EntreLeadership - We Lost our $3.5 Million Business

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Today we’ll hear about: Business owners need to start over after their partner stole their clients A business partner wants to continue getting paid, but hasn’t worked in 4 years A business owner struggling to fire his top team member for not following policy A business owner that has no idea what to do with an extra $500k in savings Next Steps 🗳️ Submit your question for a chance to be on the show with Dave Ramsey: https://ter.li/askus 👣 Find out what Stage of Business You’re In:  https://ter.li/axd39b ✉️ Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/y8qdo7   🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/fcazl2   🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/wcjhpu ☎️ Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: https://ter.li/ycznhl 💵 Learn more about Ramsey SmartDollar: https://ter.li/4imot0   🗳️ Help us make the show better! Please fill out the quick survey form. https://bit.ly/3O8fRvh   Offers from Today's Sponsors NetSuite: https://ter.li/x1t20q BELAY:  https://ter.li/yohiu6 Payority:  https://ter.li/fh2oau Trainual:  https://ter.li/a8zexl Listen to more from Ramsey Network 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy https://www.ramseysolutions.com/compa… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entrary Leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, with over 35 years of experience in the trenches. Yes, I've been there, done that, and I've got all the T-shirts. Yeah, some of them still fit, some of them don't. But, hey, we're here to help you with your business and leadership. I'm a practitioner. This is not theory, and it's not a think tank.

actually do this crap every day. I run this company, and I have for a long, long time, from a card table in my living room to here. So how did we get here and what do we do? We're going to talk to you about that. If you've got a question you want to ask the show, we'll fill out the form at ontoriladership.com slash ask or call and leave a voicemail at 844-944-1070. Grace starts off this particular event and from Los Angeles. Hi, Grace. How are you? I'm doing great, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I am, well, I was the president of a company that my husband and I built with our blood, sweat, and tears.

We had 34 employees, and our most recent annual revenue was $3.5 million. We had a bit of a situation. We started the company before we knew you, and we had two minority stake partners. and it turned out to be a terrible decision with them, and they basically stole our biggest clients from us. And we found out the only way that we could move forward was to dissolve the company because they would not let us buy them out. So we are back at the beginning stages, starting all over again because we had to get rid of the cancer that was in the business.

and now we're back to just the two of us. We do... Oh, so you do not have 35 team members in 3.5 million now? I do not have 35 team members or 3.5 million in your revenue anymore. Okay. It's gone. That's the history. So how long have you been starting from ground zero again?

How long ago was that? Probably about a year. Okay. And so what do you think you're going to do in 24? So we're just kind of stuck right now. We were trying to figure out how to move forward from all of the, I guess, sort of the pain and the trauma of what we had to deal with because it was really our baby. We loved that business and put our soul into it.

And the two partners were actually my husband's mentors. And we were just really stuck in an impasse and we're trying to figure out how do we... But there's not a tactical impasse. There's an emotional grieving. Yeah, that would sound about... right. There's no, all the legal and the garbage is in the rearview mirror. It's just a broken heart now.

Yes, and we were also, the industry that we were particularly working in was, we were kind of painted in a bad light in that industry. And so a lot of our connections in moving forward in that direction are kind of a hard to go forward with, if that makes sense. Well, you've got to rebuild trust because it was taken away from you. Yes. Or you got to end or you've got to get new clients, yeah, new connections, okay. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So what do you think you're going to make in 24? In 24, right now we're not actually making anything. We had, we were trying to negotiate some deals, and these deals have just fallen through. So at the moment, we don't have anything on the books, and so that's why we're trying to figure out how to regroup. and how to move forward. Okay. So the reason you don't have anything on the books, three months into the year,

is what? Why is that? Are you spending a lot of time in your own head, ruminating over this past and basically creating post-traumatic stress disorder? You know, I think last year we were for sure, definitely in 23. In 24, I spent the first three months negotiating some contracts, and it looked like it was going to be great.

It looked like it was going to be a real lucrative contract. And then it just completely fell through. Yeah, but you're working on one deal. That's true. Why? Why are you only working on one deal? Working on one deal is not a full-time job, nor is it wise. You didn't be working on 10 deals.

You've done this before. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. The last company that we had, actually, we had three major clients that supported us for seven years. And part of the problem we had with that was we knew we needed more clients. Yeah, you were set up for, you were set up to be owned by your clients, yeah. And you did get owned by your clients and the screwing of your partners, yeah. Yeah, we grew too fast as well.

We went from just my husband and I to 34 employees in three months. Yeah, which also put stupid people in your building when you grow that fast. Your interview process sucks. Yeah. Okay. Yes. And, you know, also the other thing is we have three little kids, and since we haven't really had any business, I've sort of stepped back to kind of being a home model. Okay.

So, how can I help you? So the moving forward process, what is your advice? and would you suggest that this is partly an emotional problem that we have to work through? It sounds like you were saying earlier, but also... It would be for me because I get mad about this stuff, and then it rolls over and over and over in my head until I turn it loose and go on with the future, and it takes up... Like, your partners are living rent-free in your head, your ex-partners.

Yeah. And you spend all your time back... I do it. I've done it, too. I spent all my time back there going, how could I be so stupid as to let these people have access to the keys to the kingdom and basically take everything from me? I must be an idiot. And I run this over and over and over in my head instead of looking forward. And if I'd spend the same amount of emotional energy looking forward, see, like when you started, you didn't have all this negative baggage in your brain. So all you could think about is how wonderful the world is and go get something.

And I got to get your brain back there because that's what I have to do with me. I have to get my brain back there. I got to go back to go, okay, yeah, I did something stupid. I let somebody have access to something they shouldn't have had access to. I put up with it too long. I did a bad deal. I built a horrible structure on the partnership. I hired too fast.

Okay, that's all the dumb things I used to do. But now what am I going to do this time? I'm going to learn from all that, and I'm going to be a whole lot better than I was. And so I'm a lot better business person than I was when I started that other company, because now I've got this thing called experience. And I'm going to think positive. See, if your brain was completely clear and all you were doing was dreaming and happy

and positive and excited about business, you'd be looking at 20 deals instead of one. Okay. And you'd have some stuff on the books. And there's always been somebody in, quote, the industry, whatever the industry is, that doesn't want to work with anybody. And that's just part of life.

I can promise you there's some people don't work with Dave. And we go ahead and do it anyway, right? We just go somewhere else. That's fine. Next. You know, I'm not sitting, I'm not going to spend time thinking about them. They don't make me any money.

They don't help me help people. They don't do anything. I've got to move on to the next thing. Or you guys need to start a whole new thing, one of the two. Just get completely out of this industry and go to a whole different thing. I don't care. But that's why you don't, your confidence is shaken and you're angry and hurt. And so you're being very tentative instead of strutting with swagger into these meetings

and doing 10 times more meetings than you should, than you're doing now. That's what I think I'm hearing. Am I accurate? No, you are completely accurate. It's been a struggle to actually get meetings. Yeah. And maybe it's a confidence thing.

It is. It's in your voice. It's in your voice. Yeah. You can smell it. You can smell it. I mean, you know, and think about it. Somebody comes into an interview for a job,

and, you know, they got fired from the last. last job and their confidence is gone. The way they walk, the way they carry themselves, the shape of their vocal cords. So it sounds like stress or anxiety or something in their voice. They're up an octave from what they ought to be. Instead of the guy that comes in and just sits down as cool as a cucumber and doesn't care whether he gets hired or not and is all confident, not arrogant, just confident. And you pick up on all the body language cues, you pick up on all the voice spacing and the verbiage that's being used. And we pick up on all these nonverbal cues.

And you can't help but put those off when you're hurting and grieving. And so this is a healing process for you. And I think one way to overcome it is just massive amounts of activity. Massive amounts of activity. I think you go get 25 appointments, blow some of them up, mess them up, cry when you get to the car, bang the steering wheel, whatever, drive home, throw something and get up and do it again tomorrow and just keep moving and keep moving and keep moving and keep moving and keep moving otherwise these people that screwed you win and the best revenge is success so go build

a big old thing nah nah nah nah that's the best revenge there is you know anybody that messes you over i mean can you think about somebody mess me over in the radio business back in the day what they look like right now it's so cute cute. Yeah, the best revenge is success, right? That's what you need to do. That's awesome. You have the right stuff, Grace. It's just the hard thing I have to do, you have to do when we get screwed over is quit blaming ourselves. We've got to forgive ourselves. And we've got to quit living in all that junk in the past. The rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason. The windshield is Grace. Go forward. This is the Ontario Leadership podcast. Well,

today I've got the privilege to announce that Summit 2025 is going to be in Denver, Colorado next year. It's going to be May 18 through 21, and man, have we got an incredible lineup for you? My good buddy, leadership expert, the grandpa of the business, best-selling author of 80-plus books, including the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership,

John Maxwell is going to be with us at Summit on stage. Man, that's huge. crowd favorite and bestselling author of the five disfunctions of a team pat linchioni back again that's a regular many other world-class business and thought leaders including our very own dr john deloney and ken coleman you're going to leave summit with the insight you need to build a unified team and transform the future of your business and if you purchase your tickets now you secure better seats for you and your team because for the first time ever we're doing reserved seating for the whole room so go to entreeleadership dot com slash summit and get get your seats now. So that last caller, Grace, whose partners, minor partners,

they weren't even major stockholders, screwed her over. They took the seat of mentor of her husband and then messed them over, hurt them in so many different ways. They hurt them financially. They hurt them in the marketplace. It caused their business to go away, have shut down, start completely over. That is why I tell people don't to do it. To know. not do partnerships. The only ship that won't sale is a partnership. We've been doing small business coaching for decades, tens of thousands of small businesses. With the exception of law firms and medical practices, which have a very unique process for building a partnership that's different than a general partnership, if you set those two aside, the number of regular

businesses, so to speak, that are built on a partnership that survive 10 years, I can count them on one or two hands. Just hardly doesn't happen because something goes wrong. Something bad happens. It can be a straight-up crook. It can be something else, but something happens in one of the person's lives or something, and you really get yourself in a mess. So I don't do partnerships. I stay away from them for that reason. And it's not because I'm arrogant. It's not anything like that. It is because I'm a control freak, but I can't control the controllables of someone else's misbehavior, and then they take me down with them because I'm trying to swim with a concrete block around my neck. It doesn't work. Called a deadbeat partner. That's a problem. I'm telling

you, it's a problem. So, guys, you get ready to start a business, just start it, figure it out. You don't need your beer drinking buddy in the deal with you. It's a bad plan. Oh, we always liked each other. That's a real good way to not end up liking each other, okay? so don't do it. Jeff is with us in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Hi, Jeff. How are you? I'm great, Dave. I hope you are, too. I am. How can I help? Well, I talk about partnerships. I've got a family business. I'm part owner. It's an HVAC and appliance repair company. We've been in business for 30 years. I have 10 team members. Last year, we did a little over 1.2 million in revenue. Cool. I am 49%. My brother's 49%. And my dad is 2%.

And for 30 years, our division of duties, I pretty much handled the HVAC and business stuff, and my brother handled the appliance side of it. And when COVID hit and the shutdowns happened, that March of 20, my brother came in one day and said, cancel Mike Bowles. I'm going home. And he did. And he has not been back to work in four years. Why?

He has no interest in coming back. we do have some real estate together and he does do some of the managing of that and that's kind of his excuse for not coming back to the service company he still expects to get a paycheck and he still expects to have a company vehicle he still expects to get half the profits four years later i'm kind of tired of that setup and my question to you is um what let's there that can be done about it. I intend to reach out to him. Is it just the two of you involved? Who owns the other 2%? My dad. Is your dad still involved? Not much. He's about 90 years old. So he was just the 2% to kind of break disputes and break ties and that sort of thing. Yeah. And so what's he say about all this?

Well, since my brother hasn't been at work for four years, he's been spending a lot of time with my dad. so my dad thinks he hung the moon. So whatever he says, my dad's pretty much on board with him. Okay. So who makes all the operational decisions on paychecks and so forth? I do. Okay. Okay.

So you're ready to force everybody's hand? Because I think it's time. I think it's more than time. Okay. So just tell him, turn in his keys for the truck. Bring the truck back. And you're no longer on payroll. No worky, no payee.

and yes you own 49% and yes you will get 49% of the profits and the profits will occur after we pay my increased salary because I'm now the CEO of the whole freaking place you guys are out none of you have access to the business I'm running the business if you don't like that buy me out you and pop go over there and have your play your gen rummy and y'all figure out how you're going to send me some money because I'm done doing this I'm done supporting your dead butt weight I'm over it. So no more paychecks and the profits will be distributed according to the partnership agreement, which is 49% of the profits.

But there's not going to be a lot of profits warning because after you pay my salary that's increasing, there's not going to be a lot of profits left. Because I'm going to convert profits into my pay. And there won't be anything getting to the bottom line. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Just fixed you, buddy. And that's going to go over like a lead balloon. Yeah.

Well, guess what? Anything you do is going to go over like a lead balloon. a lead balloon other than continuing this madness that you're doing now. That's true. Anything you do that stops giving him stuff that he doesn't deserve is going to piss off this dead weight parasite, isn't it? I agree. Okay, so you got a choice.

You either keep doing it to keep him happy. God help us. We want him happy. But, you know, at some point I'm you, I don't care anymore. So I would, you know, if you want to before you do that, sit down and go, okay, guys, the three of us are going to meet and we've got to decide something different because I'm not okay with this

and sit down in person and try to work with you. I'd love to maintain relationship with your dad. I'd love to maintain relationship with you, brother, but this is unreasonable for you to continue to get a paycheck in a truck when you don't work there anymore. If you want to work there, that's fine. I was going to offer a buyout to them.

That's fine. I would prefer to do that, but I was kind of wanting to get set up for the plan B, I don't know how well that's going to go over because they like the way, especially my brother likes the way it is. Yeah. Okay.

So here's the thing. Sometimes in a negotiation, you have to establish the rules. Here's the rules. It's not going to continue like it is. Something's going to change. Now, we get to decide together what's going to change because I'm not going to continue the way it is. So you can buy me out.

I'll buy you out. or I'll shut you out. These are our three options. Shutting you out is the most violent and harsh of the three. But I'm kind of at that stage right now, but the fact you've been taking advantage of us, of me and my family, with no conscience whatsoever for the last few years.

But we don't have to go to step three, but we can escalate step three. No, I like it the way it is. No, you don't understand. The way it is is no longer an option. There's three options, and the way it is is not one of them. I buy you out, you buy me, me out or we get violent with the reset.

You decide which one do you want to play? One of these three things is going to happen, starting now. We need to decide that in the next two weeks. I'm done. And that's the time frame I'm looking at. Yeah. But I can't keep them out of the business, can I? I can't tell them to stay away from the business, can I?

Why not? Why not? You're the guy running it. But they've got part interest in it. So what? So what? I just thought that that would give them legal right to at least be there. No, they don't have legal right to do that. All they've got legal rights to is 49% of the profits and 2% of the profits.

If there's not any profits, they don't have any rights to anything. But there's nothing, do you ever, I assume you guys don't have any written agreements, right? No. I figure, no. Yeah, this is a train wreck. It is. Yeah. So, I mean, there's nothing that says, there's nothing that says you're the operating partner, so I just changed the locks.

Okay. I got control of the checkbook. Good luck with this. Sue me. This just got violent. I'm cutting you out, dude. Bring your truck back, or I'm going to turn in a report for theft on it.

Grand Theft Auto. You want that one? We can do that. Seriously, that would go? I don't know. Okay. I'm just kidding. The point is, that's not the point.

We're not going to get there. The point is you got to jostle this thing loose with a personal, in-person conversation with the two of them and leaving it the way. way it is is no longer an option. You've got to take that off the table. So something's going to change. I'd love for us as three grown men to decide what that is reasonably, because I'm not going to continue the way it is. I can buy you out, you can buy me out, or I can shut you out. Which one do you want to do? And just tell them that up front. I would. I'm getting ready to do one of

these three things. So I'm forcing you to decide to decide one of the good options so I don't have to go to number three, which is the violent bad option. Okay. I'm going to pick up the truck, put it back into our fleet and start using it again to make money. I'm going to change the locks, and I'm going to raise my salary and stop your paycheck to where profit distributions are going to equal close to zero. That's the violent third option. Y'all don't want to. You all don't want me to do that. It's not good for you. It's going to hurt our family. It's going to hurt our relationships. But my relationship with y'all is already hurt by the way you all are treating me. That's exactly right. And so now we're going to change that so we can begin a healing in the

relationship and we can begin to move forward. Now, does this partnership that doesn't have any written documents, does it have a name? I guess it has a name. Yeah, it's an S corporation, yes. Oh, okay. And does it own real estate? It does not. We have a separate LLC, just my brother and myself, that owns real estate. We've got about $2 million in real estate. Okay. All right. So that'll be the next issue problem. And then the next, and the way you do that one, it's very simple, if it goes violent, is you're going to have to go before a circuit judge. It's going to cost you about $10,000 in court costs and attorney's fees. And the judge is going to demand the disillusionment of this partnership, which means the real estate's going to be liquidated. and everybody gets their part. If we don't voluntarily sell it off

or buy each other out or split it up. How many pieces of real estate is? Can you all split it off? The pieces, 50, 50? We could probably work it out at least close, I would think, yes. If I were you, I'd take a hit. Or as a matter of fact, you could shovel some of the real estate his way

in return for the 49% of the company, right? I could. You could do some trading that way if this guy wants to be reasonable. Once he understands, clearly, we're not. not going to continue as it is. Not an option. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to blow this up if we don't, with good conscience and as two adults or three adults, figure this out together. So I'll shovel you a bunch of the real estate in return for your 49% of the company, and we can call this a day. And then you're going to make your money on real estate. I'll make my

money on the business and the little bit of real estate I got left and we'll split that LLC up. but we're not going to continue the way it is. You not working here and getting paid is bull crap. That's a nice way of putting it. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty clean. Yeah, it's gone on too long. Yeah, it has. It has.

And the problem is he waits until you get so angry about it that you're ready to sever your relationship with your own brother because he's being such a putz. And that's where it's come to. I mean, that's, I don't like that. I don't either. I hate it. I hate it. But it speaks to his lack of character. It does. Yeah, Thanksgiving dinner sucks.

You're right. Yeah. So anyway, I would sit down with them and say, guys, look, I'm sorry. I should have come to y'all sooner before I got this frustrated, but now I'm really, really, really frustrated. And I'm at the end of my row. So we're not going to continue the way we are. I think the best scenario is that the brother, brother, you and I, I end up with a company, you end up with more real estate than half, and we'll figure those numbers out. I'll set some of the real estate and the LLC over to all set your 49%. I'm going to buy you out at the company. You're going to end up with a pile of real estate.

I'm going to end up with a little bit of real estate or whatever the numbers work out. And we're going to call, and then you can go on, and I can go on, and we can still love each other and be kind, and Thanksgiving dinner will be great. I sure hope we can sit down and work that out because I need you to really understand I'm not going to go forward with this. or if you want the company, you can come over here and run it, and I'll take a bunch of the real estate. We can reverse the process.

I don't care, whichever way you want to do it. But it sounds like he didn't want to run the company, and so there you go. And if we cannot come to some kind of reasonable, fair distribution of this stuff, I'm going to blow it up. I'm going to blow the whole thing up. It's going to get nasty.

Let's don't do that. Please don't do that. Please don't do that. because we're not going to continue the way this. You just got to take the thing off the table. You're going to tell him like six times because he's not going to hear it. That's why I'm doing this. Because I can tell you this guy.

He thinks he can blow you down and you're just going to, this guy thinks he can keep this in deal intact. And you're going to have to remind him there's hand grenades all around your belt. You're getting ready to drop them right there on the floor. This is going to blow up. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. couple of things I've discovered the hard way. In an effort to pacify someone or an effort of just

somehow avoiding dealing with something, I have too many times let things that I knew were wrong go on too long. Not wrong on some kind of illegal basis or something, but for instance, a team member who's really sweet, but they're just not getting their work done. Instead of holding them accountable for getting their work done, I just let it go on. And then a hundred percent of the time that you have something like that partnership we were just talking about with that brother, or you've got some kind of a dispute, or you've got a conflict of some kind of some kind with a team member or whatever it is. A hundred percent of the time you don't deal with it, the longer you wait to deal with it, the worse it is. It never heals itself.

you've got to, part of leadership is you have to step into the uncomfortable, and the sooner you do surgery and remove the splinter, the better chance you have a surviving, the relationship, the situation. The longer you let it go on, the more frustrated you get, and the more credibility you lose, and the more, the bigger the blow-ups going to occur. And so, you know, if you, something as simple as on the financial show, on the Ramsey show, sometimes people say, well, you know, I had a credit card and I just didn't pay it for five years. And why didn't you ever deal with it? Well, I just never dealt with it.

Well, every minute you let that go on, it gets to be a bigger and bigger and bigger problem. The problem does not shrink. You know, I haven't paid on my student loans in 10 years. And so they tripled. And so the problem doesn't shrink if you don't deal with it. The problem gets bigger because problems always resurrect. They always come back up if you don't deal with them. But when you put them out of their misery and you say, okay, I dealt with it. It's over. I dealt with it.

The sooner you deal with it, the smaller the effort is going to be. The longer you wait to deal with it, the bigger the explosion is going to be. And so family stuff like that that drags out and drags out and drags out, the longer it drags, the bigger the explosion's going to be. Because the more ingrained the players are in the misbehavior. And so a team member, if you let it go on for two years and they go, well, they think it's normal then. they're very ingrained in that misbehavior.

But if the first time they did it, two minutes later, you're sitting at their desk going, hey, we don't do that here. We don't do that here. Like, we had a guy coming in late when we first started years ago. There was about 30 of us. He kept coming in late, coming in late, coming in late. And so one day when he got to work, I was sitting at his desk with my feet up on his desk, just waiting on him.

Like, okay. And he came in like 45 minutes late. I'm like, dude, you just stole from me. you're a thief. 45 minutes, I've been paying you and you ain't been here working. That's stealing. We're not going to go forward with that. So this is the last time you and I are going to talk about this.

And so if you're late again, just bring a box to load your stuff. You're going to need a box. And you know what? It worked because for like, I don't know, for four months he was never late. And then I looked up one morning and it was like 9.30 and he's coming through the parking lot. But he had his box. So it was good. And that was it.

So, I mean, the sooner you deal with it, the better it's going to be. But the long, he'd only been with this short period of time, but he just, at the other place, they didn't give a crap whether he came to work or not. And we like care that you come here when we pay you and stuff. It's weird. And so, you know, he just thought it was normal. No, it's not normal. You can't do this here.

And so he got part of the message anyway. It worked out. But, man. All right. Chris is in Detroit. Hey, Chris, what's up? Fan, love the show, listen all the time. Thanks.

How can I help? Well, I have a staffing company and I have a staff of about seven internal employees. Last year we did about $5.2 million in revenue. Way to go. Yeah, thanks. And I'm having some challenges with one of my recruiters. So she's been with me for about two years now. She's been the best recruiter in this role we've had so far as far as like generating revenue.

The client's lover. She's fully engaged. She loves what we do, what she does. she's aligned with our mission. However, it's been a challenge with her just handling the regular day-to-day expectations of the job. Simple stuff like documentation, follow-ups, things like that. I attempted a coach her over the last year and a half. My manager's attempted to coach her over the last year and a half.

She continues to make the same mistakes. I even had her on a PIP about six months ago, saw some improvement temporarily, but then she's reverted back to her. Where we're at now is that I feel like this has affected the team. They're starting to resent her, get frustrated with her and her behaviors. And you've lost credibility with the team because you're tolerating this bullcrap. Exactly. But I've had a lot of conversations with her, direct conversations.

And I'm just basically at that point where I'm mentally and emotionally exhausted. And I don't know what else to do. I don't think there's anything else you can do. I think you've done everything. I think her time with you is done. Yeah. And I feel like I already knew that answer, but I've been told in the past that sometimes I'm a little too brash

and need to give people opportunities. You gave her six. She's been on a program. You talk to her, you talk to her, the manager talked to her, you talk to her, you talk to her, and for a short period of time it cleans up, and then she goes right back to the same junk. Because what you just told me, you're not brash,

You're not sudden. This has been very, very methodical. It's what you described to me is all that true? I mean... Yeah, 100% true. Okay. I mean, so you have talked to her multiple, multiple times. Managers have talked to her.

You put her on a program and said, if you don't stop doing this, you're going to be gone. She stopped for a while and then she went right back to it. That's what I heard. Did I hear you right? That is correct. You're not brash. You're not sudden.

You're not rash. You're anything but. Rash would be you walk in, talk to her once, and then the next time you talk to her, you know, you just fired her on the spot, you know, didn't even hardly talk about it. I mean, that might be a bit edgy, right? Probably would have been deserved, but it might be a bit edgy. But this is not edgy. I mean, you've given this woman every chance in the world.

And the problem is she makes you good money, so it makes you want to hold your nose. Decent money. I mean, she's one of your top recruiters, you said. Well, I mean, yeah, in that specific seat. But overall, you know, she's performing average, but the best that we've had so far. So that's definitely one of the factors I've been considering. The rest of the team production will go up as a result of her leaving because the cloud that she brings in like pig pen, every time she walks into the room, remember pig pen on peanuts, you know, when she walks into the room,

there's a cloud over you for not dealing with it and over her because she gets away with it while The rest of them are diligent, follow the protocols, follow the procedures, and aren't dropping balls. And yet we've got this one. Sanctioned incompetence demoralizes. John Maxwell says that. And you're demoralizing the team. And you know that. You told me that.

Your team will bow down and say, thank you, good Chris, good leader, when you actually finally take action. I'm sorry. I hate it for her. I hate it for you. It's painful to do this, but this lady's done. She's done. I, I, that's what would happen at Ramsey. I mean, we, we, no one is ever surprised when they get fired here.

It doesn't happen that often. We hardly ever fire anybody. But when we do, they, they're not surprised. They, we've gone through the exact procedure you do. We sit down, we talk about it. We say, okay, here's, here's the expectation. Then the next time we talk about it again, we talk about it again. We hold them accountable.

It's very clear. Then we have what we call an emotional firing. We say, if this happens again, bring a box, you know, because we're done. We're at, this is the last time. we can talk about it, and then they do it again, they bring a box. I mean, that's just like the last guy I was talking about a minute ago, and that's really what you've been doing here. And so you gave her every opportunity to do her job, didn't you?

Yeah, I feel like I have. That's what you told me. That's what I heard. Yeah. Yeah. So Henry Cloud says in his book, Necessary Endings, you have to end a situation, a relationship, a job, an employment situation, whatever it is.

You have to end it when you lose hope that the future is going to get better. The guy I'm talking to has no hope this lady's ever going to stop doing this. Yep, right on. She's fired, man. I'm sorry. I mean, you can be gentle, you be kind. You're a nice severance or whatever, and you don't have to be mean. But we're just going to sit down and go, you know, we've tried and this is not going to work

because you just refuse to do this stuff. So this is your last day. It was a good ride, though. Thanks for being here. And gosh, anyway, we can help you in your. future life. We want to be friends with you. We love you. We want you to win, but you can't, we've come to the conclusion, you can't do it here. And, you know, it takes about three minutes and fill out the paperwork and whatever. It's sad. It breaks her heart, breaks your heart, and then everybody

goes off to work. And that's what we do. And you just, because if the, the productivity of the rest of the team is going to go up, because their view of you, their respect for you is going to go up because you're not playing favorites while you're making them. do their job, you're not making her do her job, and it's like you're too weak to deal with it is how they feel. They may not verbalize it, but when you finally deal with it, oh, man, it's going to be, there's a breath of fresh air comes into the building. The spirit changes in the building when you deal with it for so many things. And you just have to, man. I'm sorry. It's awful. We're done. We're done. That's how it works. This is the Entree Leadership podcast.

Thanks for hanging out with us. If you want to help us out, You can follow the show, click the follow button, the subscribe button. If you have a method of sharing it, click a share button or send off the link. We would appreciate the help. And a nice five-star review is very helpful. Mama said, if you hadn't got anything nice to say, don't say nothing at all. There's a good idea. If you are using your energy to troll anyone, anywhere at any time, you should like get a life

and use your energy to go do something good in the world. I don't understand what the, I mean, you're like a vandal that spray paints us out of a building. You know, go do something good with your life, really. Josh is in Marshall, Minnesota. Where is Marshall, Minnesota, Josh? Southwest Corner. Oh, wow. Okay, middle of nothing.

Wow. Yeah. And cold, too. What's up? How can I help? Pleasure to talk with you, Dave. You too. Long-time listener.

Thanks. I am a new owner of a fabrication shop in Southwest Minnesota. purchased family business from my father, 35% over the last four years. And last year was the first year of full ownership. And we did $5.5 million in sales. Wow. What are you fabricating? Structural steel and specialty manufactured equipment.

Man, that rocks. Good for you, Stud. Cool. Yeah. I got 10 employees. And you're making bank. Way to go. We're doing pretty good.

So my question to you is this is the first year that I've had to do end of the year finances and taxes, of course. Ouch. Yeah. But we are a little bit extra cash in the account, and I'm just kind of curious and the best thing to do with that. Okay. How much extra cash? about four to five hundred thousand okay you send it to dave's bahamas fund p o box no i'm kidding okay um way to go man i hate it when an extra 400 grand shows up and that's after you got paid your

family's living and the money's just laying in the account pretty much okay do you have a good retained earnings going um business savings well i took 200 and threw in two different CDs making 5%. Is that the 400? Out of the 400, yep. Okay, no, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm asking, aside from the 400, was there already money saved in the business

for operating the business, for expanding the business, just a savings account in business. It's called retained earnings, aside from the 400. I don't have that. Okay, all right. Well, with $5.5 million, let's set aside $200 for that.

Okay. Okay, so we're going to keep. 200 in the business and that's to cover a temporary cash shortage in a month where a client didn't pay or something where you got some dips and you don't want to get in a pinch with the kind of money you're making it'd be silly to do that you don't need a line of credit you have a you have money okay and so it also could be that you pick up a piece of equipment at a deal and you expand the business or buy out a competitor a penny's on the dollar and you expand the business and you can use your retained earnings for those kinds of things and you can raise or lower the retained earnings

based on anticipated needs in those areas, okay? So let's start with 200 there and take the other 200 home. Okay. And when it goes home, what are you going to do with it? Pay off the mortgage? Yay! Now we're talking. I was thinking of that and or I still owe four years to my father.

Oh, how much is that? I can turn that into two. we got about 180 a year for four years four more yep okay so you got another 700 grand you owe him yes

oh I would throw it at that okay I wouldn't pay off my mortgage so I got him clear let's get him clear as fast as you can we got him at about 5% and the mortgage I don't care about the percentage I want him I want him paid off okay I want him clear so I'm going to change it I'm only hold 100 then

I didn't know that number was there. I didn't know that other part until now. So I'm only going to hold 100 to the checking account. In addition to the 400? Yes. There's 300 in the checking account. Yes. Okay.

How much do you need to keep in checking? You're using that as your retained earnings right now. How much do you need to keep the bill? I like to keep 200 in there. Okay. Then take 100 out of that, put it with the 400. That's 500. That's 500.

That's your dad. Okay. And then so you pay off a half a million of the seven or so that you owe him. and next year you clear him. Just like that, get it done. Yeah, and then you're done. And now you've got an extra 180 a year to do something with next time. Yeah, that's the beauty of getting out of it.

And then when that happens, you go home and take somebody home and pay off the house at that point. But I want him done as fast as you can. For his sake and your sake. Okay, that makes sense. It felt a little weird just taking it home and... No, I didn't know he was there when I said to do that. So now that I know he's there, clear him first. Okay. Yeah. That's cool. Hey, well done, sir. Very well done. Man, awesome. What a sharp young

dude. Wow. Love seeing business people win. Hey, remember better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high-quality leaders. Take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Entree Leadership Podcast.