doesn't work, I promise you it will work. You might have, if you have naysayers, they probably need to go.

Because real human beings who are excited to be a part of your organization will latch onto what we're talking about like they've never latched on anything in your organization. They're hungry for it. They're hungry for their leader to inspire them and open up and be vulnerable with them and show that you're a real human being that they can connect with and strive to become. And my guys are mostly all leading their own groups doing these same exercises and have been. And it's just kind of, it's just made its way to, through the organization. It's been very cool.

It seems like it's really important that you as the leader are modeling the vulnerability. You know, most people look at their boss or their leader as an authority figure and their whole life, authority figures all the way back to in school, where teachers who gave you a grade, you know, and there's a large sense of judgment and shame tied to authority figures. And so if you're the leader, you really have to reframe that in the way that you model this. You've got to be vulnerable. got to not zap them when they say something that, you know, you could because of your title, but you're going, hey, thanks for sharing that. And I see you, and I'm not going to judge you as a

result of that. What are the keys to doing that well? You know, I mean, we have to hold people accountable, but we also have to create an environment where it's safe for them to do this vulnerability thing. I think by you being vulnerable as the leader, it does create that safe place. If you have an issue where you're zapping people, that's a different issue. And I mean, I don't know how you resolve that because when I quote, zap my guys, it doesn't feel like a zap to them. They don't love being course corrected. No one does. Everyone wants to think they're awesome all the time.

But when I course correct them, it never feels like a zap because we have such a depth of relationship and we've been so vulnerable with each other for so long. They know I deeply love them and care about them. and I can just have a quick conversation with one of them and be like, hey, when you did this in staff meeting, here's how it came across, just next time do X, Y, and Z. And then three minutes later, we're telling jokes and laughing. It's very natural. There's nothing forced about it. There's no, like, call a formal meeting and do the formal sandwich. Hey, you're really awesome, but you need to work on this, but you're still really awesome. Like, it's just a natural conversation. And, And again, they don't seek out being course corrected, but they don't feel it like a slap in the face. Well, you said something key. They know that you love them. And they know that when you're giving feedback, I mean, this is the ultimate as leaders. Like your team has to know that you're doing it for them, not to them.

You're doing it to help them develop to be better. And it goes back to what we talked about earlier. It's transformation and reinventing yourself. As leaders, we have a responsibility to help our teams transform and to grow. and to develop. You know, you said growing muscles that you haven't grown before. You talked about not just being a better version of what you're naturally good at. There's this other end of the spectrum. I don't think this is what you're advocating, but you can work so hard to transform that you're trying to be someone that you're not. You're trying to take on a whole different persona. How do you balance being true to yourself and just naturally being who you are and growing and reinventing yourself? I don't know. I never said, out to become a certain person. I never had a persona in mind I was striving to become. I just knew I needed to figure out how to have thoughts I hadn't had before. So I think I went on a journey versus creating a, I didn't create a scenario of like, here's the beach and here's what I'm

striving, here's where I'm striving to be. If you go on a road trip to the beach, you know, you're all visualizing the beach once you get there in eight hours and you're excited about that. That's not what this was. It was just I embarked on a journey without knowing what the end was going to be and without painting a picture of that. And I think that helped me stay authentic to who I am. And just it was a day-by-day thing. And there's nothing wrong with, like when you set a goal, you do need to paint the picture of the beach and the team needs to know when we get through this eight-hour road trip, that's where we're going to be. This is something different.

This is just an intentional daily or every other day or whatever your commitment is of setting aside time to read different, study different, journal different. I hope pray different. Like this is just a journey without an end in mind. Does that make sense? Well, it seems like you're saying you're creating space to access things that are in you. They just haven't been developed. Yes. You're never at any point.

It doesn't sound like you're acting or putting on a front. You're just doing the work to unlock these things that have maybe been bottled up inside you. Exactly. And the spiritual component of that is that when you're obedient to, if God's nudging you to do this, if you're obedient to that, it unlocks something spiritually where he can start to really transform you in ways that are beyond your own efforts. Right. And that's what you see take place. You know, you and I follow Jesus. Not everybody does.

that's fine, but he talked about abiding in him, and he used the metaphor of a vine and a branch. And when a branch is grafted into that vine, the source of that branch's fruit is actually all the way down through the vine into the roots, into the nutrients of the soil. It's bigger than just that branch. And we really do believe that there is a God who's eternal and omniscient, and he has this insane power that can show up in us and through us if we will tap into that. Yeah, John 15. John 15 is that passage, and I've spent a lot of time in that lately because what happens to is you go on in one of these journeys and you want to be a better version of yourself or you want to reinvent yourself, you can get very stressed out about that and you can get very caught up in the performance of that and putting too much on yourself. What John 15 does is it teaches you how abiding in him is what keeps all of that. It's not up to you if you follow Christ. It's he's doing the work. you're just being obedient in allowing the space and the time. He's doing the work. It's not on you to completely reinvent yourself.

You're just showing up. And I think if you're abiding in him and you're creating the space, that's what keeps you just from making it a performance thing. Well, and you can't, I mean, I've tried to perform my way through it, and it's exhausting. You know, I mean, there's not enough juice. There's not enough batteries to pull you through something that you're doing out of your own effort. But it's not a very Western concept.

I mean, this idea of a buy, it almost sounds really passive. Many business owners are going, oh, yeah, but discipline, work hard, never quit, kick down the door, make it happen. Go, go, go, grind, hustle. I mean, those are two of my least favorite words that are so popular right now, like grind and hustle. And I get, I mean, I believe in hard work. but it's almost like it puts all the emphasis on the more that you bring your grind and hustle to grow yourself, that it's all about your own ability to do it on your own. Yeah.

Instead of this abiding in a bigger source. Yes. It's a difficult line to teach people how to walk. I almost feel like you'd have to do a whole segment on that, which we don't have time for. But it's a both and. I mean, if you know anything about us, we hustle and grow. Like, we work hard. Every time I interview somebody, I tell them you will work harder here than you've ever worked anywhere else.

I don't care how hard you work somewhere else. But you will go home more fulfilled at the end of the day and have a richer and more rewarding life as a result. And you will probably have better balance in your life because we're so big on that. So it's a both and. Like, again, that's a whole different segment for a different day. Well, they're very, they're very connected. And what I have found what you're talking about when I've done it well, I'm able to work extremely hard like you're talking about, but not have all this distress and anxiety. It's like there's a fulfillment that comes from the hard work, not a emptiness and not a depletedness.

There's a sustainability to it. Well, if you're abiding in Christ, you're not as concerned about what everyone else thinks about you. That's key because most people burn out and go crazy because they're trying to perform for someone, whether it's their dad or someone above them at work or fill in the blank. There's a motivation. There's something causing them to overgrind, over hustle, burn themselves out. Abiding in Christ is what changes your perspective and keeps you from doing that. We've talked about habits and some of these daily rituals to have space and think and pray. What other habits have you incorporated into?

I know you're really big on kind of your morning routine, making sure that you're setting your day off on the right foot. Say more about the importance of that for you and what it does for you to have that routine. Exercise is very important for me just to feel good physically. that that is a big component. Eating well is a very big component for me. And it's different for everybody. And so I had to figure out my own, everybody's body is different. And I really believe not everyone needs to eat the same way or exercise the same way.

Now, for years, I was hardcore. My alarm went off at 4 a.m. Every morning, got up, did a workout, like had this whole morning routine. And if I could fit in a quiet time, I did. When I started the B2C board and we committed to doing that, then I was creating a time about two to three times a week to really get quiet and read and journal. But I was still doing that 4 a.m. alarm, work out every day. When 2020 hit, it was around the first part of quarantine, I felt like God said, you need to

have a quiet time every day. That needs to become your priority. And I believe that was something just for me. I don't put that on other people. And so I started a new routine where when I get up, I don't set an alarm much anymore. My body naturally wakes up very early. That's how I am. I go to bed early.

My body naturally wakes up early. And so most days there's not an alarm, but my body naturally usually wakes up before 5 a.m. When I wake up, I go downstairs and get a cup of coffee, light a candle, just sit in a space. And every morning looks different as far as what I'm doing. if I have time, after I spend that time, I get a workout in. And I usually get a workout in four to five days a week on a typical week. And my big thing is I try not to have meetings prior to 8.30, if I can get away with that. If they start at nine, that's even better.

Because then I'm doing those things, and I'm also not rushing. I mean, if you've seen my hair, it takes a lot of effort, tardy. So we've got to have time for that. I'm curious in the time, like when you come down, you light a candle, You said it looks different every day. Are there things that you make sure that you're not doing in that space to protect that space? I'm trying not to check email during that time. I'm not checking social media during that time.

I try to focus on what I need to be doing in that quiet space before I do those things, if that makes sense. Yeah. I think there is a big, like I figured out early on I tried to have a quiet time and morning routine. But there's a big miss, and I had several false starts on this years ago when I started, and I didn't put this list of things to not do. I mean, I would jump right into my email thinking I would just check it for a few minutes, and then two hours was gone. We all know better than that.

And so it's like you literally have to say, like, here's what I'm not going to do in this time. Otherwise, it just gets eaten up. Yep. And you may as well have just come on into work and started your day. That's right. You're very seasoned in a lot of this. you have a lot of life experience. You're an incredible mom, wife, executive, leader, friend.

There's so many things. I think a lot of people look at you and they go, wow, she's got a lot of this stuff figured out. No one would you know now. People, I'm a train wreck. You really knew me. You're not a train wreck. What would you go back, you know, 10 years ago? I mean, if you could go, there's things I would go tell my 20-year-old self, like, hey, dummy, look, quit.

Or one day you're going to regret that you're going to regret that you're doing this all the time, that you're not putting enough effort here. How would you coach yourself looking back after being here almost 20 years? Oh, there's so much there. I would coach myself to be more intentional about being alone with Jesus more often and really just posturing myself in a way where he can teach me without me striving to figure it out, like, what he's called me to be in this season, not worried about the next season or, like, last season, life is made of seasons, and every season's a different amount of time. So in this season, what is it I'm supposed to be? Who am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be focused

on? And let him do the rest. That would be the probably number one thing I would tell myself. I've been reading this devotional that a girl at work wrote that's amazing. Her name's Jessica Sexton, and she did a whole section on what makes your heart sing. And that's a very interesting thing to journal about, like, what makes your heart sing? That metaphor is very powerful. Because we don't usually think about that so much, but that's also saying what brings you joy, you know. But I like that specific wording, what makes your heart saying, it's been really thought-provoking for me, especially at this time of year, because I do a lot of soul searching at this time of year every year. Most people do. It's the start of a new year. you're really getting introspective on what does this year need to be about? Who am I? What is my place in the world? All those things. And I've really been journaling about that. And so that, but that's just for this season. Like, I don't need to be worried about what my heart's going to sing about in five years. But for now, what is that? Because if that's probably what I'm put on this earth to do. Now, I'm not saying that means a different role for me at this company or a different. career path, but like in my role, in where I am, where I'm planted right here, as the SEVP of B to C, as a wife, mom, that whole picture of my life, like, what is my unique contribution? What is it that I'm uniquely gifted to do right now? And I think that's a really good exercise.

I really like that. It seems that a lot of maturing as leaders results in a perspective that it kind of says, hey, relax into the season you're in. Like, just find joy right now. If I could go back and talk to myself in my 20s, it would be, hey, you're going to make it. It's okay. Breathe. Like, just chill out. Just enjoy the season that you're in.

Yet it's really difficult early because you don't know that you're going to, like, you kind of almost overown your growth and your success and your goals and all that kind of stuff because you have an experience, you don't know if you have what it takes. and I think the truth is most people, at least the ones listening to this podcast and people that are kind of half plugged in, it's like you're gonna be fine.

If you'll just be where you are, most of that stuff's gonna take care of itself. And especially if we're really aligned on letting God, you know, write the story instead of you writing your own story. You know, we're talking about growing yourself as a leader. We're talking about transformation.

A lot of this is very personal. As leaders, it seems we have some responsibility to help our teams do this as well, to create an environment where there's accountability around growth. Many times an area may go along for a while under a certain leader, and then one day they're not qualified to lead it anymore because they weren't ahead of the growth. They weren't growing themselves. It can get kind of sticky to get other people to grow themselves, yet we've got to create this environment. How do you navigate? I mean, I'm saying like broader than your B to C board, how do you instill this culture of personal development, making sure that

people are on track to grow. I think the misnomer is that you have to almost force people to do that or be overly intentional about that. I think the average person desperately wants to do this. They're hungry for it. They just want someone to set the example for them. And most people you meet, 99.9% of the people that work with you that you meet on the street want to be a better version of themselves than they were yesterday. So just be the example. Be the one who's willing to be uncomfortable enough to put yourself out there and show them by action, by deed, how to do these things, to reinvent yourself, and to be vulnerable about the steps you're taking and how uncomfortable you are about it. I talk about that all the time. And honestly, that's really, that's the

biggest thing you can do is set the example and ask people to go on the journey with you. Like you're not, I made it optional. Well, I think they might say otherwise. But you could do it and make it optional. What's interesting thing about that, like if you have a team of 30 people and you say, hey, I want to go on a journey. As your leader, I want to be a better version of myself. I actually want to be a different version of myself a year from now that I am today.

And I don't know how I'm going to do it. And it feels like it's going to be hard and I'm super uncomfortable about this. Do any of you want to join me? We can read some books together. We can talk about it. Like, who wants to go on this journey with me? I would be shocked if almost everyone didn't follow you to do that. Because people are so hungry for that.

The people that don't want to be a part of that probably don't need to be a part of your organization. It just means they lack hunger. And if it's something else that's holding them back, I mean, there's probably a reason for that. And if you care enough about them, you can dig into that. But maybe some personal work they need to do on their own as well. Well, you can prompt that. And I love what you're saying. Modeling it is the key.

And 99% of people are probably going to follow if you'll just make that a thing and just kind of take that lid off. Occasionally somebody does get stuck. And you've got to hold them accountable for they're not leading their, area well because they've become the lid. You've gone through this. I've watched you navigate situations where you had somebody in your area and they were great for a season, but then their area got bigger than them or they didn't stay on top of it. And it's almost like it's too late for them to start transforming sometimes and you have to lean in. And I'm curious how you bring, because I can hear somebody that's cynical here in this going, yeah, this is all really soft.

It's soft skills. It's all about the mushy side. How do you actually actually? how do you actually create the accountability that shows up in business performance if somebody's not performing? Well, I think about Preston Cannon. He and I have actually done a panel together for Entry Master series about some of this. And he doesn't mind me telling his story. I've told it multiple times. But he's the vice president of Ramsey Press. He runs all of our publishing and he's very good at that. But Preston is an Enneagram 5, if anybody, knows anything about anagram, and so he's naturally very cynical, you know, and questioning of things. And he's also got the biggest heart of anybody I have ever known, but he's very prickly. He's got about an inch of prickliness. You get past that, and it's just all heart, and he's one of the funniest guys on the planet, but a lot of people struggle to get past that prickliness. And what was happening, you know, several years ago is that the folks that worked with him on his team, like creative and webblest, development, a lot of the folks that make things that were a big part of creating the books

that he's overseeing the publishing of were really struggling to get along with him. Because the way he would lead meetings and the way he would interact with them was just, it was too abrasive and it was too, I call it prickly, that's our funny term we use. And I kept talking to him about it and he just wasn't getting it. And I knew he cared about him, but he wasn't changing the way he was interacting with them. And I finally sat him down one day and I said, hey, so this has to stop so you can keep working here. Do you hear me? He was like, okay. And I said, listen, would you be willing to just spend a year going on a journey with me? Let's figure out what's going on here because we have to fix this. He was like, I'll do it. So we both studied, well, two things. One of the things we did was we studied. I'm an enneagram four. He's a five. We studied how those two numbers work well together and how they struggle. That was so. super revealing. The other thing was every time we met, I would give him one or two things to go journal about, like specific questions or topics. And so he would go and he would spend, I mean, he put in

the work. He really did. He would journal about these things. Then he would come back and he would literally read his journal to me, which if you know an Indian gram five, like, that's huge for him to open up to me that way. But he was, he loved this place so much, loved his job so much. He was like all in. So he would read his journal to me and he had this one day he was reading this journal to me and he got to the very end and he just dumped this thing on me and I was like, you buried the lead. What? Like this came out in your journaling and it was, he had discovered several things. One is he had discovered what truly motivates him with his career here. And then he'd also discovered that an old mentor of his, one of his early bosses right out of college, something that

boss had taught him, had stayed with him all these years, and the phrase was something like, it's better to be respected than to be liked. He'd been taught that 30 years earlier and had held on to that all this time, even though that flies in the face of our entire culture at Ramsey. And so he was able to identify those things, and we were able to see clearly why he was failing in this area, but not this area, and what wrongly was motivating him. And sometimes a simple amount of self-awareness is all you need to help you put the right tools in your tool belt, change the way you're interacting with people. And so he's a different person today. The people on, he's been leading groups with these same people that didn't know how to get to get along with him

two, three years ago. He's been leading Bible studies with them, book studies with them, having them open up to him. Like, it's a really cool story. But he put in the work. because he cared enough. And I think if anyone's willing to do that, they can become the version of themselves that they need to be. I think what you did is really big. I want to highlight this. And it's so powerful. I don't want our listeners to miss this. We're often tempted as leaders to tell people, here's what you need to do different. This is what success looks like. Stop doing this. Oh, I did that for a long time. Well, I know. And I think it has its place. I'm not knocking it. but you you got him to discover something like you you held him accountable to creating space where

he actually had to go think about what was going on and i have found that it's way more powerful if you get someone to arrive at their own epiphany versus trying to give it to them yes you know it's just it's so different now you got to hold them accountable you got to guide them but you didn't just say here's what you now needed he had to go figure out like that self-work is is so so critical for it to actually stick with people for them to get it i had reached a point in leading him that I was like, I've got nothing left. I've tried to, you know, knock his head against the wall for two or three years at this point. I have nothing left. And I love this guy so much. And he's one of my dearest friends. Like, I don't want him to leave,

but I've reached a point where I can't do anything else about this. I have no control over this guy being who he needs to be. And so I think if you reach that point with someone you're leading, then they have to go do. the work. Knowing this and seeing the outcome, would you have started sooner? Oh, yeah. Versus just telling them, here's what, you know. It would have been much less painful for both of us. I think it's a good tool.

If you have people that report to you and you're trying to help them perform better and develop, like, it's not always holding them accountable to the tasks and the behavior. It's holding them accountable to what are you going to journal about? Are you doing the thinking and the work so that you can discuss? Because a lot of people can just, there's things that are in them that they just, if they'll listen. Oh, yeah. And create this space. I think with Preston, you created a, you helped him create a habit.

And it's the whole like you can give someone a fish or teach him to fish. You know, I mean, you taught him how to fish. You taught him how to do this as a lifelong thing that now he can own his own growth and development going forward. It's pretty cool. A lot of leaders out there are facing challenges every day. As you know in leadership, it can be daunting. It can be discouraging. There's days that's really hard.

don't want to do it and there's days you doubt do I even have what it takes as we wrap up how would you encourage the hearts of everybody listening who you know maybe some of them are on the ropes maybe maybe need some just inspiration right now what would you say about um what you know about leadership uh that would speak to them my favorite phrase is I take what I do very seriously I do not take myself very seriously and I think that is the key to being awesome leader. And I'm not an awesome leader. I strive to be. But like, honestly, at the end of the day, when you're, you're dead and gone and they're having your funeral, they may talk about some of your business accomplishments. But I think if you're being honest, what you really want them talking about

is the contribution you made to people's lives, both family, friends, the people you, the people who work for you, if they're giving a eulogy, you want them talking about your integrity and your character, not just how well you grew your profit margins year over year. And so take what you do very seriously. You were, you're doing your thing for a reason. You probably love what you do or did at one point. So do that really well. Win at business and don't apologize for it. But in the meantime, don't take yourself too seriously. Make fun of yourself. Have fun. When you make a mistake, own it, and laugh at yourself, and that will create so much trust and endearment with the people you lead. They'll follow you over a cliff.

Suzanne Sims, always great to have you back in the Entry Leadership Studio. It's an honor to have you. And what an inspiring conversation. So many nuggets of how to grow ourselves and build our teams. You're an incredible leader. I think you need to quit saying that you're not an awesome leader because I think you are and a lot of people do. We can all be better. Well, yes, that's always true.

But you're amazing what you do. And we really appreciate you taking some time to share with our Entree Leadership audience. And thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. All right, guys, always fun to have Suzanne in the Entree Leadership Studio. You know what I love about Suzanne and other Ramsey leaders coming in and, you know, sitting across the table? It is fun to have outside guests, but it's really special to have Ramsey leaders like Suzanne. Because these are the leaders, these are my peers.

These are the people that I've built with and hurt with and struggled with alongside. with Dave and under Dave's leadership. It's like we're almost like this family that's built this thing. And we've had to learn these principles and we've had to figure out how to craft and design everything that you guys know, Entree Leadership and Ramsey Solutions to beat today. And so to have practitioners, fellow leaders, people in the trenches with us all the time actually come in and talk about this is how we've done this. I just think that's really special. I think it gives a lot of credibility to what we're talking about because stuff's not just a theory. It's our playbook for us. It's how we do leadership.

If you want to know behind the curtain, what's going on at Ramsey, that's it. You heard it today. And it really does rise and fall on leadership. And it really does hinge on your ability to reinvent yourself. Your ability to grow and transform and become better every day, that's it. And if you're not working on yourself, your business eventually will falter. So what are you doing to reinvent yourself right now? What's that look like for you this year?

What are the new habits, the new routines? Who do you need to bring around you the way that Suzanne did to give you some accountability around that? Well, we'd love to help with that. If you want to work with one of our coaches, that's why we have coaching. If not, find somebody. Find your team, find your community. Figure out your people, your posse, as Suzanne said. Who's your posse?

To do this, you've got to delegate. You've got to lengthen the rope to different team members so that you can work on the business and not just in the business. That's why delegation is so key. And you guys know we talk about delegation all the time. It's actually kind of daunting. I mean, there's a lot that comes up, and there's a lot of risks to delegating

or delegating the wrong things or delegating too fast. To make it simple for you guys and to make it a little bit more straightforward, our team put together a great resource for you to help you delegate the right way. Absolutely free. Chalk full of great information from our coaching team specifically about delegation,

and we want you to have it. all you got to do is text the word delegate to 33444. Again, text delegate to 33444 or just click on the link in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entry Leadership podcast. If you know somebody else, they would also enjoy it, be the hero, share it with them. You're the reason this podcast grows and we are grateful. Of course, you guys know now you can see Entree Leadership on YouTube, the full episode, as well as highlights another great place to follow the podcast.

Now, if you're a small business owner between two and 200 team members, we'd like to have a live conversation with you about the show and ask you a few questions. If you want to help us out with that, just click on the link in the show notes, fill out a brief survey and schedule a call with Tim, the producer, and he'd be glad to connect. Also, you can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. You can follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire entire. entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.

If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like The Ken Coleman Show. Are you doing what you were born to do? I'm Ken Coleman, host of the Ken Coleman Show, where I give you practical advice to help you discover your purpose and then map out a plan to get you there. From accounting to advertising, from plumbing to production, you were created to fill a unique role. And the world, needs what you have to offer. Join me on the Ken Coleman show wherever you listen to podcasts.