EntreLeadership - Why People Are Leaving Your Company with Shawn Davis

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

As leaders, we know employee turnover is expensive. And while that’s bad enough, becoming demoralized because you can't seem to find a solution is even worse. Questions like, Is there something wrong with me? and Why do I even bother? start creeping into your mind. In this episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast, we interview chef Shawn Davis, owner of Big Shake’s Hot Chicken & Fish. Shawn knows a thing or two about turnover from working in the restaurant industry. But at the end of the day, he still believes investing in your team is worth it—no matter how long they’re with you. Later in the episode, we sit down with Suzanne Simms, a Ramsey Solutions board member, to hear about how she uses friendship and vulnerability to create trust with the team she leads on a day-to-day basis. Remember, life’s too short to not be friends with the people you work with!   The EntreLeadership Podcast Big Shake's Hot Chicken & Fish’s website Ramsey Solutions' Core Values Learn more about Weekly Report Tool. Download the free guide 43 Easy Ways to Recognize Your Team. Schedule a call with Tim, our producer.   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership Partners: BELAY | Gravy | Hite Digital   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844.944.1070 and leave a message, or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've watched the news lately, you know that people are quitting their jobs at a record rate. Have you experienced that? How do you get people to show up, to care, and to get it done the way you need to get it done? Well, the way to do it might surprise you. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and in today's episode, we've got two interviews on the business driver of people around the topic of inventing investing in your team. Now you may be thinking, I can't rely on my team, so why would I invest in them? Well, it's one of the keys to a team that gets work done. We're going to hear how that actually

plays out in our first interview with Sean Davis. Sean is known as Chef Big Shake and is the founder of Big Shakes Nashville Hot Chicken and Fish. They've got seven locations in three states, and he uses his restaurants to not only serve great food, but also to invest in and mentor the next generation of leaders in the business. Then in our second interview, we've got Ramsey leader Suzanne Sims on how we invest in the next generation of leaders here at Ramsey. So stick around for that. Up first, our conversation with Sean. He talks about how mentors in his life invested in him early on and how it's gotten him to where he is today. Well, this year obviously has been crazy, but I think we are starting to really hone in on growing,

diversifying what we do in the food game, right? Our restaurants are our foundation. That's where we kind of got our legs and got our notoriety. We're moving into more of an online space, the e-commerce space now. I'm really excited about some up-and-coming things. I'm doing with DoorDash nationally. So that's going to be cool.

Goldbelly has really been a great way that we've grown our third-party e-commer side. So, I mean, there's a lot of exciting things. going on. And in the interim, still building restaurants. They're still creating that brand across the country. Yeah. So how many locations and how many states? Right now in three states, we're opening about seventh. Our last one in Tampa right now. Wow. Did you ever think, was that the original plan? Was this thing going to go national? Well, I was always a, I was always a systems guy. I was always a dreamer, right? So I never, I always wanted, when I first made that first

restaurant, I wanted to make sure it's duplicatable. Because in my mind, I knew I wanted to have 30. I wanted to have 40. I wanted to have 50. So my mom was always thinking about taking over KFC if that was ever possible, but that was always in my mind. That was always in my mind. Wow, that's amazing. So take us back there. Tell us the story from when this was just an idea in your head and you didn't even have one location. Yeah. What was going on in your head and how did you get that thing off the ground? Well, I had a lot of practice, right? I had a lot of history in a restaurant game. So I didn't just come from and say, woke up one morning, like, you know, hold on my fry, take my fire chicken recipe and take over the world. So it was a lot that went into it prior to that, you know, I had, um, great individuals

that allowed me to see exactly what they were doing and how they became successful in the restaurant industry. And I was able to feed off a lot of that and a lot of work ethic and I watched them do and was a part of that same growth that helped me say, okay, I want to do it now. Because I tried it before. My kids were babies and I opened up a place in Las Vegas. And it was crazy. It was a 24-hour town. I was burning myself out. I told myself I'll never do this again in my life.

And then the bug bit me again five years later. Here you are. Franklin, Tennessee. Yeah. Wow. So you talked about people coming into your life and stepping into helping you. How do you find those mentors? Because I think there's a lot of business owners out there who maybe didn't have that or

are looking for that. How do you go about that process and make it feel natural? Well, has several different mentors, right? You know, I think in the rest of the rest of the process. restaurant industry. I started pretty young in the game and I was 12, 13 years old. And my first owner of the restaurant, his name was Giovanni Palmaro. And I lived with him. I had shared in the park with him on top of the restaurant. And he, you know, when you're 1230, you don't really care about working and all that stuff. But it was exciting for me because he was teaching

me something different, right? And I loved food. I was a big fat kid. This is great. I'm cooking and I'm eating, you know. So it was awesome. Living the dream. Yeah, living a dream. I can't get any better than this. So, you know, he taught me the foundation. And I didn't really realize how much he actually taught me. You know, I actually lived next to the liquor cabinet. So I was a guy that had to check out the liquor for the bartender. So it was this routine with me and watching them order food. So a lot of that stuff until I actually needed it, you know, it was like a reflex.

I went back to that and said, oh, I already know how to do this because I was toward this. Wow. So that was kind of your first step into the restaurant scene and the hospitality world. How did you work your way up through that? Getting to the point where I opened up my first restaurant, it was a family decision, right? Because I couldn't do it by myself. I was new to the area, so I really didn't have a lot of people that I can lean on and say, hey, can you help me out? This was me and my wife and my two kids.

So, needless to say, my two kids hated me for the first year that we opened up the restaurant because they were in there pretty much every day, full time. You know, they were 13 and 14 years all the time. And my wife, obviously, I need to buy it from her because she's going to be the one that's going to support it and help me and be by my side. So it was really a collective effort from the whole family. And then when that happened, they said, let's do it. That's when it happened. I was nervous, right, afraid. Didn't want to open up the door the first night, right?

I was like, I'm not open the door. Because were you scared it was going to fail? You always had that in the back of your head. But at the same time, I always said that if only one person comes in the restaurant, I'm cool. But that wasn't really the case. I was nervous as hell. I'm not going to lie to you. Nervous as hell.

But that day, well, that night when we opened the door, there was a line down a block. And we didn't tell anybody. literally didn't tell anybody. So it was, it was amazing, amazing feeling. And what role did the mentors in your life play in getting you to that point and then the growth from there? Well, I could tell you my dad, right? One of the greatest mentors to me in life, you know, I watched and work three jobs. You know, I knew it took to wake up in the morning and work hard and not get as least sleep as you could possibly stand and still be alive, literally. And I watched that happen. And, you know, all he taught me was great work ethic. You know, you're the first. one in and the last one to clock out. That's how you get ahead. And that always stuck with me. And that's kind of the rule of thumb with me. And I taught my kids the same thing. You know, if you want to succeed at something, you've got to be ready. You got to be there before anybody wakes up in the morning to start, right? And be there to the end of the night when it's dover with it.

And you're still there. Putting the work in. You know, if you want to get to a place where you want to be at, you separate yourself. Be that 1%. Separate yourself from everybody else that's kind of hurting around. So he taught me a lot of that. He taught me a lot of discipline, right? And I think, He's probably one of the greatest mentors of my overall understanding of what life is about and how life is going to react to me when I treated it a different way, a certain way. So I'll say he was my biggest mentor. I had others in the food business, I could say Jackie Wilson. She was a vice president of Glory Foods. When I wanted to get to a retail lane with my food products, you know, I just called up Glory Foods.

I called the corporate office. And literally, I asked to speak to the president. They said, well, the president's not here. And I read an article about her, how she actually helped sell the business to a larger conglomerate. And I was excited about just what she was doing in the food business. And I left a message and she caught me back the next day. And she was like, it's been a lifelong friend after that.

And this gave me everything I need to know about the food industry. And probably a lot more than I needed to know. But up until that point, she guided me, took my hand and said, let's do it. I got you. I'll call you whenever you want to call me. I'll pick up the phone whenever you want to chat. And I was like, okay, this is cool. And that's what I got hooked on, just bringing people in my life that can help support what I was trying to do.

Yeah, that's incredible. When you have someone in your corner like that, that puts some pep in your step for sure. Wow. So from having those mentors, you obviously became a mentor for others as you grew this team. So why did it matter to you from the beginning to say, hey, I'm going to be the type of leader, the type of entrepreneur who invests in my team? Because I watched it. You know, I watched with, you know, the restaurants who put me inside their restaurant and became, you know, helped me become who I wanted to be. I watched it.

And I know what it's worth, right? If you have individuals who work for you, they just work for you. But if you bought into their plan, their dream, their vision, where they're trying to go. I mean, you're all in. You're like, yes, let's do this together. There's no more, you know, why didn't you do this? No, we failed together, right? We achieved this together.

So you always want to be inclusive with anything that you speak to individuals about that work for you. It's us. It's not me. It's not I. It's us together. And I watched that happen. I watched that to different angles of business. And it's just, it became natural.

It became natural. And someone did it for you. And so you, I'm sure you have that feeling of wanting to pay. it forward to invest in that next generation. You see yourself in these these young people who are starting to work for you and they're young and you're going, man, I remember being that age. Yep. What was I thinking about? What were my dreams? Does that go through your head? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And it's deeper than that because a lot of times when you are investing in people, right, you might be investing time, resources, training. You know, I have one of my, I would say my

my person that really only knows my recipes. They hold the keys. They hold the keys. And a young lady named Celestina Sanchez, and she's built on me since day one. And me and her had a communication barrier for like the first two years, right? She's from Honduras. And I hired a tutor for her. I had a tutor, had the tutor sit in the kitchen.

And any order that came through anything I was saying to her or back and forth, we would communicate through the tutor. So I did that for a good six months with her. and it changed everything because the communication broke down. Once the communication broke down, now, how's your family? How's your son doing? How's school going with him?

So it goes deeper, a deeper understanding of who they are versus they're just an employee and they're just clocking in and clocking out. So how to break down a layer. It was easy to break down a layer that way. But yeah, that's something that, you know, both me and my wife truly I'm passionate about,

just really getting to know the deeper person versus just the employee. Yeah, and we've talked about that on this podcast before. It goes way deeper than just the work. Correct. You have to care about the person. Absolutely. And the best leaders, they do that.

They care about your life, not just about the results that you can bring to that job. Correct. And I'm sure in the quick service industry and the restaurant industry, you've got a lot harder job because it's harder to attract and retain people. There's just higher turnover in this industry. Does that make it harder to invest in people knowing they may not be around for long? If you have a systemized direction of how you bring people into that restaurant, whether it be through a training module that they spend a couple of weeks on, going through the kitchen and making sure they understand every station, figuring out how to you the POS system and do the things the way you taught them through either through books, smarts or through a module, I mean, once that's in place, it really doesn't matter. Because the people who are going to leave, they're going to leave anyway, kind of, because it's kind of the natural way of their flow through restaurants. but the people that stay, you kind of know that.

You kind of know that. And you talk to them, hey, what's your goal? Is there anything I can help you achieve while you're here? And I've always told people, listen, if you want to use this as a ladder to get to where you need to go, I'm cool with that. Just take a piece of what I taught you, take a piece of what my wife taught you, whatever it is. I'm fine with that. Yeah, I'm fine what you say. I'm only going to be here for three months, chef.

I'm cool. I'll teach you as much as I can in that three months so you can get to where you're going. So, you know, you can't be selfish with which you hold. Because if I hold the keys, I'm not sharing it with anybody. What good of mine? So I want to be that person and hopefully still strive to be that person while I'm still on Earth to make sure I give away as much as I can. So people gravitate and grab it and grab it because there's nothing more than seeing the success of what you giving somebody and what they've been able to take from it and watch them fly. That's what it's all about.

So you don't see this as a waste of time because you invested in them. left. You see it as they are partially successful because of me pouring into them and investing into them as a person. And if they leave, that's not a reflection on my business or me. I know they're going to do the same thing. You know, I know they're going to go out and do the same thing. And that's what it's about for me. It's about, you know, doing, giving people things that, you know, whether it be knowledge, understanding, whatever it is, you want to give them something that they hold true that they dear to their heart that they can take with them and teach somebody else the same thing you toward them so they can be successful, you know, pay it forward. If you want to call that, that's great.

But I think it just becomes more of a, you know, you want to make sure you're doing something while you're here. You want to make sure you're doing something while you're here. And if I can be remembered by that, you know, just a piece of, I don't care if it's a sentence that they put in their head that they understand whether they boil water the right way, whatever it is, I want to make sure they take it with it. Yeah. So if they leave, they'll always go, man, I remember the way Sean poured into me. Absolutely. And how that changed me and how I thought about business and life differently because of that. So how do you, you're a very open-handed business owner. For the people out there who are listening, they're going, hey, that sounds real nice, but,

man, I've been burned by having that open hand, by pouring into someone who I thought was going to be here a while or help me grow this business and they ended up burning me. How do you deal with, have you ever dealt with that? When you say burn, that's a whole lot of things. Stealing from me, that's one thing. You know what I'm saying? But just by me giving the, them an opportunity, a growth opportunity within the company and they find a better one, I don't feel any other way. I don't feel, I don't feel, it doesn't hurt me because it's what we do. You know, we're set up already to attract people.

And some people are not attracted to the, through the job description that we might have offered. So, you know, I don't feel any other way. I don't feel now somebody stealing, that's one thing. That's a burn. Now you got burned. That's disrespectful. But somebody going on for a better opportunity or a different opportunity, a lateral opportunity,

that's fine. Go, go live your life. Life is too short for me to hold on to what you're trying to do. Yeah. Yeah, and we've had people here, even on the Entree Leadership team, who they're inspired entrepreneur types and they go start their own business. Yeah. And a lot of the principles that they learned here, they go and use that in their business. And that's a beautiful thing.

Why not? Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That's what we're doing. So we talk about mentoring your team and how leadership is achieving results with and through other people. So what would you say to the business owner listening? who thinks investing in their team is a waste of time.

They go, Sean, I got too much going on. I don't have time to sit down with this person and handhold them for an hour a week. Well, eventually, you're going to be working by yourself. Because people, you know, people, they feed off of the energy of the owner, right? They're only going to do more or less to what you're trying to teach them to do. And if you're not the person who's going to sit there, ask them how their day is, well, why should I care about how your day is? I don't care if you already are screaming in the corner because it's lost $100, so I'm throwing an extra chicken out and garbage and, you know, driving your food course up through the roof. And if you don't care

about me, I don't care about you. That's the only thing that's going to happen. And you're going to be by yourself sitting in a restaurant one day, open up the door or the key, respecting your employees that come behind you and you find out everybody left. That's what's going to happen. Man. Because you never sat down and got the buy-in. So, yeah, that's not a good thing to do. It's not mentor anybody or at least bring them in so they understand exactly what your goals are. Because if you don't clearly map out and tell them exactly what your path is and what your goals are for your business, why would they care? So it's giving them that vision and that clarity. Absolutely.

That's in support of what they want, too, not just your own path. If you open up the door and say, I'm struggling every day, they're like, I've got to look for another job. But if you say, listen, these are the numbers yesterday that we achieved together and we want to try to do bigger numbers the next day. So I think we can tweak this or tweak that. Then you start getting information back, right? you start listening to them, right? Understanding what they think because they, you know, everybody has a different perspective, right? And listening to everybody else's perspective is a way to become a true leader, right?

If you're just bow-headed and just like, well, nah, nah, nah, not putting your fingers in the air. And they're like, well, this guy's crazy. I'm not going to even offer anything. Even though I see them drowning, I'm not going to get my life vest because it doesn't, it doesn't benefit them now. So what does that look like for you? What do you actually do tactically to invest in your team? Is it literally sitting down for an hour outside of, you know, being at work or what does that relationship look like? It's going through that kitchen.

Obviously, I can't be there every day at every single restaurant, but I run through that restaurant. And when I run through the restaurant, I might be there for two, three days, but I'm next to you. I'm cooking next to you. I'm frying next to you. I'm battering next to you. I'm sitting in the front one next to you. I'm stocking next to you. And talking to them while I'm doing that.

So it's always good to reassure. I wouldn't say that way. I hate that terminology, but a pat on the back and let them know that, listen, I know what you're doing. I see you. I see you. I know your name. I know what you're doing. How have you been. Thank you so much, you know, for spending the time in my restaurant

to help me achieve our goals together. So that's what I do. And I try to make sure I do it as often as I can. I would like to do it more, but then I wouldn't be able to achieve anything else in my life. But because I love that, you know, if I can stay in the kitchen for, you know, days at a time I'll do it. And I've been forced to

out at this point by my wife. But if it was my choice, I'll be there. So it's not about a certain amount of time. It's not saying, hey, if you're not spending an hour a week with each team member, you're going to fail. It's about the recognition of the time you do spend with them, making sure that that's valuable time. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's not a negative time that you're spending with them. You're saying, hey, you need to do a better job.

What's going on this? Why is this? You know, you don't want to come in and be that guy. Because those things can be fixed. Well, then they see you come around and they already are on edge. Absolutely. You're tensed up. Absolutely.

Wow. So how do you get a team that you actually enjoy investing? Because a lot of business owners go, I don't like these people. I don't want to have to mentor them and invest in them. What do you say of that business owner? Well, the bad fall off and the good always stay. Cream rises. You know, people fire themselves.

I probably, in my eight years of business, I probably fired two people. And I was for insubordination or stealing or something like that. Whether than that people fire themselves, they know if they, this is for them. So there's really no need for me to, you know, to, well, I'm not going to spend time with you because I don't like your attitude. I try to give everybody the same, you know, the same time, the same mentorship, the same, you know, pat on the back as everybody else. And if they don't like it, I mean, typically, they'll just leave and it's okay. It's fine. You weren't meant to be here. So it's not, it doesn't, no sweat off my bag.

So the people that you would call lifers, right, the ones that started with you, they're starting at these locations, and you know they're there for a long time. versus the ones who, they might come in seasonally, they're there for a few months, and then they're on to the next thing. How do you know which is which and who you're going to invest your time into? Because you spend time with them.

You talk to them, right? You talk to them, you ask them what their goals are. You ask them their opinion on things. You know, most of the, a lot of times I'll say, you know, so how was the last kitchen ran? How did you guys do over there? What did you do at the other restaurant? They'll tell me, this is the way we did it over there.

I said, do you think it should change over here? So you want to involve them. And when somebody feels involved with a process, they feel so enlightened. They feel elated because I'm like, wow, this guy's listened to what I'm having to say. And he's really making changes based off my opinion. And wow, maybe I could stay here and hang out. Maybe he'll, you know, appreciate me more by adding more money to my paycheck.

But that's what it's about, right? You know, listening and really engaging. Wow. So you can tell just based on the conversations, the questions they're asking, the level of depth and their genuine interest in the business. And you go, hey, they might be leading a location one day. I'm always doing that secretly because we, like I said, I take the philosophy of growing within instead of growing without and looking for individuals outside of our brand that I have to teach

them our culture. I have to teach them exactly what we're about. So I try to reward the people who currently work for their company to be the next leader to take over a new location that we're trying to open up because I know they know what it takes and I know they respect it because they watched me do it. And there's no greater feeling than giving that person the keys, right? Because they're like, he listened to me. He watched me. He understood what I was doing. He respects me. So if I respected somebody that highly, they're going to, in turn, respect what I put out there in people's mouths and try to feed them. So they take it that much higher as regards. Is there a way to figure this part out in the hiring process before they're even in the doors?

Is that a part of the conversation? I wish there was a magic ball that I could do that with. Are you going to be a good one? Yeah, yeah, right. I can tell you there's, I can never figure out somebody in an interview process because, I mean, somebody could sit there. I'm going to be this. They've all the right answers. All the superb answers.

I mean, squizant stuff. I'm like, what? Really? Okay. Don't show up for the first day at work. Well, I had to. My tie got flat and, you know, couldn't find a babysit. Okay.

Well, you know, so I want to see you work. You know, the way you work, especially in the restaurant industry, you, restaurants are always dirty, right? It's always dirty. I don't care how level of cleaning this you try to do. A restaurant's always dirty. But if there's a time that you're sitting there staring and waiting for something to do, I know you're not the right person.

But if you're a person that finds stuff to do and stays busy, you're the right person. That's the only thing I watch. If we're slow, what are they doing? Are they still cleaning? Are they helping something out? Are they moving boxes? Are they doing anything else other than they sitting there with their hands on the hip staring at the clock. If you're staring at the clock, I already know who you're going to be and what I can

use you for. So do you talk about things, you know, you mentioned earlier, finding out their goals? Is that something that you start to include in the hiring process where you say, hey, what are your long-term goals? Is this a place you see yourself and they go, oh, of course, absolutely. I see myself here for a long time. You know, everyone wants to have the right answer to get the job. Yeah. I think that's something that everybody should ask, right, regardless of what industry you're in is, you know, what are your goals? Because their goal might be, I want to be here for a month. I'll get a couple of paychecks out. I'm losing my house. So until you know what their goals are, you know, it could be a long-term thing or short-term thing. But it's a

question that has to be asked to any individual that's going to work for your business. Because at the end of the day, you know, we might not be aligned right away. You know, my, and that's just that's just it. We might not be on the same page. You know, you have to work hard for me. I'm not going to allow you to come into my business and just do just enough because you're trying to get to somewhere else that much faster. So, you know, I've never, you know, I've never, rant to that personally. Somebody just was super honest with me. Yeah.

But, um, I'm just here for a few weeks to collect a check, Sean. Just got to let you know, man. Things are rough right now. Car's about to get towed. So I just need a quick check, bro. Can you help? Yeah, I'd rather just write them a check and say, hey, be on your way. There you go.

You don't need to work for me right now. Man. So do you have a story where you invested in a team member and they left and it took an emotional toll other than, you know, they stole from me? Or have you always felt like it was worth it, no matter what? I have to say it was always worth it, regardless of the situation, only because I'll treat the next person different. You're the eternal optimist. I would treat the next person different.

If I got, you know, if I shed a tear or, you know, couldn't sleep at night because of something, the reason why somebody left, I would never be able to treat another. I want to treat everybody the same way. And that will stop me from doing that. Yeah. I internalize a lot of things, right? And I think I'm more emotional than the average person. But I internalize that emotion. My emotions sometimes go outwards and I want to make sure of, you know, kind of inside me

versus being, you know, somebody watching me from afar and saying, hey, what's going? There's a good guy. He's a little upset today. So I want to figure it by the same way. Yeah. Well, business can get personal for sure. I think a lot of business owners out there, they probably, they've dealt with that emotional toll because, you know, we talk about how business is easy until people get involved.

Correct. And people are, it's emotion. It's hard and you've got to get inside their brain and you want them to do the things you want them to do and the way you want it done. And you want them to show up and to care as much as you do. And that's just so hard. Is there a way you found as you've been investing into your team to get them to care as much as you do? You share their goals. You know, if you share your goals with an individual, they can either say, I want to be down this guy or not.

or, you know, my goal is to one day open up a thousand restaurants, those thousand restaurants. I'm going to need leaders in all those restaurants. Can you see yourself in that position? You know, I want to share the numbers. So we share numbers with our employees. You know, this is what we did last week. This is what we're going to do this week.

If we didn't hit it this week, let's try another week. So sharing numbers and sharing what you're actually doing in your business, it opens the world up to them because they're like, wow, then they'll become more conscious of what they're doing. They become more conscious of trying to help save money in the business if they know what it is that they're trying to achieve. So clear defined answers of questions they might not even had, and I feel is always the best way to get that buying from somebody.

Absolutely. And you've got seven locations, and you're talking about your leadership team. How do you invest into your leadership team versus, you know, an average team member? Is there a different format for that? How do you systematize that? For instance, the young lady that Celestina talked about her. So we tried to center on trips, you know. She's never in six years, seven years, she's never had a day off.

Whoa. If she's had cold or eight, I mean, she'll work and I always tell her, go home, go home. But for her, pay vacation, tell me where you want to go. Let's send you in your family. Tell me what you're, so we treat people in certain ways that we know that they care just as much as we do. You know, we make sure that we take care of them. Yeah. And is it, is there an ongoing communication that you?

have with your leadership team that kind of lets them know, hey, you're checking it. How's things going over here? How do you do that? Yeah, every Monday. Every Monday we get on a call and share, you know, pros and cons, right, for the previous week and some success stories, right, and what we could do better and just ideas, right? Engaging with ideas makes people, you know, because then you force people to think, you know, I need an idea for you once a week.

I'm going to force you to think and force you to care about what you're doing every day in my restaurant. So, you know, we say it's the idea time. I need an idea. I need you to say, okay, well, this I think. I don't know idea. I think we can do this different. I think we'll attract more customers.

Whatever it is, I just need an idea. Because without ideas, there's no growth, right? I want to grow. So if I have a room full of people who have no ideas or dreams, I'm just going to be the only guy with the idea with no help. So it's all about ideas for me. And them, you know, pushing off their great, their successes, their losses, or whatever happened that week, but the biggest thing for me is ideas. Yeah. It reminds me of our

core value here at Ramsey's self-employed mentality. And it sounds like you've been able to do that with your leadership team. I mean, they're running a location. I mean, there is a very self-employed mentality. You don't feel like you're collecting a paycheck from the boss. Correct. You have that ownership. And when you bring those ideas to the table, well, then you're a lot more bought in because you're a lot more passionate about your idea than you are someone else's that was mandated. Oh, yeah. Right. So is that part of the investing is saying, hey, what is your idea. Okay, go run with that. Let me know what the results are. Well, we'll put it on the table. If it's something that we feel like it change, obviously me and my wife and feel like it changed

and take that restaurant at a different course, absolutely we implement it. I never want to feel anybody want them to feel like they went unheard, unless it's kind of crazy idea that we're like, no way, you know, but something that's, you know, they want to, you know, add something to the menu. They want to, you know, whatever it is, you know, we'll look at it, look at the price, the margins and stuff like that and say, we'll see if it works for a month. It doesn't work for a month, we implemented your idea. But it's always good to have thinkers. I mean, look at this organization. Without thinkers, it would be nothing. So you have to have thinkers around you. Yeah. And I know you're passionate about the next generation. You've got a heart for young people.

We're talking teenagers. What are some of the ways that you've invested into those teenagers who they're not even in college yet? They don't know what that future looks like. How do you help kind of guide them on that path? Well, I'm truthful with them. I tell them my story, you know, where I came from, you know, what I've been through. A lot of time that resonates because you don't want to come off like you're a teacher or you are somebody that is, doesn't really truly understand what they're going through. You know, I came from a certain part of the town, which was a rough area. You know, if I didn't have cooking in my life at that time, I'll definitely be in jail.

It's like it's a thousand percent guarantee because I was already in the streets. So I know what it is to look for a direction. Even if you're not going to go into a cooking game, check it out. Check it out. I'm going to teach you what I know. Just check it out. Give you an alternative, and you make that decision. But I think it's important that, you know, you have to give all what you know,

all your keys of success up, right? Regurgitate it. It has to come out of your system. You know, you're not promised tomorrow. So if I doubt everything I know in my head and never gave it to anybody, I'll be selfish. So I want to try to give that to as many people as I possibly can. Give yourself away. Give it away.

And that's beautiful. I love your heart for this stuff. Anything you're excited about as far as business goes coming up in the future? I'm just excited about waking up every day. It's my age, bro. I'm literally excited seeing the sunrise. But ultimately, I just really want to continue, you know, about four years ago, me and my wife told ourselves that the more restaurants we open up, the more people we can, feed, right? The more people we can feed, and I mean in a way that people with second

chances with felonies, more people we can hire, more people that we can help them feed their families so they don't have to deal the minimum wage job. That's what makes me happy. You know, so the more restaurants we open, the more people we can put the work there underprivileged or needed a way to make some real money and get out of what the situation they've been in. So, yeah, just continue to grow our businesses, our brand. That's what I'm looking forward to. Well, Sean, always a pleasure to talk to passionate business owners like you. the way you do business and leadership and how you're investing and mentoring the next generation of leaders so thanks so much for taking the time to talk about thank you again for having me man

appreciate it thank you so much as sean talked about investing in your team is a non-negotiable for growing your business so what if you don't have time to invest in your team well there's a few simple things that you can start this week we'll have a conversation about that right after this our second interview is with senior executive vice president of b2c susan since on how we invest in our team here at Ramsey and specifically how she invests in her leadership team. We do a lot of activities, activity things, fun things. We like to have fun, so we'll do a spelling bee with the whole team.

We'll do a flip cup challenge, tournament style with the whole team. George has been a part of some of that. Yes. We have the most epic Christmas party any company has ever had, and we have it every year, and we're known for that. So we do a lot of things like that in addition to awesome benefits and tuition reimbursement if you're learning more skills for your job and things like that. So there's a lot of things we do that are really like wide ranging for the entire team. And when you start to zoom in, you go, okay, you lead, how many people are on your team team?

Because you're leading the entire business to the consumer division. Yeah, and I honestly don't know exactly how many people are in that division. Hundreds. I have five direct reports. Okay. I have five guys that report to me directly that lead that area. So you're really leading the direct reports, and then you're helping them lead their teams well. Yeah, and I try really hard to have a lot of visibility with the larger team, but I do have five guys that I work with the closest and can definitely speak to that.

They're awesome guys, by the way. They are. I get to work with them as well, and it's a pleasure. So how do you do that on that smaller team? With those five direct reports, what does investing into them look like? Is it just a weekly meeting? It's a lot of things. I think philosophically what I'd want to start with is that I invest in them by becoming friends with them.

And we started that early on, I mean, years ago, because most of us have been together for years, working together for years. And we just like each other. And we're all very different from each other, but we appreciate each other's differences and uniqueness. And we just have a lot of fun when we're together. And so the six of us do try to go out just once a quarter and just have a drink together and there's no agenda. But just in and around the office every day and just in regular meetings, like we try to have fun and we make fun of each other, but we also cheer for each other and we support each other. And we've got a lot of neat things in place. Like we created this rhythm several years ago where once a week, and there's a broader group involved in this besides just me and my guys.

once a week one of us is responsible for sending an email out to the group that has some encouraging words and usually a prayer and maybe some scripture that's just something that's on our heart at the time just encourage each other we do stuff like that too but we just we're friends and like we're working really hard together I mean what we do is hard work but if you're having fun while you're doing it it's so much more rewarding and I just say life's too short to not be friends with the people you work with. You spend too much time with these people. Yeah. Well, one of our core values is work hard, play hard. And so there is that balance. But a lot of people have a hard time going personal, right? It's like, well, I don't want to ask them about their family. I don't want

to ask them about, you know, how they're doing personally. Why? I don't know. I'm asking you. What is that barrier that people are experiencing? Is it because work is for work? George, that's the most absurd, ridiculous thing I've ever heard. It's very archaic. When you look at just even the challenges in the past year to year and a half, if you don't build strong relationships with the people that you work with, whether, I mean, they can report to you, report to someone who reports to you, it doesn't matter, you can still be friends. You've got to have enough security in yourself and own the role that you're in, whether you're an owner or the top dog or whatever that is, just own that and then not take that so seriously

that you can't make fun of yourself in front of them and to them and laugh with them because that's what we're all looking for at the end of the day. We're looking for someone if they're leading us to be able to relate to them, to understand them, feel like they understand us. And honestly, like I said before, we spend most of our lives with the people we work with. And if you don't know them and you don't know what's going on with their families, you're missing out on so much richness in life. And I would tell you flat out, you will be more effective as a team.

You will accomplish more in a shorter period of time if you're friends while you're doing it. Does that come down to trust? Is that why? Yes, because recently, this is a great example. Recently, Dave was just kind of going on a rant with our team because one of the ways we invest in the larger team is we have a staff meeting every week with all of the team. All thousand people are in one room. It's a lot of payroll. It's a lot of payroll and it's worth every penny because that way communication is happening and it's happening the right way.

And in one of those meetings, Dave was just sharing some stuff on his heart. And one of the things he shared was that a year ago during COVID, he didn't know what he was doing. And he literally said that. He's like, I didn't know what I was doing. But I was just putting my big boy bridges on and figuring it out every day. And it's so powerful for a CEO to share that with the team. He has enough security in who he is and his role here. that he can share that and not have any second thoughts about that. And our team walked away from that,

just blown away because that gives them permission to not always know what they're doing and not to posture all the time and act like they know what they're doing because that annoys everybody around you. So as the leader, give them that permission. And you can still hold them accountable to excellence, because Lord knows Dave does, hold them accountable to the things that you expect, but also share with them when you don't always meet the mark and you don't always know what you're doing and have enough security in yourself and in your role to be able to do that. So it sounds like as a leader you need to be vulnerable as part of investing in your team. That's what it looks like is vulnerability.

Yes. And you also mentioned standards. Is it also communicating expectations? What happens in your weekly meetings with your direct reports? Yeah, it's so funny. I'm terrible. I tend to expect people to read my mind. And I've kind of figured that out about myself more recently.

And so I'm really challenging myself to communicate better because I sometimes think they just should know my expectations. I've heard you say, I wish they would just get it. And it's like, what is it? Get the memo. Get the memo. Why can't they just get the memo? Where's the memo? The memo's up here in my brain.

Okay. And that's not helpful. To me, it's just common sense. But that doesn't mean it's common sense to everybody. And so when we have our weekly meetings, my five guys and I meet every week together and we share, we take turns sharing what's going on in each person's area. It's awesome for collaboration. And even though their areas are so different, it's helping them build things together because they're sharing with each other. But in those meetings, like, I'm communicating expectations.

We had a situation pop up recently where one of them was sharing a disaster that occurred from a technological standpoint that I just hadn't heard about at the time. at the time and he was sharing about it. And I said, well, when that happened, when you found out about that, like, you went to that other leader that was involved and talked to them, right? And he was like, no, at that point he hadn't talked to him at all. And I was like, okay, pause. I looked at everybody in the room and I said, just so we're clear, my expectation next time would be, if you hear this news at 10 a.m. on Monday morning, at 10.05, you're in such and such as office. Are we clear on that? Yes. Crystal clear. Yes. But it was like a teachable. moment kind of thing and there was no shame involved and there was no like making that person feel

less than in front of their peers. It was more like just I'm communicating expectations. So next time you all understand like this is how we, this is how we roll. Well, and as you've talked about having a personal relationship, it comes from a very different place when they know that Suzanne's got my back. Suzanne loves me. She'll go to war for me. I'm glad you said that's very different than you walking in their cold and you guys are just your business acquaintances and you're reprimanding him in front of all of these people. Oh, George, that's so important. I'm so glad you brought that up because the guy that I was directly talking about there knows I'm his friend, knows that I care a ton about him. I know what's going on with his kids. And we're

all friends. And so it's a conversation. It's not like a, it's not like a verbal spanking in front of people. That's not what, and it doesn't feel like that. And so that's very important. If you, if you take the time to build those it's so much easier to give constructive criticism. Yeah, and no one feels put down by that. They don't love it. No one loves constructive criticism. They want to be a rock star all the time, but they take it so much better when they know you care about them and you really do have their back, like you said.

So what does the rhythm look like for investing in your team? Let's say it's a weekly versus a monthly basis. What are those check-ins look like? Maybe it's, you know, we have our weekly report tool. Yes. Is that something that you use regularly to kind of have that check-in versus monthly? Yeah, that's a good one. That's weekly.

And so, oh, it's so great with those weekly reports because I get a lot of those, right, having a really large team. And so that gives me an opportunity when I see a flag, something kind of negative in someone's report. I directly email that leader. And if I see something going on in their home life or something that they talk about, when I see them in the hall, I will reference. that hey Kelsey so-and-so like I saw on your weekly report that you're worried about worried about this and tell me what's going on there and like it means the world to them so that's a weekly thing that we do monthly um gosh you could do things weekly monthly daily it just it's all about what matters to your team one of the things with my guys we've tried to do is

have lunch together once a month again with little to no agenda like I might bring in some philosophical things to talk about, but that's more of just building relationship and having some teachable moments too. But a lot of the teams will, they will have a practice of an all-team meeting once a month where there's a larger team involved. And that's where they're communicating things. They need to make sure people here in the right order that's going on in the company. And I'll try to attend those when I can. It's how I stay connected to the different teams that report up to me. But there's important. important rhythms for weekly, monthly, and quarterly that you need to establish for your team that

makes sense for you guys. Yeah. I think of a lot of examples as you mentioned that. I remember being on the live events team and you came to Pete who leads that area and said, hey, I just want to be with the team once a month. I just want to be in there. I feel like I don't even know who's on the team now, who's not. And you just got plugged in. So you just set up a meeting like that and said, let's just get lunch altogether and hang out, no agenda. And I love that idea because it's so, You don't need to have a brilliant, crazy idea. You just need to go, I'm just going to hang out with these people. Yeah, and usually in those meetings when I do those, I just kind of open up myself and say,

anyone can ask me anything they want. And I'll just let them ask any question they want to ask me. I'm an open book, and I have enough security and confidence in myself that, like, I can share things with them and not be so guarded. Then I feel more approachable. And if you've got two people on your team or you've got 200, you should still do that. instead of feeling like you're in some high tower and no one can talk to Suzanne. I mean, all the time people go, if you have a problem. And I always say, you know, a little fear goes a long way.

A little healthy fear goes a long way. Sometimes you want to scare them off. Oh, that's funny. Just a little. And I've seen us also do things like, you know, our Ramsey Solutions Leadership Team. We do awards every year. And it's really fun. It's a beautiful dinner.

The events team puts it on. The creative team do a coffee house where they just share someone does a presentation. the marketing teams, they come together. And so I see so many, we love meetings around here, but I don't think it's for the sake of meetings. I think it really is to invest in each other. That's a good thing you bring up. We probably don't need to camp on this for this particular podcast, but meetings need to have an order and a structure and an agenda. Otherwise, people have meetings for meetings. And a lot of companies do that. They kind of get in a rut with that. And then people feel like they're wasting their time in meetings. What did you do all day? I don't know. I was in meetings. Oh my gosh. I'm so proud to say at Ramsey, like we don't do that.

We do a lot of meetings. Most of my day is spending meetings, but they're efficient, they're productive. And when we land the plane on something, we walk away knowing who's responsible for what for the next steps. We're very clear on that because we use certain structures for our meetings so that everybody knows what their role is and what we need to do after the meeting. Yeah. And a lot of times you save a thread of emails that could span a week because you just met for 15 minutes and got some clarity. Because as we know, emails can be a dangerous way to communicate because the punctuation wasn't there. And now I thought there was angst behind their sentence. Very true. So when it comes to investing in your team, really it comes down to creating trust and creating that relationship, which we talk about, we move at the speed of trust around here. That's right. And a reason we've grown the way we've grown is because we trust each other and we care about each other.

So what ways have you found that really work best for creating that trust? You can't manufacture it, but what are some of the ways that you can do that? Number one's vulnerability. We talked about that. Like putting yourself out there being real and being raw and being honest is the fastest way to build that trust. Another way is to do what you expect of them. I think this is huge. If you have communicated to your team that you expect them to be at work at 8 a.m. every day of the week.

And that's important to you. You better be there at 8 a.m. every week, every day. They better see you. And don't think for a minute they don't notice when you pull in and when you leave. They watch you like a hawk. They know. So don't ever deceive yourself into thinking they don't know. They know what time you come to work.

They know how hard you work while you're there. They know if you're picking up trash in the parking lot when you walk by it, if you expect them to do that. So whatever the things are for you that you find yourself always harping on telling the team, make sure for crying out loud that you are doing those things. in setting that example. Because the fastest way to tear trust down is to not do those things. And they go, well, she doesn't really believe that because she would do it if she believed it so much. Well, for sure, yeah.

Wow. So let's say a business owner's listening and they're not investing in their team at all right now. What are the three things they can go do tomorrow to start to invest, create that trust, create that vulnerability? I'd be curious why they're not right now. I'd want to dig into that. Like, if I were talking to one of them directly, I'd say, you need to probably. spend some time journaling and thinking about why you haven't been investing in your team, like what's holding you back? The second thing I'd want to know is what's motivating you now

to want to invest in your team? Like, what do you want the end result to be? Like, put that down on paper somewhere. And the third thing is, I would just, I would communicate that to the team. I would go to them and say, hey, like, I love this company. I'm called to do this thing and I'm here to do this thing. And I love the fact you guys are on this journey with me and you're helping me build this, but like, I haven't really been investing in you like I should be. I'm going to own that and I want to start doing a better job of that. So maybe get some feedback from them. We love getting feedback from our team on what do they want. Like what's important to them? That doesn't mean we do everything they want the way they want it done. That's not the point. The point is like listen to them,

find out what their pain points are and what it is they actually want from you as their leader. And that might inform some new rhythms for you or some new practices. Yeah. Some people may just say, I just love some recognition once in a while. Absolutely. And you do the awards or maybe it's, hey, I'd love one-on-one time. If we get lunch once a month, that would mean a lot to me. Yeah.

And it's those kinds of things. And by the way, if you're an introvert like me, you don't want to do those things. Guess what? You have to. That's leadership. That's part of the game. It is. Well, a lot of people say, Suzanne, I don't have the time to invest in my team.

We're trying to do work here. I don't have time to hold hands. You don't have time not to. And get coffee on every Wednesday and do all these things. Hey, if you don't, if you don't take the time, you will have turnover like crazy. You'll have to spend the same amount of time recruiting and hiring people to replace those people. So get ahead of that. Invest in your team.

And they'll stay with you longer. They'll go on some hard journeys with you as those crop up. It's worth every minute. It's worth every minute. And I talked to Sean about this one as well. The other side of the coin is, well, Suzanne, what if I invest in this person? for three months for a year, for two years, and they go leave or they burn me.

That will happen. Just get ready. It will happen. And it'll break your heart and you'll be mad and you'll want to throw things at the wall. But you have to accept as part of one. That's one of the main things you have to accept as a leader is that people will break your heart. And you will have to make very hard decisions with people that you've built friendship with like we talked about. But life's too short to go the other way.

So go ahead, put yourself out there, invest in them, love them, treat them the way you'd want to be treated, build friendships with them because your life will ultimately be so much richer and fuller if you do that, even through the heartbreak. Yeah, well, that's a perfect way to end here. It sounds like regardless of how hard it is, how much time it takes, it's worth it. Invest in your people and your business will be stronger and will grow. Absolutely. I love it. Well, Suzanne, always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Come back anytime. You know where to find us.

Anytime. Thanks, George. Great stuff from Suzanne Sims and from Sean Davis in this episode. If you want to check out what Sean's up to, you can actually shop online at shop big shakes.com. And one of the best ways to invest in your team like Suzanne talked about is to simply recognize them. If you need some ideas, our team has put together a list of 43 for you to choose from. To download the free guide, just click the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening to today's episode.

Hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And if you're a small business owner with 2 to 200 team members, we'd love to hear your feedback on the show and ask you a few questions. Just click the link in the show notes to fill out a brief survey to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. You can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter.

I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entry Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Ken Coleman Show. Are you doing what you were born to do? I'm Ken Coleman, host of the Ken Coleman Show, where I give you practical advice to help you discover your purpose and then map out a plan to get you there. From accounting to advertising, from plumbing to production, you were created to fill. a unique role and the world needs what you have to offer. Join me on the Ken Coleman show wherever you listen to podcasts.