EntreLeadership - Would Selling My $4.75 Million Business Be a Mistake?

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Today we’ll hear about: •             A young man considering if he should sell the family business •             A business owner weighing the cost of hiring W-2 employees •             A man dealing with the consequences of bad financial decisions •             A woman wondering when it’s time to disclose the business’s revenue with her son   Next Steps: ·      📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message: https://ter.li/ask-us ·      📚 Learn about the EntreLeadership System: https://ter.li/system-p ·      💻 Get EntreLeadership Elite for your business: https://ter.li/elite-p ·      ✉️ Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/enl ·      🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/summit  ·      🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/masterseries  ·      📖 Order Dave’s new book, Build a Business You Love: https://ter.li/b4kru2   Connect With Our Sponsors: 💼 Go to Belay Solutions or text ENTRE to 55123 for their free resource! 💻 Visit NetSuite today to learn more. 🧾 Visit Payority for a free consultation! 📈 Grab ⁠Sales Gravy's⁠ free resource to help you hire and lead better. 📝 Use code ENTRE15 to get 15% off your first year of Trainual.   Listen to More From Ramsey Network: 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show💰 George Kamel   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. If you've got a question you want to ask on the show, fill out the form at Entreeleadership.com slash ask, or you can give me a call. Leave a voicemail. We'll get in touch with you. Make you a caller on the show. The numbers, 844-944-1070, 844-9-44-1070. Dan is in New York City.

Hi, Dan. How are you? Hey, Dave, honor to speak with you and great seeing you at Entree Leadership Summit. Thank you, brother. Good to have you. Good to have you. So how can we help today? Yeah, so I am the co-owner of our family restaurant cleaning business.

that currently generates 4.75 million in annual revenue and employees about 80 cleaners. My dad, who started the company, is 65 and ready to retire. I'm 26 and have been working with him since 2017. Recently, a large competitor has made us an offer to acquire our business, which frankly is more money than either of us have ever seen. And they're also offering me a leadership role to run their business. New York City operations. My question is, should we take the deal and sell, or should I keep building on the foundation

my dad started? Okay. You're 26. Correct. Sometimes one of the decision-making formulas I use is I get out of the moment and I extrapolate out decades and say, when I'm there, which of these decisions are? decisions will I be happy with? When you're 56 and you will get a portion of this money or your dad is taking it all? No, so it's just my dad and I. I'm saying the money if you sell it,

do you get some of it? Yes. Okay. We would split it 50-50. Okay. So you're going to walk away with a chunk of change and a job. Correct. And you're going to invest that chunk of change into something. Correct. And you're going to work this job. When you're going to work this job. When you're you're 56 and you look back on your life, how are you going to feel about the 26-year-old version of you? I never really thought about that. I never thought that far out into the future. I do know that the chunk of change that I would walk away with, invested properly in some, you know, growth, you know, index funds or mutual funds could be a lot more than what it is, you know, today. Invested properly.

Of course it is, yeah. And that's another thing that I also take into consideration that, you know, it would be several, several millions of dollars come, you know, when I'm 56 years old. Yeah, okay. So it's a million dollars your part now? So it's a $6 million valuation, $4.5 million cash at closing, and one and a half million they want to roll over in form of equity into their larger organization to, I guess, incentivize me to, certain targets to continue to grow the business and, you know, increase the value of the equity. Well, I mean, if you put $2 million in your pocket at 26, it's not a bad day. You can do a lot of stuff. The, yeah, so I just want you to think, do you, you know, 10 years from now, at 36, you're going to be working for these people or you will have moved on.

Correct. Yeah. I've had lunch and breakfast and dinner with the founder of this larger organization on multiple occasions over the last several months just because we've known each other for about two years or so. And their end goal is essentially acquiring all of these smaller competitors. bundle it up, get to a certain valuation, and then sell it to, you know, some, you know, private equity firm or a very large, large, large competitor. So their ultimate goal is to just increase the value and then sell it in five to ten years. Okay. So, yeah, then at 36, you probably won't be working there. Probably not. I just want you to think about it in that lens rather than, who-hoo, I hit the lottery. right in the moment and and you know because um i think you probably are selling this it doesn't i don't

hear anything here that sounds like red flag red flag red flag red flag dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb i don't hear any of that okay but i i you will have fewer regrets if you think about the long term implications not just the moment if you if you've if you've kind of played through what's the worst case scenarios, the worst case scenario is they screw this up and they go broke two years from now and you walked away a couple million dollars and now you got a new career ahead of you. That's your worst case, right? Right. Your other worst case would be you work there until you're 60 and hated every minute of it,

which means you needed to leave, right? So we don't want to do that. So those are the kinds of things I try to think about what are the downsides, what are the downsides, where the downsides extended out into decades. And if I can handle those versus the obvious upside, which is the moment we're in, then, yeah, that's probably a go. I will tell you this, and I don't think this applies to you, okay?

But I'm going to say it for the listener that's out there on this subject of selling your business. Right. I have known, yeah, I'm trying to think, 10 people that got hundreds of millions of dollars for selling their business. And the only thing they got other than that was wishing they didn't sell it. The money got their attention, but I mean, I sat with a guy who got $400 million with tears run down his face going, it's the dumbest thing I ever did.

I should have kept that. I loved it, and it's lost its soul under these new people. They don't treat people right. And I traded money for, and, you know, so all, a liquidity moment, selling something for a big chunk of change is not always something that is without regret. Okay. I don't think that's your case, Dan, and I don't think it's your dad's case either, because I think you're your dad is at the end of his journey, he's ready to retire. It's an excellent exit for him.

It's an excellent on-ramp for something else for you. You can do all kinds of stuff with this in the future. Either stay with these guys or not and, you know, take that last bit of equity. It goes public or rolls up into a bigger one. That last bit of equity is going to turn in even more money. This is going to be great for you. So I think you do this, okay? But I'm just for our other people out there, sometimes we, in business, we think,

oh we got a big pile of money we won um i've talked to a lot i talked to one guy got 11 billion dollars and he had tears run down his face and and it was 40 years later and he's just like still it was i hate it and he still talked about the transaction in a negative you know sentences about the people involved and everything else it was just awful and so it's um you know it's very real so uh money is not not necessarily the only decision-making box to check. Matter of fact, it's definitely not the only one to check. And just because you get a pile of money doesn't mean automatically we need to do it. But listening to your old story, Dan, I think if I was in your shoes, I think I'd do this as well.

It sounds exciting. Good luck with it. And we appreciate you calling in. Appreciate you being with us at Entree Leadership Summit. This episode is brought to you by Traennial. Whether you're running a department, managing a growing team or stepping into a new leadership role, you've got people counting on you to keep things running smoothly. But creating repeatable training, documenting processes, and rolling out policies, that's probably not what gets you fired up in the morning. Still, it's the backbone of a high-performing team. And good news, trainual makes it easier than ever. Trainual is the go-to platform for organizing everything your team needs to know. From training new hires to keeping your systems and procedures up to

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To grow your business with Elite, go to Entreeleadership.com slash elite. Or just click the link in the description where you're listening or reviewing. Sam's in Greenville, South Carolina. Hi, Sam. How are you? Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Own a residential remodeling company. I did a million in revenue last year with profit margins in about the 40 to 45 percent range. Awesome. Yeah, doing good. And my question is, we have all subcontracted work. And for a legacy perspective, is it smart to hire W2 employees to run the business? Because as of now, I handle all sales and administrative tasks.

And if something happened to me, the business would cease to exist. It would anyway. Because the W2 people wouldn't know what to do. Right. But there's no, I manage everything, too. So there's no... No, you've got to fix that. It's not whether they're W-2 or contractors.

It's the I-Manage- Everything part. Right. From a legacy perspective. So, yeah, you answer the question of, you know, what happens if I'm not at work for two weeks? Oh, God. Right? And you're killing it.

You have taken this thing to the wall. Way to go. Congratulations. You're working your butt off and you're very good at managing the jobs and you're very good at managing the subs, and you're very good at manage the customer's expectations, completing things on budget and on time,

or you wouldn't have gotten here. And that's a rarity in the space that you're in, because most people in the space you're in are jacklegs. They don't do a good job. But that's why you got no competition because you show up on time and do what you said you were going to do. Am I right? You got it, exactly.

Yeah. It's an interesting world. I love that world. And so, yeah, And I always laugh. We did a remodel on a house 30 years ago or so, or 25 years ago, and we couldn't get the doofus to show up. I was wearing him out.

I hired the wrong guy. It was a small remodel, but my son was like 14, and I asked him one day, taking him to school. I said, what are you going to do when you grow up? And he goes, I'm going to go in the construction business. And I said, why? And he goes, it's an easy business. If you just show up on time and do what you said, you're going to have no competition. He got that at 14.

you know. I'm telling my son's the same thing. Yeah, it's just amazing. So, yeah, so I think that, I think you start to bring in your first layer of leadership, which is going to move you, you know, up into Pathfinder or from Pathfinder into Trailblazer at this point. Because, and then you decide what the model is for the actual on-the-ground labor.

I'm fine in your business model because I grew up in construction and real estate. I would be very comfortable running subs. Right. And I like that because I don't have to manage as much crap. And if there's no business, I'm not sitting there on payroll that's twiddling its thumbs. Right. And most of the advice that I've gotten to other people in my industry who are further along than I am, say keep it the way it is, that I'm an oddball that nobody does that well.

Don't mess with something that works. Yeah, I would keep subs. Now, I do think you need to have some on-staff people that's going to increase your overhead, but it's also going to increase your ability to do more jobs. So it's going to increase revenue. So I think you need to, have you got a W-2 foreman or supervisor, job manager, whatever we don't want to call them? No, I have no W-2.

I run all the crews, do all the sales, everything. is up now. Yeah, yeah. I think that's your next step, is you put somebody on to help you do the things you do, not swing a hammer. Right, and I thought about that, and me just staying at the sales position

but get someone to actually run the cruise themselves. Yeah, well, and they're not going to do it instantaneously. You're going to run them together with them for six months to get them to run them the way you want to run them, because I don't know where the person you hired was trained, but they probably don't do it as well as you do it. Right. Right. And that's some walls that I've hit before. Yeah, you've got to get them in. They've got to do it Sam's way because Sam's way is freaking working.

So, you know, they got to be able to finish the sentence of what would Sam do, not what a supervisor or a foreman does. So, you know, I'm going to bring you in, but your delivery of this on budget on time, you're managing the subs. If they don't show, you replace them because we've got to finish this job. We told this homeowner. You know, all those kinds of things you do every day. You keep the heat on. And, you know, it's not okay that the stinking appliances weren't delivered on time. So we're on the phone with whoever going, get the crap over here. You know, this is what they do.

They light a fire. They manage a project. And so, and it's a good, it's a good job. It's a good job for somebody. And if you had somebody doing 70% of that, and you're doing the other 30%, you could probably increase your revenue three or fourfold what that person costs.

Yeah, and that's the metric that I've heard that they should bring in about three or four times. Well, in this case, it's freeing you up and you're going to bring it in. Because you're not on the job busting somebody's chops over the appliances that weren't delivered. Instead, you're over here making a sale.

Right. And you're making sure the bills are paid in the accounting and you're managing some of the... metrics, which is the spreadsheet on the job, you know, the job costing on each job and the schedule on each job. And so you're watching is this thing progressing while he's in the, while he's got dirt under his fingernails pushing the stuff around actually on the job. And so the jobs are going to get more efficient. And you're estimating it's going to be more accurate when you do this because you're not going to be bogged down in the day to day.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the higher. And I'm probably not doing, I don't think I want W-2s of home in your world as far as the actual work getting done. You may end up with a person that kind of is the grout that fills in the gaps where a sub, you know, there's always on a job, but depending on the size of it, but when you're building a home, it's the same way. You need somebody who's going to just do the five, six little things that don't really fall under a certain sub. Right.

It's almost like a jack-of-all-trates, and they can sweep, and they can, tighten up a faucet and... Yeah, pay them $25 an hour or whatever. Exactly. You probably do need that. The more jobs you run, the more you can justify that. But in terms of your big trades, the electricians, the plumbers, the carpenters, the painters, the drywall, I'm going to leave them on their own. Got it.

You do what you want, but I'm just thinking through it with you. Because you can grow or shrink the business at will. you could double the size of the business and hardly change your actual payroll. Yeah, because the subs are not a payroll item in that sense. And so you've not taken on the risk of, I've got to pay these people, but all the work dried up. That risk is off the books with the way we're talking about doing this. So good job, Sam.

I love what you're doing, man. And I can tell you're a stud. This is very cool. Very cool. Good stuff. Thank you for being a listener. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. These days, business as usual is anything but.

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Hey, Matt, welcome to the Entree podcast. Hey, Dave, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I am 24 years old. I own a remodeling business doing about $750,000 a year with six full-time employees. But I have $260,000 in super crappy debt. And I don't have enough cash to get the projects done that we've got on the schedule right now that we've taken deposit for. So I'm trying to figure out a way to kind of get out of this without filing bankruptcy or taking on more. debt just to just to survive okay so um wow have you been losing money on these projects we have so you're estimating estimating estimating did suck um we've we've in the past three months

since i started diving into this we've increased our gross profit from an average of 18% to like 35 and a half percent we're still going up from there um but we're kind of drowning in the past mistakes. Okay. What is the, what kind of debt is the $260,000 in debt? Yeah, so we've got about $185,000 in debt to bank, so that's going to be credit cards, merchant cash advance, term loans, lines of credits, a couple of trucks, that we've got about $72,500 in vendor debts. Okay. Hmm. So how many jobs are underway right now? We have five jobs underway as we speak. Okay, and they've all given you a deposit and you've begun work. They've all given a deposit. We've begun work, but I made some super silly

decisions and didn't have a lot of financial clarity when I took these deposits, and so a lot of those deposits went towards kind of cash flowing to business and making up for losses on past projects. We're starting these ones from behind the eight ball. Okay, so you don't have the money coming in unless you add a new project to pay payroll, right? Yeah, we've taken between 30 to 50% up front for all the projects we're working on now. We've got a few more in the pipeline, you know, after we learn the lesson, stop taking deposits up front and using them for other stuff. But we'd have to rearrange a schedule to push those projects ahead. to actually make any money to really get to the other projects.

Wow, what a mess. All right, so unless you take other projects, you can't make payroll and you can't buy supplies to do the current stuff underway. Yep, yep. Okay, because I'd be fine with not paying the bank, and I'd be fine working the vendors. So the 260, I can just stiff-arm that if I can get these jobs completed. What do the six people do? So they are, we've got five that are field labor, installers, carpenters,

and then I've got one project manager. Okay. Do you have access to any micro four-day projects that you could put one of these guys on that turns some cash rack quick? Yeah, we've actually got a couple on the schedule. We just pushed one up last week that we got knocked out. So that helped us make payroll for this week. So we're trying to secure some more of those.

But a couple of these projects were going to be probably $60,000 short on as far as labor material goes after those deposits were gone. So we'd have to do quite a few small projects in a short time period. Yeah, you're going to have to. And or you're going to have to take supplies on credit. Yeah, yeah. Which is the struggle with that is, you know, we've already done that. And, you know, we've got these big vendor bills that we can't pay. So they're not likely to let you go pick up a bunch more stuff, yeah.

They're going to put you on COD pretty quick. Oh, yeah. Okay, so one of the five projects, the smallest of the five projects, how much was the deposit and what's the total size of the project? Yeah, so that project, we're going to wrap that one up to date. That one was an $18,000 and a half thousand dollar project. We took half up front about four months. months ago. So you're going to get the other nine?

Right. Today. Right. Hopefully. Okay. All right. And that's going to help you make payroll. Yeah. So now we're down to four projects. Yep. Okay. Because my, my, um, the way we turn this is we survive the stuff that's on the books that you screwed up the deposits on, the remaining four. And the way we survive those is we generate enough cash from micro projects and side projects to make payroll and complete the existing projects. What's the largest of the four?

The largest of the four, and this one is absolutely ridiculous that I did this, but it's a $256,000 home edition. We took half up front for that and used that to float the business for the past six months. All right, if we take that one off the table, that leaves three. So what I'm trying to do is choose my pain. okay because those people are probably going to sue you before this is over because I don't think you're going to finish that one

on time anyway they're going to go ballistic at some point and rightly so actually but um yeah okay the other three projects what size are they because I'm going from 18 to 256 you're all over the map

Yeah, so then we had another, we had a kitchen remodel that was 90,000. We took half up front for that. Same thing. Use it to make up for losses on past projects. That one we're going to wrap up next week. We've taken progress draws throughout that project, so we're going to get that one knocked out. But that one comes with a vendor bill of $45,000 for the cabinets. My fear with that one is if I don't pay this vendor,

they're going to go ahead and put a mechanic clean on that client's house. And you don't have 45 more coming because you've already taken other draws against the second half. Right. Okay. All right. So how much do you have coming on that one? So that one, we've got 9,000 outstanding, which will cover the remaining payroll to get it knocked out. Yeah, probably not.

You're probably going to give a lot of that 9,000 to the vendor and work a payment plan with them on the balance, telling them what's going on. You got any more cabinets you're buying from them? Well, we're supposed to buy cabinets from them for this home edition that we've got also. Yeah. But we actually found the same cabinets at a different vendor for about $8,000 less. So we're going to switch over to a different vendor anyways. Yeah, okay. But I'm just saying, you're probably not going to get any more business out of them.

No. Once you put them on a payment plan and give them $5,000 towards their 40 and go, I'm trying to save this and I'm trying to keep from file bankruptcy, so work with me here. and I'm going to send you money as quick as I can. I know I've got to get this cleared, and you add them to your 72 vendor list, basically. But you work out of deal with them so they don't file the mechanics lien. All right. So that gets us down to 256 plus two other projects.

Oh, my gosh. What are the other two? The other two is one of them is a bathroom. We just started that one this week. That's going to be another four weeks left. That one, we should actually have enough coming in from the project. only took 30% up for that one. You started this week and you spent the deposits this week?

No, we spent the deposit. We took the deposit for this one about two months ago so that deposit was gone. We just started it this week. Why did you wait two months to start? We were just booked up that far with bad projects. Okay. Okay, so that one's how much again? So that was a $45,000 bathroom.

We took 30% up front on that one. but the remaining draws on that will cover all of the costs for materials and labor. So you can run that one out. A little bit of change. You can run that one out. So then that only leaves one more. Yep. Because the 18's done, the kitchen's done, the bath you can run out.

You got the big 256. What's the number four one? The last one, that one's a whole house remodel. It's $186,000 project. She's mostly paid up. She owes us about six, and it's going to cost us about nine to finish it over the next. Almost done. Yep.

This one's almost done. So you're out except for the 256. Right. And some cabinets. Right. And a few other vendors. Yeah, I mean, you got the 72,000 worth of vendors. You told me that.

But I'm talking about, we're adding cabinets to that, or we're adding a portion of that $40,000 cabinet bill to that. And then you got the 256, which is a freaking disaster. And the rest of them you're done with. Yeah. And you're finishing all of these projects. they're all coming to a head. Yep, we're going to finish all those.

So why not take new projects and run them properly? Yeah, I mean, once we clear these last few and we've just got the big one. No big ones. I want you to take, I want you to, oh, rabbits, not elephants. Sure. I want you to turn stuff in two-week turns. And let's just start generating cash at 40% margin. Two-week turns.

Don't take anything else big and long. You can't afford it right now. You can't handle it. You can't handle to sit on the deposit, and you need to take a deposit. But you don't need to take a deposit. But in your business, you should take a deposit. But, yeah. So you're out.

You've made it through, except for the 256, is what we're saying, and some cabinets. So, yeah, go take a bunch of short-term projects and then prioritize where the, as you finish those and you clear, you know, you take a $20,000 thing and you clear $6,000. grand what are we doing with that what are our priorities our priorities are payroll and truck payments and then vendors and bank is last right credit cards can jump in the creek i don't care if your credit goes bad screw it you need to clean up that mess but and and then you you know so if you do a million dollars that's going to make you 400k in the coming 12 you could clear all of this in 12 months but you're going to have to learn to do short-term stuff and you're never going to manage cash the way

you did because this is way stressful. I'm stressed out and it's not me. Absolutely. There's no fun, I mean, really, you're not having any fun, Matt. Hoo. Yeah, so you have learned your lesson. You'll never do the misuse of the deposit again, right? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Yeah, you run these jobs as separate standalone businesses. There are separate P&Ls. Your job cost everything back to the job and you keep all the money in the job that's on the job until the job is done. And only then, if there's money, lay in there, do we clear it and move it under general fund? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, you've already learned that lesson, though, I think, haven't you?

I did. I did. We did start job costing and treat the funds as separate. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, you got to run. You got to run. Yeah, I think you're in the quick turn, small ankle biter stuff where you make 40% and you just do a whole bunch of them. and if you can't get enough of those really fast,

you may not be able to keep all six people. You'll have to look at and force rank those guys. But if you can get enough to keep them busy and you're making 40% on everything they're doing, you're not only making the payroll, because that's part of the cost of the job, your job costing their hours, but you're making a 40% profit.

And so, yeah, if you go make half a million dollars, that's 200 grand. $200,000 get you out of this mess because you could clear your vendors and you can finish the 256. The bank is still going to be sitting there looking at you, but you're going to have to work through them, but that's a longer-term issue. Yeah, and they're kind of aware of the situation, actually, and they've been super cooperative, the bank already. Yeah, because they're screwed. They don't have a choice. They don't have a choice, yeah.

The only thing they act proactive if they could do is pick up your trucks. Right. But other than that, they're just screwed. And so, yeah, and don't factor any more of your receivables to them. They don't get any more liens on your stuff. Yeah. They're sitting on the sidelines. They get paid after we stay open and move our way through this 256 job.

And then after we start clearing those vendors up, cabinet people included. And then bank is last on the list. Credit cards are last on the whole list. Trucks would be at the top of the bank list. Following me? Yeah, because it's going to take them longer to get to you and screw up things than the other people we're talking about. Right. Yeah, can you line up $500,000 in the coming 12 months, $5 to $800,000 in the coming 12 months of small jobs that are two to three week turns?

Yeah, and the next 12, yes. Yeah. You know, obviously we learned that I'm not good at managing the large projects and we lose money on them every time. Well, you can manage them. You can learn how to manage them, but I don't want any more. I don't want any projects of any size I lose money on. This ain't a hobby. So, but you need the quick cash turn that the large job even managed well does not give you.

Right. I don't need you taking draws on that large job in addition to the deposit and redeploying those draws. That's what got us here. So instead, I just want completion, profit in pocket, and profit then applies to mess. Is that working? Yeah. Makes sense. One more time.

You think you can get 5 to 800K of 2, 3-week jobs? Yeah, and the next 12, yes. Yeah. And then if you want to go stick your toe in the water on larger jobs 18 months from now, you can pick one up maybe. But there's a lot of money to be made in those small bathroom jobs and the three-week turns on a paint job or, you know, whatever, without taking on a complete rebuild.

Yeah, absolutely. Historically, they're our highest growth profit. projects anyways. We should have been focusing on them from the start. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, it's okay to have a product mixed five years from now that includes one department or area of the company that does the large stuff while we've got the other thing over here making bank on these small turns. The small turns are also a lot more front office work per dollar. So, I mean, it takes as much effort to sell a small job as it does a large job, for instance. almost. So yeah, that's what I'm going to do. I think you can turn this. You've got to prioritize

where every dollar goes and you've got to start generating some cash. And so what we did while you and I were talking was we just said, okay, this is an elephant. It's a mess. How do you eat an elephant? A bite at a time. And I started going through, I started going through every detail and said, okay, here's a bite. Oh, that job's done. Oh, that job's done. Oh, that job's done. Oh, and we can get there and we got this one problem with the kitchen. Oh, okay. And now we've got the 256 is the only thing left outstanding plus the 72 and the cabinets and the 260 or the 185 bank stuff. So you can get there, dude. But that's how you've got to approach it because if you look at the overarching thing like I was doing at the beginning of our conversation, it's overwhelming. It was overwhelming.

It was overwhelming me. I couldn't figure out how you're going to make it. I just about told you to punt. But you're not punting. You're going to make it. You can turn this. but you're going to work your butt off and pay for your sins by having no life for the next eight months. You're going to just, and you're working for everybody else. You ain't working for you. You're working for the mess you made. And you can clean it up, though, and you'll be glad you did. And it's going to take you, this is a very profitable business when run right.

Second remodel call in this show. One highly successful, one almost bankrupt. There you go. but right remodels got both of them had the potential to make a 40% margin don't you just wish in some of your worlds you could do a 40% margin hello so there we go yeah so you can do this mat but it's going to be a lot of work and you're going to be very focused on every little detail and not um let someone else reset your priorities once you put them in place you force rank who gets money when and if somebody doesn't like that

toughies. They're going to get their money when they get their money. Maybe you lose a relationship with a vendor permanently, but that's different. You're going to lose it when you file bankruptcy anyway. So you might as well pick your, pick out who's going to be mad. Decide who's going to be mad and why and what power they have. And, you know, mechanics lean or take the trucks or what, you know, what's the downsides? Wow. Very, very interesting, dude. I think you can do it. Hey, holler at one of our coaches, and if you need some help as you're weeding through this, I bet one of them can walk with you through this. Wow.

Does leading your team feel like hurting cats? Even if your business is winning financially, a misaligned team will create new fires for you to put out every single week. But with Entree Leadership Elite, you'll align your team and hold them accountable so you can stop hurting cats and start scaling your business. To join Elite, go to Entreleadership.com slash Elite, or just click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or on podcast. Allison is in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Hey, Allison. Welcome to the Entree podcast. What's up? Thank you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and taking my call. I own a small consulting business with nine employees. Last year, our profit was $2.1 million with a, I mean, I'm sorry, our revenue was $2.1 million with a profit of $5.35.

My son, he will be a freshman in college in the fall, has expressed interest in owning and running it one day, is going to cause a study business. My question is, at what age or phase would it be appropriate to let him see the business financials? What are you trying to accomplish by him seeing the business financials? My thought was that eventually, if he is learning business in school, that it would be more enjoyable to see real-life financials and what can be done to improve this. And it would be a learning experience.

On the flip side, obviously don't want to give too much information because it's also our personal finances. But as a potential business owner, I thought that it would be exciting for him to see the potential that the business has and apply it to what he's learning in college. You said he's a freshman? He will be. So he just come out of high school just the other day?

Right, right. How many kids have you got? I've got two. And is he the oldest? He is the oldest. And how emotionally mature do you think he is? He is very emotionally mature. but we live well beyond our means,

so I don't know if that would be too much information to give him. You said you live well beyond your means? Below. Below your means, okay. Below our means. Okay, all right. So, you know, I think it would be a lot for him to wrap his head around. But he is very mature for his age.

The way that we did that, was not just business, but the overall net worth and everything, was we unpacked when the youngest got to college and unpacked with the two new in-laws, Rachel's husband, Winston, and Denise's husband, Bill. So we sat down five of us. Daniel wasn't married at that point. He was in college. And the way I set the table was, you know, we've always lived our life. below what we make. You guys have not known what we made. We also have an additional problem in that we're celebrity status or whatever bull crap that is in the spotlight, right? So everybody wants to know your business or thinks they know your business or acts like they know your business

and all that stuff and they don't know squat. But, you know, that kind of stuff, right? So that's an added component. But the, so the way I set the table was, we're people of faith, I said, okay, number one, you're going to see some numbers in a minute that are going to be hard to emotionally digest. The proper way for you to see these numbers is not that you hit the lottery because you didn't, but instead, God owns everything as for me and my house, we serve the Lord. and so God owns all this, and someday it's going to be your responsibility to manage it, or if you come into the business to manage it in that way as well. But these assets, this net worth, this amount of money,

is if you choose to take the responsibility to be a steward for the Lord, to manage this money for him, that you're going to see this as a responsibility. you're not going to see this as, who-hoo, I just hit the lottery, the DNA lottery. And to their credit, having set the table that way their whole life, and having reset it that night together, they were very somber and almost a little bit worrisome that that was going to be a heavy thing to carry. Right. Instead of like, oh, God, I can go, I can go spend money.

I can go get a car. This is going to be great. mom and dad are rich, you know, it was none of that, okay, it was quite the opposite. But that had to do with spiritual maturity, emotional maturity, how they were raised, and we set the table that way. Okay, so, and that night as we unpacked it, and then their eyes were rather large. They're like, holy crap. Well, I mean, you've been taking nice vacations, boys and girls.

I mean, you had to know that was coming from somewhere. So, but no, they're, so your son may have a little bit of that, but I, so I would set the table with him of number one. I think this would be interesting to you as you're studying business. By the way, it's first year in college. He's not going to study any of this. Right. Right. So you might be, you might be a year early on this discussion. Is it, I was thinking that now is too early, but, you know, do I wait? You know, his sophomore year will be fine. So you think it would be. I'm fine while he's in school. Yeah, but I'm going to set the table.

until he's working in the business. Now, I'm just going to say, okay, it's very important that this is super confidential. Oh, by the way, I did say that too. Right. You know, you can't talk about this to anyone ever. Right. Except to each other. The people at this table are the ones that can talk about it.

That's it. Nobody else. Because people can't, they can't figure, they can't, other people cannot avoid envy and jealousy when they think they know something. And so, you know, it's like, no one should ever, you know, you start hearing all that stuff. So, okay, so anyway, I would set the table and say, in the name of you learning business,

I think this would be interesting. It has to be super confidential. And you're going to have to emotionally and spiritually understand, this ain't yours. It's mine. Right. And you have no rights to it. just because I'm telling you about it.

So, you know, this cannot allow you to become unmotivated because mom and dad will support me because we're not going to. Correct. You've still got to go get your grades. You still got to have work ethic. You've still got to do all of that. And if you want to work in this business, you've got to be twice as good as everybody else that works here

because you're not going to be respected otherwise. They're going to think you're a dufous child that got the job. Correct. And so you've got to lay all that out and then do it. but if you just splash it out there, you do run the risk of a 20-year-old, not emotionally grasping this or coming to wrong conclusions because of it.

But I think you just preempt those wrong conclusions and go, I'm concerned about doing this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Because I want you to have this stuff, but here's the danger. The danger is that you don't think you have to work. The danger is you tell somebody about this. This is family confidential information.

The danger is that you become emotionally old overwhelmed with this because it's a large number. These are dangers, and you need to, I'm counting on you being a man, not a little boy, my son, in order to accept this information and do with it what we're hoped, and the information being a blessing to you. And when you set the table that way, I think you'll be fine. Thank you very much. Now, if you told me he's got a drug problem, he doesn't like to work, and he cusses his mom out

all the time, you know, no, we're not doing this. He's great, and, you know, I wouldn't even be considering it. I know, I know. But I'm just saying I assumed the way you described this kid that this kid is a solid kid. Yeah. And that's what I was going on. And so obviously we're not sharing it with dysfunctional people because they're going to do dysfunctional things with it. Right.

The information. And come to dysfunctional conclusions. And so that's the thing. So it's kind of like if you want to take it weird, it's like a lot of, sometimes people hit the lottery, they don't tell anybody because of their family. Right, right. It's that kind of thing. So that's what you've got to be careful of.

But yeah, I think it's good training, spiritually, emotionally, mathematically, business acumen, all of that is good training. And it has worked out well for the Ramsies. We haven't had any major upheavals with that. And it's a wonderful question, by the way. and congratulations on all your success. You've got great margins in your business, and it sounds like you're running a wonderful, wonderful thing,

very proud of you. Good stuff. All right, folks, remember better a wary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high-quality leaders, so take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Entree Leadership Podcast.