EntreLeadership - This Family Drama Could Destroy This $3 Million Business

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Today, we’ll hear about:  How family drama is impacting a highly profitable business  A business owner dealing with an underperforming employee  What humility really is according to Dave Ramsey  A business owner looking for advice on an effective digital marketing strategy    Next Steps:  📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message: https://ter.li/ask-us  📚 Learn about the EntreLeadership System: https://ter.li/system-p  💻 Get EntreLeadership Elite for your business: https://ter.li/elite-p  ✉️ Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/enl  🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/summit   🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/masterseries   📖 Order Dave’s new book, Build a Business You Love: https://ter.li/b4kru2    Connect With Our Sponsors:  💼 Go to Belay Solutions or text ENTRE to 55123 for their free resource!  💻 Visit NetSuite today to learn more.  🧾 Visit Payority for a free consultation!  📈 Grab ⁠Sales Gravy's⁠ free resource to help you hire and lead better. 📝 Use code ENTRE15 to get 15% off your first year of Trainual.    Listen to More From Ramsey Network:  🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman  🎙️ The Ramsey Show  💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights  🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show  🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour  💡 The Rachel Cruze Show  💰 George Kamel    Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. I actually did this stuff today. If you want to submit a question, go to Entreeleadership.com slash ask or leave us a voicemail at 844-944-107. in either case. We'll get back with you and make you a caller on the Ontario Leadership Podcast. 844-944-1070. Dial it up. Brad is in Vancouver. Hey, Brad, how are you? Good. How are you? Thanks for your time today. Certainly, sir. How can we help?

So I am the third generation of a family business. We're in the tourism sector. We operate seasonally for six months a year. I'm currently one of two managers and our parents are the shareholders. We have about 15 employees and in terms of the business in 2024, we did 3.1 net, or sorry, 3.1 revenue and 2 million of that

was net after tax. And the business itself is a great business, but there's a lot of internal fighting as it's my father and his sister. and now that we're on to the third generation, her kids are four of them and there's two of us. And there's just a lot of conflict with the operation and whatnot of the business. And so the question I'm trying to get to is we're at the point where we would like to either be bought out or buy them out.

They don't want to take the advice of our lawyers. They don't want to sit down. They don't take the advice of our accountants. So I'm just trying to figure out what are some steps I may be able to take to try and get them to the table to at least start those conversations. Sounds very childish. Yeah, no doubt. Okay, so it's like your dad against his sister and your dad's kid, you. Yes.

You got siblings in this? Yeah, me and my brother. And all these people work there? So they've stepped back now during COVID. We've taken over. And, yeah, the four of them and the two of us all work there, all the kids. So six of us. So the six cousins?

Yes. And who is it that doesn't want to talk about changing this? So we try to... Who is it? It's the... The parents, the shareholders, my cousin's parents, they don't want to meet as share. They don't want to have shareholders meetings with my parents.

And they're leaving it up to their kids. They made two of their kids directors now, and they're leaving it up to the kids to deal with it all. And they don't want to have shareholders meetings. They don't want to have, yeah, and directors meetings at that. They don't even want to discuss the problem. Yeah.

What it really comes down to is money. while we were, I've been doing this, I'm 29, I've been doing it for 15 years. So we started, we all started quite young. And our parents would, we had, we had an hourly wage. And at the end of the year, it was a good business. So there was always a little bit of profit. So we would often get a bonus. And those bonuses were paid out in lieu of the directors getting,

in lieu of the shareholders taken profit out of the company. So everything was divided 50-50, but now their kids want more, so they want to try to increase our wages through the roof. And they're very combative with trying to move forward unless they get what they want. And we're kind of at the end of our ropes with it.

Okay. Are there any managing documents, any partnership documents? Yes, there's, we have a document, we have the management documents, but in our documents, we don't have like a shotgun clause or a buyout or sell clause. Okay. Have you sought legal advice? Yeah, we have to a degree. It comes down to spend in or, you know, a lot of money for potentially not a lot of outcome. For example, this past year, there was an issue with my brother, who is a director, with the bank getting sign an authority. They didn't want to recognize his sign authority after they had already signed the documents

to recognize it about six months before. And it took the bank shutting down our accounts to get them to do something about it. So it's, I'm just a little bit of a loss there. But when we talk amongst ourselves, yeah, we're kind of coming to the same. conclusion that we may have to go more of a lawyer. I don't know much about law in Canada. Okay? Yeah, that's fair.

In the United States, this is a general partnership that needs to be dissolved. And if the parties cannot come to a mediation and aren't willing to discuss dissolving it, you could sue in circuit court in the United States to have the general partnership dissolved. Right. And a judge would rule that this business is sold and the proceeds are doled out to the shareholders. If you cannot come to a mediation on one of the parties buying the other party out. I don't have a way to make childish, selfish people quit being that. Right.

I'm sorry. I wish I had, if I had that magic wand, I would have, I'd be able to bail money. But yeah, it's, I don't understand the, other than the sense of entitlement or the braddiness, straight up immaturity of some of these people, why they would take such an adversarial stance on a business that's making $2 million a year. Profit. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I'm going to, you know, I'm going to investigate if that is a possible move in Canada. let's pretend for purposes of our discussion

that that's a possible move like it is in the United States, okay, that you could go into court and the judge would adjudicate and say, this partnership has to be dissolved because the parties can't work together. Okay? And so we're suing for the disillusionment of the partnership. I'm guessing there's a mechanism to do that.

If you find that to be true, and you need to pay some attorney's fees out of your pocket, you and your dad, to go find that out. Then I'm going to tell your dad to grow a backbone and go sit down in person with his sister and say, look, the kids have all come to the end of the rope. They're not going to work together anymore. So someone has to decide, me and you have to talk about this, someone has to decide to buy one of the other out because we are not staying together. If we will not decide that. If you won't talk about that, we're going to have a judge force you to talk about it.

We're going to sue you. And honestly, that is what I would do. But I think your dad needs to sit down in person, calmly and quietly explain this is ending. Now, it's either going to end because we all sit down and work it out, or it's going to end because a judge ends it. You decide. I would prefer we work it out and we don't give lawyers a bunch of our money. And I would prefer to continue to be your sweet big brother and have Thanksgiving together. But if you guys want to continue to be buttholes, then we're going to have the judge drill you a new one. I'm serious. This is the conversation.

Because that's what's going on. And somebody actually needs to call this crap. Right. And that's where y'all are. And so, but I think your dad should have had a conversation leading up to this like two years ago. Agreed. But he stood back and your aunt is being a butt and nobody's saying the emperor has no clothes. And so your dad needs to proclaim, dudes butt-necked.

We're not going to pretend like this isn't happening anymore. So my kids are done and we're going to get our share out of this either by working out something where you buy us out, or we buy you out, or the judge is going to make us do that. So you decide which of these we're going to do. Do we sit down and do y'all want to be bought out? That's fine. We'll be happy to do that. If you all don't want to be bought out, then you want to walk away with some money,

that's fine, or we'll walk away with some money. That's fine. But we're not staying and we're not leaving with no money. So you're going to deal with this. and you've got to have this very firm but calm, kind, low volume, no cussing conversation with his sister because it's not her kids, though, the problem. Well, the directors get to decide, no, honey, you're the shareholder, and I'm going to sue you if you don't help me solve this. Because I can't get you to behave.

And all I'm asking is for someone to have a reasonable conversation here, and you guys are just being idiots. and we're not going to do this. So, obviously, don't call them idiots. That's probably not going to work. But you get the idea. You guys have tiptoed around this and acted like it's all going to go away if we just ignore it.

You put your hands over yours and go la, la, la, la, la. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It's something y'all have been doing. Yeah. And your dad is not stepping up. Am I wrong? Yeah, I mean, we're me and my brother are kind of at the point now.

We're having these conversations with him, and, I mean, he's been doing it his whole life. right so there's a little more uh connection i guess um he doesn't work there anymore right no he doesn't okay that's not his identity is no longer there anyway so um are you don't have actual shares yet right no we me and my brother do not okay so this is his problem actually it is but yeah the idea was to always hand it down to us um yeah i've listened to a lot and i i know your your take or the take on third gen and all that. There's nothing wrong with third gen.

I don't have a problem with it. But there's a lot wrong with. You're all third gen. But third gen is not, it's not necessarily has to be adversarial and crazy people involved. But y'all sure did stir it up. So I don't know.

I mean, you talk to your dad. If I'm you and your dad is just going to do nothing, I'm going to go get a job. I'm leaving. I'm not going to stay in this. Because it's untenable. You're trying to put, your finger in the dike, and you're getting ready to get swamped when it's dam breaks over

top of your head, and you've got no control over this. Right. And the people that should be making the decisions are acting like four-year-olds. Your aunt made your cousins directors. You all aren't directors. Yep. Yeah. Something's got to move here, man.

So this thing, waiting on this to get better on its own is an unrealistic hope. called a dream that's turning into a nightmare it's not going to get better on its own you guys are going to have to drive the truck through the front window and something's going to change so maybe your dad won't deal with it but if i'm you i'm not staying if he's just going to stand there and watch these people that have because they happen to have hit the DNA lottery run this thing into the tank while you're over here working your butt off trying to hold it together with baling wire and duct tape no thank you that's too much stress for no money and what's your best hope in that situation?

I get to be partners with these people. No, thank you. That's your best hope if you do nothing. So doing nothing is no longer an option. It hasn't worked well for your family, and your family needs to learn to decide how to deal with this. So I don't think your dad's going to deal with it. The more I sit here and think about it,

I think he's going to sit on his hands, and then you're going to have to make a decision whether you're going to stay in the soup or not. But if he will deal with it, that's the proper thing to do, is to have a sit down with a sister and say, look, we're not going forward. These kids can't work together.

Your kids are misbehaving. They think our kids are misbehaving. They're not working together. This is not good for the business. It's not good for the kids. So there has to be a disillusionment. One of us has to buy the other one out. If we can't come to terms on that

or begin a discussion about that, then we're going to have a judge tell us what to do, and we'll have the judge do that. That's called a lawsuit, so I'm getting ready to sue you. And that's what your dad should do. It's what he should have done. 36 months ago. But, and that's why I don't think he's going to do it now.

But anyway, that's where I would be if I were in your shoes. I'm sorry, man. That's a painful, well, it's so stressful. There's so much emotion and anger in the air every day when you go to work. People can't, I mean, think about your team. Who would want to work in this environment? It's like working in a beauty parlor. Oh, my God, where it's just gossip everywhere.

And you have to take some. sides with one of the six cousins. Oh, man. Sounds like a hillbilly nightmare. Oh, man. Please. No, really. That's awful for your team. Such a toxic situation. Somebody needs to be a grown-up and do something about this. Oh, man, I'm sorry. Wow. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. Wow. Well, guys, you need to have detailed ownership agreements. In our case at Ramsey, it's a trust document because the stock here is held in trust among the three Ramsey's of the next generation, and the details of that are clearly outlined very clearly. In a typical small business, you spend more money on payroll than any other expense. Your team is your largest investment, which means

you need to get a great ROI on your team. That's where Entree Leadership Elite can help. Elite is the online platform that aligns your team so you can scale your business. You'll get integrated tools to get your whole team on the same page, and our proven trainings will help you become the kind of leader people want to follow. Plus, Elite's community of business owners will have your back even when things get tough. My leaders use Elite every week to unify over 1,000 team members at Ramsey Solutions. And now you can use Elite to align your tools. Team 2. To grow your business with Elite, go to Entreeleadership.com slash elite, or just click

the link in the description you're listening to on the podcast, whichever it is. Alan is in Dallas. Hey, Alan, welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast. Thanks, Dave. It's great to talk to you. Sure. How can we help? Okay, so I own a sourcing company in the DFW area. We have a scrappy team. team of seven and we did 6.6 last year. And we've grown to the point. We've grown a little bit faster than my skills have been able to prevail, I guess, as far as hiring and training and things like that. And so my question kind of revolves around a concept that I guess I would describe this. Do I have unrealistic expectations of my team members? Really, I don't expect

them to be able to do exactly what I do at the same level, but the effort level, that's kind of what I'm struggling with. I don't feel like the effort level is equal to what I'm paying some of these people. So you think you've got some guys mailing it in that are just working at J.O.B. That's right. Yeah. All right. Well, one of the things we did at the stage, you're at the pathfinder stage of the five stages of business. And I'll send you a copy of the book, Build a Business you love, which will walk you through this. And because it shows you how the Entree Leadership System works.

All right. Now, one of the things we did when we were at this stage was we had to start identifying what the values were that drove me. How did I make a decision on something? And so we ended up with 15 or 16 core values over the years. We have wordsmithed them and realize some of them were redundant, rolled them back in. Today we have 14 core values. And they're all over the building.

They're plastered in the stairwell. They're plastered on the walls. We talk about them in staff meeting. One of them is that you're self-employed. Treat this place like you own it. You care about the customer. like you own it. You care about getting the work done like you own it. You care about excellence like you own it. If you're walking through the parking lot and there's a piece of trash, if you own the

place, you'd pick up the trash, not step over it and say, I sure hope maintenance will get this. You pick it up if you're the owner. If you're the owner and chairs need to be moved, you move chairs. If you're the owner and a truck needs to be unloaded, you unload the truck. You have a sense of ownership emotionally, and that is a core value. That is who we are at Ramsey. And we tell you when you join Ramsey that if you want to be a we, these are the core values. One of them is a sense of self-employment.

We're all self-employed. We all work for ourselves, and we're going to treat this place like we own it all the time. If you can't do that, you can't work here because you're not a we. We do that. And if you're not a we, you're not a we. You don't work here. And so if someone here, based on that, is mailing it in, immediately, it might be a co-worker, is going to go, hey, dude, we don't do that here. Or a coworker could go to a leader and say, hey, so-and-so is mailing it in. they come in late, they leave early, and they sit on Facebook all day,

and they're not in social media. You know, they're just mail it in, they're just collecting a check, they're a parasite. And nobody wants to work beside that, much less employ that. And so we have made it a cultural icon that you have to care, what you said,

you have to care to work here. And so now you've kind of got to go in after the fact with two of your seven people, but you just start with all seven and go, guys, I've come to realize there's a couple of things that drive me, and one of them is the self-employed mentality, and that is one of our core values going forward. We're going to all act like we're self-employed,

we're going to all act like we care, we're not going to mail it in. And if I sense somebody's mailing it in, and if I sense somebody's just working at J-O-B just to collect a check, then you're not going to fit in here. I'm going to talk to you about it and see if you can stop doing that so you can stay. Though if you want to be a we, we don't mail it in. We leave it all on the field.

We're playing for the Super Bowl every play. You grip the ball and you put your head down and you run headlong into the line. You do what it takes to go win. You call the play, you execute the play, you leave it on the field. You're breathless when you come to the bench. That's what we that are self-employed do, and that's what you're going to do if you're part of our team. And based on this change, some of you may want to elect to not be here anymore. because honestly, that's going to happen involuntarily if we don't make some changes among some of the attitudes.

So it's okay. I understand up to this point. No, not going to hold any grudges for the past because I wasn't real clear before, but I want to be really crystal clear with everybody, kind, and say, if you work here, this is what we do. And you can do that with anything. We did it with gossip. You know, early on, we had a little bit of gossip going on. when we had eight or ten people here.

And I don't have much toleration for that kind of garbage. So I set up, one of our core values is you hand your negatives up and your positives down. If you hand your negatives down and you stand at the water cooler and gripe about how dumb your boss is, your boss will fire you. Right. Because he's dumb. He'll do that. What do you find motivates people to do that? Because I've had some of these, I've been an elite member for a little while.

I'm gobbling this material up as fast as I can. I love it, by the way, thank you so much for it. You know, where I'm at with this one person is a tough conversation number four, where it's basically an ultimatum. Yeah, they're gone. I don't think you're going to make it. They're not going to make it. Yeah, that kind of thing.

So the quandary, I guess, is a little bit, it's twofold. One is this person, while he's carrying a very small portion of the weight, that portion is enough to really hurt me if I have to shoulder. It's hurt you more if he stays. Yeah. Because everybody else is running at 20% off because they're watching this moron. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's where I'm at. And I, you know, I've written to me. It hurts. I got to tell you, when you got seven people and you let go of one of them, you lost one seventh of your production is the way it feels. Minimum. You might have lost more than that. It's more than that.

Yeah. I fired a star salesperson one time because they would not. stop gossiping. Couldn't get them to quit. And I fired them, and I felt like, God, man, I'm lost, I'm going to have to get out there and sell again. I'm going to have to pick up the ball. And, you know, the weirdest thing happened,

we didn't even miss them. The other people picked up the volume, and all my fears were completely unfounded. And that's what you're going to find here. Because the other people are going to be so glad this guy's gone because third buds don't like to work with don't. Right. And they're going to step it up.

They're going to pick up. And you can even have a meeting and go, you know, guys, we're a small group. I'll just go ahead and tell you, it scares me at a small group like this to let somebody like this go. But I felt like it was more important for our team to be aligned and our team to be a team and our team to love each other and trust each other and everybody here playing with everything they've got than it was the amount of production that that one person had. So the rest of you and me, we got to pick up the slack to offset this until we can get

somebody hired in here that actually cares. and has a crusade mentality. And I'll get them in here. And fast as I can, but the rest of us, come on, guys, we've got to work together and we're going to pick it up. But the good news is we don't have to, you know, we don't have to tolerate somebody that doesn't care anymore. Yeah. And the other one that's kind of hovering in the fringes in this discussion will straighten up really, really fast when you do this. Yeah.

And start being aggressive and trying to make sure they didn't, they don't fall into some of those same. Exactly. Yeah, this guy has a great, he's humble, but the hungry and smart parts are just not there. You know, he's plenty smart. He's a likable slacker. That's right. Yeah, exactly right. So you go, well.

He's friendly. Everybody likes him, but they don't respect him. That's what you'll find when he leaves. You have to create rules that you shouldn't have to create, like respond to the customer within two hours. Hello. I don't need to tell you that. That should be automatic. Right.

Answer the phone. I'm just putting holes in the dam, yeah. You know, really, this is not hard work here. And so you want to do real work, go to get a shovel, but this is not hard work. Answer the phone. I get it. I mean, this is the stuff that goes on inside my head,

so I understand. But yeah, just, you know, you're going to find the rest of the team is going to fall in love with your quiet, gentle strength where you take action. You're a man of action, and we have a set of standards, and we all adhere to those standards. I do and you do and you do and you do and we do. And if you're a we, this is how we are going to do it.

And I'm really sorry we're down right now. I'll get somebody in here as quick as I can. The rest of you, come on, let's join hands, let's pick this up. Let's not miss a beat. And here's the thing, they won't. Because the calories they're burning watching him not working right now will be used to get new customers. Well, you didn't give me an easy solution, Dave.

But, uh, no, I did. I gave you the easiest possible solution. It's going to be quick and painless. Takes about 10 minutes and he's gone. Sit down gently first thing in the morning and go, dude, this ain't working. I begged you and I can't beg you. Here's the thing. I always get a question when I'm doing Autre leadership.

How do you motivate people? You don't. You hire motivated people and you get out of their way. But I am not going to light, wet wood. I had one guy go, I'm burn out. I'm good. Dude, that's impossible. You were never on fire.

And, you know, that's exactly where we are. And, you know, I'm sorry, I wish I could fix this guy. You wish you could fix this guy. But one of the things you're going to learn in leadership is you're not responsible for other people's activities. All you're responsible for is managing them. You can't make them care. You can't make them smile and be happy. You can't make them push.

that's an internal decision, not an external decision. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Our question of the day from Andrew in Minnesota, as a new CFO, I'm learning that I need to grow my confidence in making decisions. Previously, my roles have been very customer-focused or admin-heavy, like accounting, where the right answer is always yes or find a solution. However, I know as a leader, the answer sometimes has to be no. How do I learn to build that skill and not?

come across as a jerk. You have any advice for mentors, books, training, or education that would help me in this area, and as I grow, how do I remain humble so that confidence or ego doesn't get in the way or lead to bad decision-making? Well, confidence is not the opposite of humble. Arrogance is the opposite of humble. Competence and confidence are required to be a CFO because a CFO is an executive branch decision-making role. And you're supposed to be sitting with the president and the owner of the

company making suggestions in the financial arena, not merely executing the accounting statements. And so there's nothing about that. That's a jerk. And so smiling is a good start, even if you're delivering bad news. Just smile while you're doing it. And you know, this, I'm sorry guys, this isn't working and we're smiling. And we have to do something different here. and, you know, the answer is no, we don't have the money to do that. If you got any better ideas, talk to me about it, but I don't see how we can do it. And it's just a no. I mean, one of the most powerful words in the English language that will set you free is the word no.

But it doesn't have to be delivered at the top of your lungs or laced with cuss words. It can just simply be a gentle, quiet, smile, and no, I wish we could, but we can't. We don't have the money. We don't have the bandwidth. with. We don't have the whatever. We can't be everything. Only God is everything, and we're not him. And so, you know, in terms of, I don't know, other than the Bible, I don't know what teaches you to people skills necessarily that that would give you the confidence to say no with a quiet, gentle spirit based in strength. And Warren Weirsby says, meekness is not weakness.

its power under control. And so that's what you need as a CFO is this gentle confidence. And if you're good at your job and your answer is based in the way you see the facts, just say here are the facts. And based on those facts, I think the answer is no. I don't think we can do it. What do you think? And that could be talking to your owner or it could be talking to a subordinate.

it can be talking to one of the other departments and go, and, you know, hey, if you think it's different, let's talk about it, but I don't see how we can do it. And here's why. One of the things we've done around here is we're always training up the next layer of leaders. Even if someone's not in a leadership role, I want them to know how a decision was made and why a decision was made. So that the next time they are faced with that same decision,

they understand the decision-making framework, the values and the principles that we use to make that call that way. And so you can do a little teaching with your no. No, I don't think we can do that. Here's why. And dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, and dot, and this is what's bothering me about that. If you can bring me some evidence of something I don't understand that can help me make that a yes, I don't mind. But right now I think it's a no and you show me otherwise. Or next time you're getting ready to face this exact same thing, at least you have the same framework to make the decision because I just explained it to you.

And so you lay out why something happens and how something happens as a method of training, but it's also a gentle method of delivering a no, a good way to communicate. But increasing your verbal skills and your communication, your patience, compassion with people, can allow you to have that gentle calmness and strength that sometimes just says,

we can't work together, or sometimes it says it's as simple as I've got to teach you how we got here and that'll alleviate their frustration. But if someone here is a reasonable explanation for something and they can't get their head around that, you've got other issues. Or they get all emotional and refuse to get their head around the logic of how you're getting to a place, then you've got other issues. You're dealing with a child in your team.

And so that's not on you then. that's on their lack of confidence. And so I think the more competent you are at the job, in other words, your decision-making paradigm, how you're making suggestions, how you're executing different parts of the CFO role, is vital to being able to make a calm, gentle-spirited, know with an explanation why, for training purposes, stick.

And that'll put you right where you need to be. That's exactly how that works. So that's what you'll do in any executive role, but really in any role inside the organization. Your competence gives you confidence, and that keeps you from entering the land of jerk. Most of the time, jerk comes from insecurity. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. If you want to help us out, we would appreciate the help. Click the follow button, the subscribe button, the share button, and share the show.

Follow it, share it, like it, leave a five-star review. all of that. It really helps us with the algorithms on the various platforms. We definitely appreciate it. So please subscribe, please follow. I think you're our only marketing hope. So thanks for the help with that. All right. Kyle is in New Haven, Connecticut. Hi, Kyle. How are you? Hi, good, Dave. Thanks for having me on. I just, I own an event staffing company, right? And I have about 200 part-time employees and a full-time employee. And we do about 2.1 million in revenue annually. And my question for you, Dave, and thank you so much for helping me out, is how do I go about creating a marketing strategy with a responsible budget?

How have you gotten the business that you've gotten? Knocking down doors and cold calling and just tenacity, I guess. I love your marketing strategy. Thank you. What is it that you're wanting to do that you're not doing? Well, so, you know, I have financial goals surrounding... No, marketing. Marketing.

What is it? What marketing is it that you're wanting to do that you're not doing? Digital marketing. Such as? Such as, you know, SEO, right? Bringing my website up to the front page of Google for certain, search terms, right? Just getting more eyes on us. Our competitors tend to have more visibility. And so, like, we have competitors that can't come close to the quality of the product that we have,

but they're more visible online. And, you know, I lose a lot of what I think is potential business that way. Because they don't find you. Exactly, because they don't find me first. And once you get in with an event staffing partner, people are, people just don't like, to switch, they don't like to lose the familiarity. Well, unless something goes wrong, yeah. Okay. Exactly. All right, so what's your, how good is your website?

It's fine. I mean, it looks nice, right? If I come to it, does it make me want to buy? I think so. I wrote all the copy myself, right? And so if people find the website, I think they're... The visuals are strong. You know, as far as I know, right?

I'm not an expert in any of those things, but from my perception, and it is strong. Okay. So your perception is that the website is not the broken link, it's that they never get there? Yes, exactly. Okay. All right.

So your marketing strategy that you could expand on would be buying some Google words in your neighborhood. And so if you bought event marketing or event staffing in your neighborhood, what would that cost and look up, you know, work with Google on that? They sell Google keywords, right? You know how to do that. Yes. Yes.

Okay. And the same thing on Facebook. You can do Facebook advertising that retargets local. You can do geotargeting, meaning drop ads into people's Facebook pages in the market that you're in. Facebook's probably not as good for you as Google is because you're a B-to-B. You're not marketing consumers. Facebook's a better consumer outlet, as you might guess, because who's on Facebook? It's not businesses looking to staff.

LinkedIn might be good for you. Yeah, yeah, LinkedIn can, I guess, do ads. Yeah, yeah, you can do, again, you can do force-placed ads based on keywords, and there's all kinds of processes you can use with both of those. So what was your net on your 2.1? About 370. Okay. All right.

If I'm in your shoes, I'm going to hire somebody for the 50 to 70 range that is a world-class digital marketer. You know, it's funny you mentioned that day because I have been like, considering reaching out and hiring a sales slash marketing person and I even have a couple candidates in mind. Now, sales and digital marketing are way different. Sure. Sales is analog, shaking hands, eyeball to eyeball, human interaction. Digital marketers don't know how to do that.

To find maybe people that are specialized in either. Or outsource or outsource the digital marketing and get a freelancer. and it just does a contract basis. But the problem you've got is you've got to really spend some time picking this person as if you're going to outsource it, as if you were hiring them full time. I want you to really understand and make sure they are competent because here's the thing. Everyone in their 20s up to 35 years old has grown up with a magic wand in their hand and then they all think they're digital marketers.

There's not a 27-year-old on the planet that doesn't think they know something about SEO. Okay? They just do. It's native to them. And they actually do know something about it. But that's different than being an expert on, you know, laying out a digital campaign

with Google Keywords and a LinkedIn strategy, which is what you and I are talking about. I don't actually know how to do those things, but I got a whole bunch of people on our team that do know how to do them. and so that's what you're interviewing for is, did I do a website once that worked while I lived in my mother's basement, or am I an actual digital expert?

Sure, and so a person to do this full-time versus, like, outsourcing it. You got an interview for what I was talking about either way. Right, of course. That makes sense. Thank you. Because here's the problem. Too many times at your stage of business, folks that we're coaching, and it actually never happened to me

because the internet didn't exist when I was at your stage. But what we're finding is, is they know they need to do this, and someone comes in and convinces the guy with a little bit of smoke and mirrors, you, the guy, that they can do anything, and they're the genie in a bottle, and all of a sudden you drop 20 grand

on a marketing contract with a freelance guy and find out later that he can't find his butt with both hands. And it's just, you know, it's a problem. And so you've really got to not just be the only sale they make. I always laugh and say, sometimes I think we hired a salesperson. The only sale they made was when we hired them. So you really got to get down in the weeds with them

and have them give you some proof text, give me some actual examples of when they did this. Show me how this works. I'm not going to go do it. I don't want to go do it. That's why I'm talking to you. But show me how a Google AdWords strategy works. show me what a LinkedIn strategy would look like in this situation.

Let's start to unpack it and show me you know how to do it. And then set some key things that are contingent upon your payment, that they have to hit these key points. Otherwise, we're not just giving you money because you said you knew how to do marketing. That's not happening. So anyway, we're going to dig into it as if we were hiring them to be an employee. And you might want to hire them to be an employee. I don't know.

You're going to have to at some point. because this digital marketing world requires a constant pressure, and you're going to start learning words like ROI and ROI and Roaz and conversion rates and all these things on these words because you can overpay for these stinking words. You can overpay for these positions on Facebook really easily because they're not afraid to overcharge you, I can promise that. So you've really got to manage this like you're scared to death

that you don't know what you're doing because you're scared, to death because you don't know what you're doing. And you're looking over their shoulder and you're micromanaging and you're learning about it from them. I want to know what they're doing every step of the way if I'm used so that it actually gets done because we don't want fool with all this and the only thing we do is spend money and nothing happen because marketing that works makes you more than it costs you. It's free.

So a marketing strategy that works, that's where it leaves you. You're going to enjoy being there. That's the plan. So good stuff, man. Good stuff. I think you're at a cool place. And I think you definitely are going to need some help there one way or another, depending on how you choose to staff it. Folks, remember better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high-quality leaders. So take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Andre Leadership Podcast.