EntreLeadership - Unexpected Challenges and Unknown Outcomes Are NOT Unprecedented

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

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Hey guys, Daniel Tarty here with Entree Leadership. And for the last few days, I've been talking to a lot of leaders around here at Ramsey, asking how they're feeling about all this disruption, all the stuff that's been going on with coronavirus and marketplace. And I hope you guys have enjoyed that. I hope you guys have gotten some good nuggets out of these conversations. And I was thinking about this this morning. And it kind of struck me how often I'm hearing this word in the headlines and the news. A lot of people, I've even found myself saying this word,

the word is unprecedented. You know, it's like, these are unprecedented times. You know, I think that's true. You know, I mean, coronavirus, we haven't had that. We haven't had this kind of market disruption before. Certainly, like, if you're looking at stats about the unemployment rate, just going off a cliff all of a sudden, you know, I know what we mean when we say this is unprecedented.

But I looked up the definition on the word unprecedented. You know what it means? It means never been done before. And when I read that definition, for some reason this verse came in my mind out of Ecclesiastes, and the verse says that there's nothing new under the sun. In fact, it says there's nothing that has been done that has not been done before, and there's nothing new under the sun. And I thought, all right, hang on a second.

How can something be simultaneously unprecedented, like hasn't been done before, and then there's this biblical principle that says there's nothing new. Essentially, there's nothing that hasn't been done before. And I was wrestling with that tension and kind of journaling about it, and I thought, you know, I think there's a principle here. And the principle is always deeper than the context. So the context we're in is unprecedented. The context is coronavirus, this kind of disruption, unemployment rate, sitting here in 2020.

No, we've never had this specific like organization of these events where they've all come together in these, you know, exact ways. But since the beginning of time, there's been challenges, there's been disruption, there's been chaos, there's been storms. And, you know, I thought the principle really is when we have an unexpected challenge with an unknown outcome, we tend to panic. That's really what's going on here. You know, coronavirus, market disruption, we've got an unexpected challenge. We didn't expect this. I mean, I don't know if you expected it. I didn't expect it.

But some more back in January, I was setting our goals for like, man, this is going to be a banner year. Here's what we want the end of the year to look like. Here's our next five years. I was very strategic. I had my plan. I was ready to go. The market was doing fine. And I made a lot of assumptions about this year that things were going to be, you know, business as usual, up and to the right.

And as I've talked to you guys, business owners, out there, you guys are telling me the same thing. Yeah, we were, we were poised to have our best year ever. We were not expecting this. Yet, here we are. We've all got an unexpected challenge. And then the part that makes it really hard, especially as leaders, is the unknown outcome. How long is it going to last? How long are we going to have to all stay in our houses? How many people am I going to have to have really difficult conversations with? Am I going to have to fire people? Am I going to lose my business? You know, I tend to kind of go to worst-case scenario when I don't have a clear vision of the outcome. I think we all do,

and I think it's human nature that we do that. And, you know, the truth is, though, if I take the situation that we're currently in right now, and I put it to the side, I think back on my life, there's so many situations where I've had an unexpected challenge with an unknown outcome. And I bet you have, too. You know, think about when I was a young parent, you know, the first time that we had kids, every little thing they had, you know, everything that was wrong, you know, they had a little temperature. Oh my gosh, they have a 99 temperature. Do we run to the hospital right now? We panic and we call your parents and they're my wife's parents, whoever, and they're like, no, you're fine. Just let him sleep, you know. But if you hadn't had that

experience before, it's an unexpected challenge, an unknown outcome, and then you figure out from someone who's like, no, here's the outcome, it's going to be fine. But I remember when my daughter, Savannah, who's now 11 years old, she was probably three or four, and she was at the stage where kids, you know, they start climbing up on everything. They climb up on the furniture and get off the furniture, but they're also so cute and you let them play on the furniture anyway, even though, you know, it's probably going to be a problem. And it was this stage of life. And I remember being at work and getting a call from my wife in the middle of the day. She said, hey, Savannah fell off the counter. She had climbed up on the counter. She fell off and she landed on her

head. And I just, I can still put, I can, I can see exactly where I was when I got this phone call because my whole world stopped. My four-year-old landed on her head, and that's all I knew. It was an unexpected challenge, and I didn't know what the outcome was going to be. And I panicked. And I rushed home. I got Savannah, I got Emily. We went to the ER. I remember sitting in the ER for, I was probably 30 minutes, but it felt like 30 hours. Because the whole time, I'm just in this, like, this washing machine, you know, like tumbling in my brain, like, is this going to be really, really bad? I don't know what the outcome is going to be. And, you know, we went in and the doctors checked her out and she was fine. You know, they said, hey, we feel like she's good. She doesn't

have a concussion. Go home. Keep an eye on her. She had a little bruise the next day on her head. And then, you know, we're back to life. And if you've had, you know, kids, and especially if you've had a few and through the years, you realize they're pretty resilient. You know, most of the time, it's fine. But as a new parent with this big challenge in front of you, you're worried that this could, you may have totally bond as a parent and, you know, your kid's going to die because you did something stupid or you let them do something stupid. And that hardly ever happens. But until you experience it and go through it, your emotions just kind of take over and they hijack your brain. They cause you to feel fear. I remember, you know, moving out here from Texas, my wife and I loaded up

everything that we had. And we said, let's move out to Nashville and, you know, go conquer the world. And we got out here and realized that we could have done a better job planning. We didn't have enough money. We didn't know anybody. We didn't have jobs lined up here. I'm not even sure. In hindsight, I'm like, what are we thinking? You know, but I remember sitting in our apartment here in Nashville with no money to pay the rent. And my wife, Emily, looking at me going, you either got to figure this out or we got to go back home. And I found myself in this unexpected challenge and I didn't know what the outcome was going to be. And I remember feeling fear and eventually found a job and started delivering sandwiches to pay the bills and eventually met somebody at church and started

working for Dave Ramsey and 16 years ago. And it's been an incredible journey since then. But I still remember thinking, we're going to have to load everything up and go back home with our tail between our legs because I screwed this up. You know, I remember as a leader the first time that I that I hired somebody, feeling scared about that. Unknown outcome. I don't know if I'm going to get this right. I remember the first time I had to fire somebody. I remember the first time that, you know, we had this big event lined up and we were going to take everybody out into this really cool resort down in Mexico for one of our entree leadership events and a hurricane was coming right at this resort. And people are calling cancel and saying, hey, we see the hurricane. We're, we see the hurricane. We're

worried about coming in, and I thought this whole event is about to crumble, and I was paid on commission on this event, so my whole paycheck was about to go away, and I was about to be in debt to Dave Ramsey, because all this was going to get canceled out, and he'd already paid me the commission, and I thought, I'm going to have to pay this back. I was panicking. It was an unexpected challenge with an unknown outcome. Right at the last minute, the hurricane turned away, and everything was fine. But guys, right now, we're all experiencing this principle of we're in an unexpected challenge with an unknown outcome. And that is not unprecedented. And that is good news, because if it was really unprecedented, we wouldn't know what to do. But what we can do is we can

look back and go, all the times in our lives, as leaders, you and me, when we've been up against an unexpected challenge with an unknown outcome, what do we do? Because we got through it. I mean, we're here, right? We got out of bed today. So what do we do? So I started thinking about, well, what did I do in these situations? At least what did I do that was helpful? If I could go back in time, I could probably throw out some stuff that wasn't helpful. But the pattern for what's been helpful for me in any situation where I had this challenge and I didn't know how it was going to work out, I think through all these situations, and the first thing that I do that's helpful is I just focus. I set aside some time. I get a piece of paper. I get a pen and I just get all my thoughts and feelings

out and I focus on, okay, what's important right now? What can I control? What can I actually? What can I actually do about this situation? Focus. Get all the white noise out of the way and all the distraction and all the fear and the what-ifs and focus on what's important right now. And then I write it down. There's something for me about writing it down going, okay, I've labeled that thing. I can actually do something with that once it's on paper.

Second thing that I do after focusing is communicate. Whether it's communicating with my wife, what we're going to do with our daughter, communicating with the team about, hey, what are we going to do if this hurt? McCain hits this resort and we have to cancel the event. But the idea is just don't go it alone. Start communicating with people, with your peers, with your team, with your support group. If you stay in your own head, that isolation just continues to perpetuate the fear, the anxiety, that washing machine effect where we just feel like it's total vertigo. So we got to focus. We've got to communicate. And then the third thing is just get creative.

You know, the reason you have a business is because you're creative. You figured out a creative way to solve a problem. And you come up with either a product or a service, and you figure out creatively how to deliver that thing. And then there's another problem that comes up with the customer, and you create a solution. You in your nature, as an entrepreneur, as a leader, are a creator. You take a problem, you create a solution.

And so the third thing that you do, when you're in the midst of a challenge, you didn't expect it. This wasn't your plan. In fact, the plan that you did have is worthless now. So guess what? You have to create a new plan. Create a new plan. So I understand this is unprecedented. I understand maybe you've never had to work from home before.

I understand you might be having to close things up or lay people off or certain lines of business are just tanking right now. I get that. And I'm sorry. That's hard. It's hard for all of us. But we're going to rebuild and we're going to relaunch and we're going to get through this. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to realize that this isn't actually unprecedented and you aren't out of luck. You aren't in a hopeless situation because you can still focus,

you still communicate, and you can get creative. So remember who you are, you're a problem solver. Remember that this isn't really unprecedented. It's not unprecedented in your life for you to have challenges. You're right back where you've always been. What'd you do before to get through those challenges? Focus. Communicate. Get creative. Guys, I'm telling it, you do those things, you're going to make it. You do those things, you're going to win. You do those things, it's going to be painful short term, but long term, we're all going to be better as a result. So that's what I want you to do.

Get creative, get focused. Come up with the plan. And together, we're going to get through to the other side of this thing. Cheer up for you guys. Believe in you guys. We're going to make it. Let's go.