EntreLeadership - These Are Crucial Decisions Every Leader Needs to Make

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Today, we hear from: •      A vice president who is trying to balance leading a large team while doing her own job •      A solopreneur who needs help but doesn’t have time to hire anyone •      An Instagram follower who is trying to decide when to hire a contractor on as a team member •      A managing partner who is wondering if her work expectations are too high for millennials and Gen Zers •      A caller who wants to know how her faith should influence her work Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Download the Time Tracker Tool from EntreLeadership: http://bit.ly/3ZaaPRR •      Take the Stages of Business Assessment: http://bit.ly/40r4sdJ •      Start your free trial of EntreLeadership Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      How to Hire Employees: https://bit.ly/3qx7DAw •      Have a question for The EntreLeadership Podcast? Leave a voicemail at 844.944.1070 or submit your question for a chance to be on the show with Dave Ramsey: https://www.entreleadership.com/ask   Take our listener survey and let us know what you think about The EntreLeadership Podcast being a caller-driven show. If you do, you’ll be entered to win a $100 gift card: http://bit.ly/40dV9hf Start growing in business and leadership with the EntreLeadership Newsletter. Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://bit.ly/3IRWnsL Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE •      Payority: https://bit.ly/3IaA5SK •      Staples: https://staplesbusinessadvantage.com/ramsey Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/company/policies/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of your business, any stage of your leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches, running and growing a business, really doing it. I made these decisions today right alongside you. We run into the same shovel and the same manure that you do, and we know how to shovel it. That's what it's about.

There's a hustle and grind, and there's a part of this running a business thing that's a blast, and it's exhilarating, and there's a part of it, there's a pain in the butt. We know all the parts of it, and we're glad to help you. We think small business is the hero of America. We think it's the backbone of America, and there's actual data to support what we think. We're thankful for you, and we're here to help you. The phone number, if you want to participate and ask a question, is 844-944-1070. 844-944-1070. Or you can email in a question or fill out the form, rather, on the website, Entreeleadership.com slash ask.

And, like I said, just dial the 844-9-44-1070. Leave a voicemail. Our gang will get back with you and set you up and you'll be a caller right here on this podcast. We're so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us, America. Margie is in Jacksonville, Florida. Hey Margie, how are you? Hi, Dave.

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored. How can we help? I am the vice president of a large travel company, and I am responsible for leading about 3,000 travel advisors, 21 local directors, and two employees. And I would love to get your thoughts on how I can continue to leave this large group of people

and still do the things I need to do every day as vice president. Okay, so these are three, you don't have 3,000 direct reports. You've got 3,000 travel agents out there in this area. I am sort of responsible for helping grow and lead and grow their business a bit. And you have 21, what do you call them? They're local directors across the U.S. Okay, so what does a local director do? The local director kind of helps us to manage the travel advisors in their area.

Okay, so if they have miscellaneous needs, they're going to go to the local director, not to you. Right. And so each of those have a couple of hundred on average. Yes. Okay. And so these travel agents are not employees. They're independent subcontractors, but your job is to serve them just the same. Correct.

Okay. And the 21 local directors, are they employees of your? company? They are contractors as well. Okay. All right. And they report to you. And then in your office, you've just got a handful of folks.

Yes. Okay. So first thing I want to realize is the system is you've got people that are independent business people. They don't need you to lead them. They just need support. And the methodology that's put in place for that is the local director. and the only time you're going to be stepping in is when it's something that a local director can't handle.

It's out of their league, right? Yes, to a degree. We do provide education and training for them. Yeah, but I'm saying you're not, you don't have 3,000 direct reports that you have to hold accountable and manage their day-to-day activities. Absolutely correct. Yeah, okay. I'm trying to get my head around this because I knew it wasn't logistically possible. Okay.

Okay. And then the people in your office are just administrative staff to help you to function. Yes. Okay. Now, what are your VP duties in addition to that that you're trying to balance with this? Marketing and more strategic activities that are necessary for us to grow. By growing, you mean grow the travel agents' business for them or add more of them to your all's portfolio? Add more of them to our portfolio as well as a little bit of marketing for our brand and making sure our brand stays recognizable in the industry. Yeah, but that's also to add them to the portfolio.

Okay. All right. So you're not generating leads for them as much as you are training. You're teaching them how to do it. And then you guys are running branding stuff, strategic branding. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm a little dumb about the overall structure, and that's the only way I can answer is to

understand it. So I've got to dig into the weeds here a little bit. All right, I'm back with you now. So how do I balance? So it sounds to me like your primary job is not babysitting. It is not babysitting is 3,000 people. Your primary job, at least 80 to 90 percent of your efforts and mental and emotional bandwidth would be driven towards the training and the strategic and the branding, right?

Your VP job is the bulk of your job. description. Yes, it is. Okay, that's how you balance it. You've got to lay it out like that. And so if the 3,000 people are having problems that are boiling up that are taking up 50% of your bandwidth, then you've got some other kind of problem, a staffing problem, a delegation problem, something else that's going on because you need to keep 80% of

your bandwidth on your VP stuff and 15% or 20% of your bandwidth on making sure the 21 area of people are taking care of the 3,000 people and or, but, you know, again, the occasional major issue comes up that's going to require Margie, right? But most of the stuff is going to boil up to the 21 directors. They're going to take care of it. And as long as you're training them and you're training the travel agents as promised. And then your big thing is you're creating this national branding and you're continuing to add to the portfolio. That is your job. So, yeah, that's how you balance it. You've just got to, you've got to analyze it like that and say, okay, what percentage of my bandwidth?

And then you're kind of, in a sense, if you sense that you're being off, then you would stop and do a little bit of a time study on a couple of weeks to say, all right, out of my week, I'm looking at my calendar, here's what I did. God, I spent 60% of my time babysitting these people. That's out of line. I'm going to mess up my VP position over here. I've got to change something. Or it's a temporary thing because there was a wave of some kind of silliness comes through

or something, right? And that's a temporary thing, a problem that goes away in the industry or something like that. So, yeah, does that make sense? I'm always, so I, here's, let me give you the parallel for me. Here's what I did. About 20, maybe 25 years ago, 20 or 25 years ago, something like that. In my prayer time, I figured out God was saying that I'm to work on, as the CEO of Ramsey, I'm to work on three things other than being the product.

I'm one of the products. I'm doing that right now, okay, doing the show, right? I'm, you know, being a forward-facing product. But other than that, my job is to work on new things and broken things. And so if something hits my desk that's operational and it stays on my desk too long, I'm not doing my job because my job is to work on new things and broken things and really am big things, something that's big. But so I've defined my job that way.

And so I watch my time other than being the product, if I'm getting sucked into operational things, That means I've got a leadership problem in my company, someone who's not getting their work done. So operational crap is rolling up to my desk because it's not, well, it became a broken thing. So I'm now working on broken things. New things, big things, and broken things, right? But I don't need to see all the, the only operational stuff I look at is I look at the metrics. I'm looking at accounting numbers and sales numbers and metrics and budgeting sheets. And I can do that in 45 or 50 seconds and see what's going on in an area and keep moving.

just a checkup and know I'm going on. So my point being, that's not your job, but my point being, I had to say there's things I do and things I don't do. And if that gets out of balance, that means that's a symptom of another kind of a problem going on out there. And so in a sense, you're time studying yourself continually. You're managing your time with your prioritized to do list, if you want to call it that, or your inbox or whatever it is. But you look at the end of the week and you go, I spent my whole week on the wrong stuff. If I do that 50 times in a row, we're out of business. So I have to spend my week on the right stuff.

And it has to be done on the right thing. That's your situation. You don't do the strategic branding, vision setting, the VP job long enough because the other people are sucking the blood out of your week. Then you've gotten it out of balance and the whole thing is going to cave in. on you. You know that instinctually. That's why you're bright and you're able to do this. But I'm just constantly going to be monitoring the pulse of my time. That's the way I'm going to look at it there and see where we go from that. So really, really good question, Margie. And that group of

3,000 travel agencies, they're lucky to have you. You're watching their back. That's good stuff. It's a good model. Very interesting model. Well done. Well done. Well done. Hey, this is real stuff in business right here. We're glad you're here. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. After 30-plus years of running this business, we have determined that there are six things that drive our business. And there are five stages of business. The treadmill operators, where folks start, as you can imagine, you feel like you're on a treadmill.

Too much of the business relies on you. Then it goes to Pathfinder, where you now have. have other people, but there's kind of a lack of direction, a little bit like hurting cats. Then it goes to Trailblazer, where you lack the leaders and the plan to scale your business, instead of just worker bees, you've got leaders. You move from Trailblazer to Peak Performer, where your business has become a little bit comfortable, and you need to give it a little shock. And then you move to Legacy Builder, where we start talking about a succession plan, and it's time to develop how we're going to leave a legacy. If you want to know what's

stage of business you're in. And what you have to do to level up to move to the next stage, go to Entreleadership.com and click on the stage of business assessment. And we'll help you dial that in. This is the most practical tool out there because it wasn't developed in a think tank. It was developed with working with our business and with tens of thousands of businesses over the last couple of decades. You know, running a business is hard. You spend all day putting out fires as the CEO, the chief everything officer. And by the end, you can't even remember what you're did. Your business is running you. You're not running your business. That's a treadmill operator we're talking about. And that's what it looks like to be in the early stages. But if you join

Entree Leadership Elite, our digital membership for business owners, you'll get a detailed action plan with tools and amazing tools and teachings, most of them by me, that fit into your day and they show you how to gain momentum and level up through these stages of business. Again, and take the stage of business assessment at entreleadership.com. Here's the thing about Entree Leadership Elite, the digital membership. It's free for the first 30 days. Did I mention it's free? You can cancel any time after that, no hassle.

Check it out. Go to Entreeleadership.com slash elite. Try it. It's free. I mean, you really can't beat the freaking price, okay? Get in there and see if we suck or not. We don't. We're proud of it.

We get it done. We're learning stuff new every day and we're always adding things. I was in a meeting this morning with Entree Leadership guys. They were showing me one of the new tools they've launched on holding people accountable and working with them with their weekly reports and meetings, a meeting tool. It's an incredible set of tools. So get in there and figure this stuff out, boys and girls. We'll help you.

We love working with business people. Entreeleadership.com slash elite. It is a free trial. Kelly is in Philadelphia. Kelly, how are you? Hi, Dave. It's such a pleasure to speak with you. You too. How can I help? So I am a solopreneur, one woman show. I am a computer programmer and also consultant. I'm on track to make 150 by the end of the year. Wait a go. Thank you. If I really push myself, I'll hit 220. But that's part of the problem.

I'm just utterly exhausted. I know that I'm at the point that I should be hiring, but I don't know the right way to go about it. In terms that, one, I don't know how much money I'm supposed to really have in the bank before I make that decision. There's definitely enough opportunity. I have more than enough work that I can start splitting it off. And then if I had to, I could get more work easily.

Not kidding. At least once a week I turned down. down work. And so I'm comfortable in that aspect, but I'm thinking to myself, I'm already maxed out on hours. How am I supposed to spend time with the new hire getting them acclimated when I'm kind of already maxed out trying to hit my deadlines that I have, like my current obligations? So those are my two main questions. Part of the investment that you're going to make is not just money. It's loss of revenue because you have to spend time. This is you taking a step back in order to take five steps forward.

And so, yes, you're going to use up some of what would have been productive time to invest in the future by training someone. No way around it. There's no exception. You can't not do that because otherwise they put out crap in it as your name on it. Right. So you're going to step back and you're going to say, all right, I'm going to allocate this many hours. And that's a pay cut for me to get this person up and running so that I make more later.

So what type of programming are you doing? What's the language? Sure. So I focus primarily on Microsoft products and the programming's in VBA and then we use a lot of the automation tools that they have. So like if we don't have to write code, then we won't do code. But when codes necessary, we use VBA. Okay. All right. So you're mainly functioning in the Microsoft suite. Okay, that makes sense. That's good. And so it's easy to hire because they either have the certifications or they don't. Oh, correct.

Yeah, it'll be easy to find someone that knows what they're doing, but the right person, right? Yeah. And so the training is, it's not like you're teaching them to code, for God's sakes. You're just teaching them to organize the process and deliver it the way that you like it delivered. Well, there is, so I'm not teaching them how to code, but they do have to adhere to to my standards for how I could. Exactly. Yeah, but I'm just saying, in other words, you're using products they already know

how to use. The organization and the application to your standards is the only training. Yes. That's different than teaching somebody how to do it. Right. That's a lot easier, actually, than teaching somebody how to do it. In other words, they're going to get it in 90 days or you need to fire them. Okay.

You've made a bad hire, right? I mean, if they know how to run the tools, and they can't run them to your standards, you're going to know that very, very quickly, aren't you? Yeah, and I think hearing, like you say, 90 days, like, I need those benchmarks for myself because I don't really, I don't know. I made that up. I made that up.

I'm not a programmer. I'm not a programmer. I got 400 of them working here, but I don't have any idea what they do. So, but I mean, this is a, I get the difference between writing code and using tools. Okay, I understand that concept. So, but what I'm saying. is that we have things we do here. If we hire someone to run audio, an audio board for a live event or for a podcast or for whatever we're doing, okay, then they need to know how to run an

audio board before they come here or we shouldn't hire them, right? So they already have the skill set, but then all we've got to do is say, okay, here's our standards, here's the way we expect a room to sound. We do not accept bounce back. We do not accept this. I don't want to hear about concrete. Shut up. Figure this out. Get your configurations right. Get your gains set, and we do, I've done live events for 30 years, and so there's people who can do in a room and so people who can't. All right. And so I don't know how to do it, but I do know when it's right. And in your case, you do know how to do it, and you're going to know how it's right.

So I can walk into a room, though, until that audio guy doesn't know what he's doing. He's not meeting our standards, right? Same situation, but metaphorically anyway. So I think you're going to find this. If it takes 90 days, I'll be surprised if you hire the right person. Now, don't try to underpay and train someone. They need to already have the skills. You do not have time to do this from the ground up.

It's going to be too costly. Right, right. So this is not a junior programmer. It's not a dev one. So that's what I was thinking, too. And then so there was someone that was very interested, and we had worked previously together, and we went over salary, and it was just what they were asking for.

I just couldn't do. And the big thing was like the health benefit. It's like shot the salary up by like $20,000. And I'm like, oh, this is crazy. You just didn't get the right person. Listen, when you are a two-person operation, if they need benefits, you're talking the wrong people. But how do you factor that into the salary, though?

Okay. That's their problem. It's two people. Okay. You know, benefits packages are people who want to work for Goober Corporate America. You know, what you've got is an opportunity to grow a business and this person is going to come alongside you. Hey, we're going to grow this thing.

And as it grows, you could end up managing six or eight people doing what you're doing. If you're good at this and you develop some people skills, and I'll work with you on both. Get in here and let's grow this thing together. Join the team. But it's not, oh, what can I get? Listen, if you're interviewing people, if the interview changes at any point or starts with what can they get rather than what they can give in the interview. Okay. They're takers.

They're not givers. They need to be adding value. And it's fair for them to know what they're going to get paid. But if this person wants a big suite of corporate benefits, they shouldn't be talking to Kelly in Philadelphia because Kelly's a one-man solopreneur. We don't have a suite of benefits. Our benefit is here, your check clears. That's your benefit.

How do you make them feel valued and like you're rewarding them financially? Like, how do I leverage that? The way they feel valued is they actually get to work. work with humans instead of idiots in corporate America. You feel foul. You know, you can do what you do if you went over corporate America and they take 80 hours a week out of your butt. You know what that looks like and they treat you like a robot and the first little time they want to raise dad gum stock price. They put you on the street. They treat you like a commodity, not a human. They don't know your name. They don't know your kids' names. I don't know your mama's got cancer. But you do.

You're small business. You got heart. And that's who, somebody that wants to work for you is who you need. If they need, we're not trying to compete with benefits and pay for corporate America. If that's what you want, hit the door. I can't help you. I can't help you. I got a pretty good benefits suite with 1100 team members here. But even today, I'm not, I can't compete with freaking Google or something. If you want to go to work for Google, go Google. You know, that's fine. But you don't, you know, you wouldn't fit in here anyway. So, because we don't think that way. So what we're trying to do is add value and change the world. And what you're doing there is that. So your benefit is that you're going to treat them like a human being.

That's your cost different. I mean, your brand differentiation as far as, you know, hiring someone. So the first thing is, yes, you're going to take a step back. You're going to make a little less money, but you need to define the short period of time. The person you were trying to hire was either not a fit because they're just looking for big money and big benefits, and they're not caring about the overall picture of this. And so they weren't a fit. It wasn't that they were overqualified.

It was that they didn't have the right values and didn't want to be where you are, that they were more impressed with the office or the whatever at the other place. That's fine. So just keep looking. But you should get someone talented enough. You don't have to dumb down your requirements that they can meet your standards within 30 to 90 days. And then you're not going to lose that much doing that. And pretty quickly, you're going to add enough work back to have covered the offset on that.

Now, how much money should you have saved and set aside for that? enough to make sure you can pay them and you can still eat. So if you've got enough work coming in to pay them and still eat, then, and you've got that already on the books, you already got that in the pipeline, then you're probably okay to have very little money set aside, you know, $5,000, or something like that. But you don't need $100,000 in the bank and retained earnings as a solopreneur

to make your first hire. That's not necessary, as long as you've got work coming in. And it sounds like you've got work coming in. So, but have someone that's going to add energy to the equation, not draw energy from the equation. Because you're already tired. You want to be really tired? Try to manage some idiot that's supposed to be working for corporate America and they're now working for you. That'll make you really tired.

So don't do that. Get somebody in there who's got that entrepreneurial flair. They can see that, you know, you and me together, we could grow this thing. You could end up making a lot of money, managing. a team of 20 people doing what you're doing. If you develop the people skills and the programming skills to take this further, this is the promise we make you when you come on with Ramsey because we're growing. But we can't compete with corporate America here.

We don't want to. I don't want the people that want to work there. I don't want them in the building. And if they come in the building accidentally, they don't stay. So, you know, that's how that works. So you're doing good stuff, Kelly. Very, very, very well done. Very cool.

Good stuff. Hiring is different. when you're a small business. And if you hire corporate goobs into small business, they're going to leave because they're corporate gobs. And they're going to go work for corporate gobs because they're corporate gobs. That was deep, wasn't it? This is the Andrele Leadership podcast.

Hey, this is cool. Apparently, I'm on Instagram. Who knew? Three million people did, I think. Anyway, yeah, I got an Instagram. Instagram question. That's fun. Farmhouse tea. That's cool. Farmhouse teas. It makes me kind of want some. I'm not even a big tea drinker, but that's probably good stuff. You can put some sugar in it and have some good sweet tea from the south, I bet. How do you decide when is the best time to move a contract worker to an employee status? Oh, this is a problem. A lot of few people in small business violate this. You don't get to decide. whether someone's a subcontractor or not, the law decides that. IRS regulations decide that.

And if you treat someone that is an employee by definition, by IRS definition, as a subcontractor, you're going to get your but fine when you get audited, and you're going to get hammered. And a lot of you don't want to fool with payroll, hire three or four people, and I don't want to fool with the 941s, and I don't want to mess with the IRS deposits, and I don't want to have to go through all the payroll taxes and all this crap, because it is garbage. It's hard to get through it all and figure it out, especially your first three or four people who drive you nuts. You don't want fool with it, so you just declare you are an independent subcontractor, although they're not.

They're actually an employee. So here's the deal. The IRS has all kinds of guidelines and tests, but the basic things revolve around three things. if the company controls everything about the job and everything about the worker, and the company provides all of the, let's say it's marketing, the company sales, the company provides all the leads, they have a desk, they work physically at your location, and no other locations, they're an employee.

You can't just decide. You can't get your little wand out and go, poof, you're 1099. Now, it doesn't work that way, junior. Are the business aspects of the worker's job controlled by the person paying? Like how the workers paid, whether expenses are reimbursed, who provides the tools and supplies, if all the office supplies or the farmhouse teas, if the shovels, if you're working in the field, if the equipment is provided, the tractor is provided, whatever it is,

by the employer, the employee brings nothing to the table here. They just walk up and you've done everything and they plug into your system. They are not 1099. They are an employee. And if you pay them 1099 instead of 941s instead of on W-2s, then you're going to get hammered. And then the third test is what's the type of relationship? And I'm looking at the IRS website. are there written contracts or employee benefits like pension plans insurance vacation

will the relationship continue and is the work performed a key aspect of the business then then that you know again it's an employee so examples of an independent subcontractor is the guy that cuts your grass he provides his own lawnmower he decides how much he's going to charge you're not his only customer he handles his own insurance he creates his own leave He has his own checking account. He has a business. He's an independent subcontractor. If you hire someone to cut grass with you

and you provide the lawnmower and you provide the customers and you collect the money from the customers and you have the lawnmower repaired and you buy the gas and the insurance, they're an employee, period. By IRS regulations, you do not get to decide this crap. It's not how it works. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck.

All right, that's how this works. And so probably the one that is the most confusing or that looks the most like an employee that's not is real estate agents. Residential real estate agents, commercial for that matter. Almost all of them are independent subcontractors. They work in a broker's office, but they pay their own, MLS dues, their own real estate dues, they split commissions with the broker, they set their own time, they set their own schedule, the broker can demand they come to sales meeting and that kind of stuff, they can put some constraints on them, but these people are independent business people,

technically speaking, and are 1099. They are not, they are not employees. And, but listen, if you don't, another way of thinking about is this, if your employee does not have another customer other than you, they're probably an employee. And independent subcontractor that's a real estate agent, has lots of customers, and the broker is not one of them. All right? So they work for a lot of different people. The guy that cuts grass has a lot of different customers. They don't work for one person. But if you have a whole bunch of real estate like I do and you hire someone full time and all they do is cut grass for you and they don't cut grass for anyone else and you provide their lawnmowers, they're an employee. They don't run their own business. They don't run their own

business. An independent subcontractor runs their own business. They're another small business person in a very real sense. So that's how that works. So you don't get to decide the best time to move a contract worker to employee status. They've already moved and the 1099 status. Now, if we want to move away from the tax issue and say a contract worker, like we sometimes would contract, we don't do it much anymore, but we would contract for an outside person to do some technology coding for us, some web coding for us, writing, you know, build an application, a lines of code, right? And we'll give them a particular job to do. But they are in their own place. They don't, not in our building. They sometimes have other contracts while they have hours. Sometimes you can get a contract employee

that comes in the building, but it is a temporary process. Now, when do I move? that person from contract to employee, as soon as I know I need the job filled, because it's cheaper to have them as a team member than it is to contract out. If I contract out code, it costs me 25 to 30 percent more than if I bring someone in the building to write the code, and I give them all benefits and everything else of being a Ramsey team member. But occasionally we'll have an actual contract employee in the building. That's perfectly legal, but because it is a temporary thing, it is a written contract for a set period of time. And again, this now does not violate the IRS regulations.

But then how do I want to move that person to full time? I want to move them to full time off of contract and make them a W-2 employee when I've got enough work to keep them busy all the time because they're less expensive as a team member than they are a contract employee. And by the way, if you're contracting out there, you're paying both sides of FICA. Okay, I got to pay, you know, it's 17.3%. You got to pay half of that, 15.3%. You've got to pay half of that, 765 each. And if you're self-employed, you've got both sides of that.

That's called self-employment tax. So if you're a solopreneur, you're contracting, you're filing at 15.3. If you're a team member here, I'm picking up half of that as payroll expense. and the team member only pays half of the payroll tax. I pay the other half as the employer. That's another way you know what you're looking at there. And so you gain, if you're a contractor becoming an employee, you gain 7.65 if you make exactly the same money.

You come out ahead when you come on board with somebody. That's how that works. So there we go. All right. So if you want to talk about leadership, this is your place. This is the Ontario Leadership podcast. Call and leave a voicemail at 8449, 41070. Sarah is with us.

Sarah is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Hi, Sarah. How are you? I am better than I deserve, Dave. Good. How can we help? So I am the managing partner of a family business that helps other family businesses run their marketing.

And at my peak, I had 8 to 10 employees. Wow, that's cool. And my question for you, I've been an entree leader for, well, I've had like four or five years of entree leadership experience, and then I knew about entree leadership and did like a one day thing a decade ago. So I've known I've been like in this for a long time. And my question for you is that as things are changing or how are you changing things and how you run your organization and teach others as millennials and Gen Z become the prominent employees and leaders in the workforce, because a lot of the rules that entree

leaders that you have taught entree leaders like a decade ago that I've been working on, I feel like if I hold millennials and Gen Z to some of those standards that I'll just end up losing employees. And so I'm wondering how you're dealing with the difference. Well, you're specifically the story about the employee who they were late twice and you said, well, if you're late the third time, bring the box in and they did. And that totally made sense a decade ago. But now like the way that. I don't want somebody working here.

It's not going to show up for work. Okay. It completely makes sense. I do it. Listen, I got a building full of Gen Zs and millennials, and I love these generations. They are excellent generations, but we don't have to dumb down for the ones we hire. We hire ones that like calluses on their brains and calluses on their hands. We hire ones that will charge the gates of hell with a water pistol.

And there's as many of those in these two generations as there were ever in the baby boomers. Okay. And they're not afraid of work. They're passionate. They're mission-driven. They do require more than the boomers did. The boomers just wanted money. But the right kind of millennial in Gen Z requires meaning in their work.

They require it to be mission-driven. They have to see that it connects to something that matters. And, of course, at Ramsey, that's pretty easy to give them. but the and they have to have this sense of dignity at work. They can't be treated like a robot. They can't be treated like a unit of production. They're not going to fall in line and assembly line and just do stuff automatically just because the boss said so.

They need to know why you're doing things. But that's all okay with me. That's always been okay with me. I always, because bosses push, leaders pull. And if you're going to pull, you have to inform, communicate, draw in, set a vision, have a mission, have work that matters that you can participate in. And, again, I got a building full. I would say the vast majority of our workforce is Z and millennials. I can't tell you exactly, but it's way north of 75% of this building is that.

Okay. But I will tell you this. The other thing I love about, I used to say this about millennials, but it's also true about Gen Zs. They're very easy to interview because there's only two kinds, awesome and sucks. The ones that suck want a participation trophy. They want to be an activist. They got some other agenda. They're trying to virtue signal.

They got some other thing that they're all twisted up and torn up about other than getting their freaking work done. And the ones that are awesome want to join a crusade. They want to plug into something. They are not afraid of hard work. They will outwork a boomer every time. If they believe in and see what it is they're running at, again, they'll charge the gates of hell with the water pistol. So, but they're really, it's really a bifurcated generation more than the others.

The others would dress up and look like they were something that they weren't. This generation just tells you, I'm not doing that. You're an idiot. I'm not going to work over there. I don't like you people. Good. That's perfect because we don't need you. You don't fit.

But the ones that want to be a part of this, my God, they're awesome. No, it's just, that's what I'm looking for. And it absolutely does apply today because we do it every day here. Okay. And, you know, occasionally one gets through the cracks and we get one in here that gets confused about who owns the place or something. And once we explain to them, they quit. But that's okay, you know. That's just part of that.

That means we didn't hire properly. But it is a, let me tell you where it'll help you, is the interview process is the secret to the sauce to this. because they're there. I know they're there. They work here. The right kind are there that want to plug into that. But again, they're never going to, they're the world's worst two generations to work for a boss.

Yes. Where you just come in and just because I said so, and they're not going to do that. They need to know why. And they don't even care if it's messy or chaotic or confusing or awkward. They don't even mind that as long as you just tell them the truth. They need to know why. They know what's really going on.

And you pour into them like that, and it's a mentally healthy organization. But, yeah, they're not going to operate on 1950s or even, you know, 1990s. I do it because I said so thing. But I've never told people to lead that way anyway. Yeah, no, you haven't. No, that's very helpful. Yeah. So it's a, but I've got friends right now that are saying, oh, if you don't acquiesce and allow them flexibility to work from home,

you know, which means I don't want to work much. Or I work all the time. I work too much. Now, not everybody that works from home either works too much or not enough, but most of them fall into one of those two categories. They work 80 hours a week because they don't have enough discipline to walk away and put the stupid screen down and go play with their kids at night. Or they work about three hours a day and they call it working from home.

And it's not working from home. It's a part-time job and you're collecting a full-time pay. It's called stealing. But that's happening all over America. If that's, you know, I got a friend that says, oh, well, you have to provide that. No, I don't have to provide that. We don't have any work from home. We work from work.

That's where we work. And it's okay if you don't want to work here. But at least we all know where we work. We work from work. That's what we do. We don't have a work from home program. Some die of that might change, but it's probably when I'm dead. Hey, thank you for your call.

It's a great question. And thank you for letting me get up on my soapbox. I am a huge fan of the millennial and Gen Z generation. I really personally like them. I act, because let me tell you, boomers, I'm a boomer, right? I'm the boomers are all old now. But even, what's the other one, Generation X, yeah, that's the, they're in your 50s, right? Both of those generations had some posers.

They would act like they're something, they're not, you know what I'm saying, poser. You know, they're putting on the dog. They're dressing up like a thoroughbred. when they're really a donkey, right? And these other two generations, they've had enough. They're sick and tired, these young ones, because social media has burn them out on posers, because social media is nothing but posers. You figured out that Facebook friends aren't real friends because they will not help you change a tire at 2 a.m. None of your Facebook friends will help you when you need it. They're not real friends. They're fake friends. And this generation knows that.

So they're sick of posers. They love authenticity. And if you're comfortable in your own skin, even if they completely disagree with you, they will respect you and like you. But the posers, there's not many posers in these two generations. And again, that's one of the reasons I like them because one of the things I've happened to me was when I was 28, I lost everything and went completely broke. And one of the benefits of losing everything is you no longer care what he might think. I'm no longer need my desire to, my motivation to make you happy and like me is really severely close to sub-zero.

I'm just not driven by that at all. I'm driven by results and by people's lives being changed and by serving and by helping. I'm passionate about watching someone light up and go do something cool that they never done because they intersected with entree leadership and they, you know, they got in Entry leadership elite and they call me back and they go, man, you know, we made $10 million. You know how much Ramsey got of that? Nothing. And that's okay.

I'm still jazzed about that. That's awesome. That's what drives me. But it's so my level of authenticity is sickening. It's there all the time. Well, you're that way all the time. Yeah, I'm that way all the time because I just don't care anymore. I lost all that.

My need, I was a big time poser. Wearing a fake watch, starched white shirts driving a, you know, a jaguar. So I mean, I know what poser looks like. I was, you know, but when they took everything and nobody cared and everybody that I thought was my friends ran for the hills, then my need to make other people, you know, impressed with me is just zip. Zero. My team wishes it was a little bit more, but it's not enough. So there you go. But that's what this, these millennials in Gen Z are that way.

And that's why they're so cool. They're very authentic. Again, some of them are authentically crazy and nuts. You just don't want to be around them. But at least they're authentic about it. And so you can just go, whoop, you're not going to fit in here, are you? No, I don't think I am. Okay, that's right.

Then, you know, that's the deal. So this is how it works, boys and girls. Oh, I love that question. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Really, really good question. I love your business, helping family businesses. Oh, awesome.

I'm glad you're doing that. They need you. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. You guys find Sarah. She'll help you. That's very cool stuff. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey. If you hate what you hear, sorry. It's what you're going to get. So you have to be somewhere else, I guess. If you love what you hear, we'd appreciate some help.

Do a couple things to help us. Number one, leave a five-star review. One stars don't help. Mama said if you hang anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Follow us. subscribe on the podcast, on YouTube, however it is you're doing this, and click the likes and share it. Take the link, share it. I saw a funniest Instagram thing today that I was cracking up at, and I shared it with three of my friends. And guess what?

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Good. Good. Better than I deserve. What's up? So I'm a physician, but in December I joined a mentorship program for real estate investing. and I'm working on getting that buildup. My question is, how do I best live out Proverbs 16-3? 16-3. Commit your work to the Lord? Yep. Okay. For those of us that are people of faith, you know, I do that all the time. And it's actually one of our core values on the wall here that we ask our people to do that. Do your work as unto the Lord. And what that means to me is, I'm a simpleton, but it's, do my work as if my boss, my leader, was Christ.

What would he want me to do? How would he want me to handle this HR situation? That's a mess. How would he want me to treat the people that were involved in the mess? How would he want me to compensate them? How would he want me to do this or that? And it's not always a clear answer, but at least that's the motivation of it. we, you know, sometimes we don't know what to do because there's not necessarily a biblical

indication on what you do with insurance, because it's not in second hesitations, right? So what do I do with insurance? You know, it's not there. So I just got to think about, okay, what's the motivation of insurance and what's the right thing? What Jesus would do that? Well, that's your opinion. I'm not sure I agree with that.

But the, so the question is when you're looking at it is, am I doing my work as if God is my boss, as if he owns the company, owns the assets, and, I'm taking my direction from his handbook. He's got a pretty thick handbook. Some of it's confusing to me, but some of it's very clear too, right? And so, you know, that's what I'm trying to do. And so obviously that's going to demand an extreme level of ethics, integrity, of compassion, of generosity, and of excellence. I don't know how long you've been running around the Christian world, Sheila,

but one of the things that discuss me sometimes is that Christian sometimes in some areas means substandard. You know what I'm saying? I agree. I do. And I agree with everything you're saying, do what's right, not just what's easy. If you take that a step further and you look at the financial aspect of that, where do you go, as an example, tithing? I think everybody agrees with tithing.

you should tithe from your personal income, how do you do that with a business? How do you take it that step further beyond just doing what is right? Well, there's two sections in scripture on giving, tithing and offering. For those of us that are evangelical Christians, and you're speaking like one, so I'm guessing that's it. Okay, so the tithe is a tenth of your increase. It says in Deuteronomy. Now, what my increase is is my income. My income consists of income from investments. It consists of income from book royalties. It consists of income from the profits of this business.

The business is not an entity, not a spiritual entity. And so the profits of the business are my increase. And so I tithe on my income, which includes my profits from my business. Does that make sense? But the business doesn't tithe. It's not a spiritual entity. nor does it need to mathematically, because mathematically, mathematically, if you're tithing on the profits, which is the net increase, and if you took it home and it's your income, and you tied on the profits,

it's the same exact amount of money. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah, so I tie, I don't do any, I do very little giving, charitable giving out of the business itself, very little. And so I gave it the office. We can't really say that because I seldom do. But yeah, I've got a family foundation that handles all of our family philanthropy, and our additional giving over and above the tithe, which traditionally goes to your local church,

is an offering, and then we handle all of that through a family foundation, the majority of it. Now, occasionally we'll do $5,000 or something from here. I mean, there's a few things, but the line item for in corporate generosity is very small, except towards our team. The money we spend with our, that we spend with our team is astronomical, but the, I'm talking about, do we give to the local homeless shelter out of Ramsey Solutions checking account? Almost never. It usually goes through the Ramsey Family Foundation, which is personal giving. Again, it's flow through. It's still getting done, but it's not, it's not this

company's job to do that. Because where I ran into trouble, and this, this is just you and me talking, okay, a couple of million people listening in it, but we're just talking. So, where I ran into trouble when I was giving out of the company was sometimes I was not giving because I, because of generosity, I was giving to get somebody off my back. Okay. Like they were, like I was out, you know, like,

here's one that I do that still. Okay. I'll just tell everybody. All right. We're on 680 radio stations. A couple of them are Christian stations. stations and they do fundraisers. And we'll send some money over there.

But that's, we're really doing that because we're part of that industry. And we're just being helpful and we're nice and that kind of like. But we're not really doing that because that's like our generosity. You know what I'm saying? It's more like giving to the high school annual. That's not generosity. That's just you can't get out of it because your kid is over there. You know?

You see what I'm saying? I do. You know, the rubber chicken dinner that you're trapped in. to and you got to go to the fundraiser and that garbage. You know, so, and the food's bad and the company's worse and all that. You know, so the, you know, that kind of stuff. You get that, I don't want it, I don't want it too much of my giving to because I was trapped.

And when I just take it all out of here and we say, oh, we don't do that here. You have to talk to the Family Foundation. And then Denise May or may, that was our director of our family foundation, may or may not tell them yes or no. That's up to her. She runs our guidelines on that. And then we've got a real pure heart about our, much more pure, not totally. I just told you I wasn't pure, but a more pure heart on our generosity because we keep it very,

very separate. So, yeah, the generosity piece. But, boy, I tell you what, the beautiful thing is you're asking this question, which means you've got a wonderful heart, and you're not doing this just for you. You see that you're going to be able to do good for others because you're doing business. And that is what makes America great right there, people like you. So thank you for integrating your faith. into what you're doing. That's very powerful. Was I babbling or did I answer your question?

You did. Thank you. Okay. Hey, thank you for being with us and thank you for being Sheila in Oklahoma City. We need you. We need you out there. If America had a whole lot more Sheila's and a lot less of those, Karen's. Sorry, Karen. But my sister-in-law's name Karen, bless her heart. I mean, wouldn't it be great if everybody was like Sheila, y'all? Come on, everybody raised your hand. You know, bring the house down. Sheila's the deal. That's how it works right there. I mean, gosh. Here, if we, if everybody that made a lot of money was unbelievably generous, we could make the government irrelevant, y'all. And wouldn't that be fun? Then you would take their power away then.

If we took care of all the widows and orphans and hungry kids, we took care of, you know, build hospitals for children. There's a few of them around. But, I mean, if we just spent when we spent on our pets, we could have those, right? I mean, it's unbelievable, y'all. The generosity is. is amazing out here that could happen if we were all more like Sheila. I wish I was, but at least I got to talk to her about it.

That's pretty cool stuff. Very, very cool stuff. Hey, guys, so that was a fun episode of the Entry Leadership podcast. Being a leader is a choice. Leaders aren't born. It's a series of choices. And we want to lead you through that series of choices here. So thank you for joining us and choose.

to do one of the most powerful things on the planet you can do. And that's the privilege and the honor of leading. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast.