The Ramsey Show - App - An EntreLeadership Theme Hour During the Coronavirus (Hour 2)

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

Ken Coleman, Daniel Tardy, EntreLeadership Theme Hour Tools to get you started:  Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. It's an Entree Leadership Small Business Theme Hour. Our panel for the hour is Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality No. 1 bestselling author of the book The Proximity Principle. He talks all the time about jobs and careers, so it's natural for him to be involved helping us with small business questions.

If you've got a small business question, the phone number 888-825-5225. Also joining me, our Executive Vice President of Entree Leadership. He runs the entire Entree Leadership operation here in our organization and sits on our operating board. Daniel Tardy is joining us as well. Welcome, guys. Good to be here, Dave. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. This is great. It's going to be fun. We love small businesses, and they are, like everything else in our culture right now, freaked out. So, man, I've talked to a group of leaders last night just that were friends of mine, and it was just, it's a different time. So if you're in business, you've got questions, we're here. The phone number, 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225.

Before we go to the phones, a big announcement. The Entree Leadership Summit event, which is probably the premier leadership event in the world now. It lights out absolutely crazy amazing uh is scheduled may the 17th through the 20th at the gaylord palms resort in orlando florida which is an absolute off the chain incredible resort uh gaylord got in touch with us and said we're probably not going to be open then uh good chance we're not 100 sure but we're probably not going to be open then. Good chance. We're not 100% sure, but we're probably not going to be open. And so we were given the choice to move this Entree Leadership Summit or shut it down. And of course, we chose to move it instead.

And so we are postponing it until July the 12th through the 15th, which will make a lot of you more comfortable to come, I'm sure, that we're already scheduled to come. And also, there's some seats available, if you make you more comfortable to think about that as well, to joining us there. Chris Hogan will be speaking, Christy Wright, Ken Coleman, Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and presidential candidate, Damon John from Shark Tank. Mike Rowe.

I'm excited to spend some time with Mike. I've always enjoyed Mike, and we are pretty much cut out of the same cloth. He's a special dude. Cat Co., the COO and president of North America Focus Brands. Benjamin Zander, the founder and conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. It is an incredible, incredible lineup. Again, it is July the 12th through the 15th is the new date. And if you want tickets or those of you that are already signed up, your tickets have automatically transferred. So it's going to be fun, Tardy. I'm excited about this. And Dave,

more than ever, as we've all been isolated, we need a place we can get back together. You know, I mean, since the beginning of time, when heroes have gone out on the battlefield they've had that that campfire experience to come back at night and share the stories of the day and gather around the campfire and break bread and encourage each other and say hey here's where we're at now and uh this is going to be a big bonfire uh in july i don't know how that's gonna go over if you're a leader if you're a leader i think it'd be hot and humid metaphor was going good for a minute but the uh orlando in july i don't know how that's gonna go over if you're a leader if you're a leader i think it'd be hot and humid metaphor was going good for a minute but the uh orlando in july the uh but you know seriously you make a good point by july if you're a leader out there you're gonna need your tank filled that's the truth you're gonna you're gonna be wrung out by

then um i'm tired after the last two weeks leading our organization. It's draining in the middle of this stuff to lead a team, to have the responsibility to serve a team of people, have 1,000 people looking at us for payroll checks. And we love those people, and we don't want to let them down. And you're out there. You're leading. You're experiencing those emotions. And if you're not experiencing those emotions, and we don't want to let them down. And you're out there. You're leading. You're experiencing those emotions.

And if you're not experiencing those emotions, you're not a leader. You're just a boss. And come to Entree Leadership. We'll teach you how to be a leader then because you probably need to grow up. But it's what we do. And so this summit is going to be so needed. By July, it's going to be like, oh, gosh. Well, and here's what we know about leadership.

It's hard all the time, much less in the midst of a pandemic. And we've studied and watched leaders. I've watched leaders over 20 years now. The ones that make it, they don't go alone. They come together. They commune. They connect. And it's a bit paradoxical because we're so independent as leaders.

We want to think we don't need each other. But the truth is we do. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. We've got to come together and say, hey, we're in this thing together. What are you learning? How can I learn from you? How can I encourage you? And then we can split back up and go do our thing.

I've got to tell you, one of the guys I can't wait to hear, we added to this lineup in July because we were able to get him for July, this July 12th through the 15th. And he spoke with us, he spoke for us once before and was amazing. I mean, I came out of there, I feel like I came out of a Rocky movie after listening to the guy. And that was Coach Lou Holtz. Yeah. He is, his talks, he, I mean, you just come out of there bouncing off the walls, man. Well, and he was a bit unassuming.

We didn't really see it coming. We thought this would be great because we know his track record. But that place was on their feet when he was done. Standing ovation. They tried to tackle me in the green room afterwards. He was so fired up. Coleman, if I had tried to tackle you, you would have been tackled. We all know. I wouldn't even be sitting here today yeah that's well said you know but

Dave Daniel said something well I don't want to lose that beautiful analogy of sitting around the campfire after after a hard battle you know there's something beautiful about gathering with other people who know what it's like to be in the trenches and this is a special event has been not just because of the speakers but it's the community we've noticed over the last several years something special is happening in those conference rooms and in those hotel hallways and the special things we do this is a special group of people you don't want to miss this we are good at creating an experience and you have an experience it's not just sitting there listening to speakers all week, but it's pretty fun. So Entree Leadership, the summit event moving from May to July 12th through the 15th.

That should push it out there far enough that we're okay and we won't have to do it again. And so you can get tickets or you can wait until things calm down to get a ticket but there's going to be some tickets available and all of you that were signed up for may you can quit fretting about whether we're all going to have it or not because we were fretting about it we weren't sure if we were going to be able to have it and we're just kind of standing on one foot and then on the other and then one foot and then on the other and wait wait wait wait and then you know and the gay lord comes in and says uh you need to move it. So, okay, we'll move it.

And that's what we're going to do. And so your tickets are all automatically transferred to that July date if you already had tickets. By the way, those of you that already had tickets, we've already gotten in touch with you. We don't do those kinds of announcements over the air. Our team's been calling every single person that was and emailing every single person that already had a ticket.

But if you want more information about that, you can text the word Orlando to 44222. Orlando to 44222. I understand that this week you might not want to be purchasing a ticket to this. I get that. But go ahead and text us anyway, and we'll follow up, and we'll walk with you through the decision-making process that's reasonable for you. That's how this works. It's an Entree Leadership Theme Hour.

Small businesses, they are the backbone of this economy. And Daniel Tardy, Ken Coleman, and I, the panel, are here to help you. Phone number 888-825-5225. In times of uncertainty, there is one thing you can control, you. So it's time for you to say no to fear and yes to a plan. And that plan is Financial Peace University. Through FPU, nearly 7 million people just like you have learned to pay off debt forever, save for the future, build wealth, and become outrageously generous. And for the first time ever, you can start a free 14-day trial

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start your free trial of financial peace university today at davramsey.com slash fpu it's an entree Leadership Theme Hour. We're talking small business questions this hour. The phone number, 888-825-5225. Joining me, Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling author, Ken Coleman, and Executive Vice President of Entree Leadership and Operating Board Member, Daniel Tardy, to answer your questions. Gary's in South Carolina. Hey, Gary, how are you?

Hey, I'm doing great, Dave. Hopefully you guys are too. I do have a question, but before I ask my question, I actually want to thank you because my wife and I were sitting around having our coffee yesterday morning, and we were thinking about just how blessed we are because we are 100 debt free and this is a stressful situation but when you ain't got no bills you got a lot less stress and we um we learned all this stuff the hard way about 25 years ago and we took your class fpu when you still taught it yourself at christ church oh my goodness in the early 90s so yeah yeah with an overhead projector it changed us and uh it's been a real blessing but to my

question we do have a small business um several employees and the business has run completely debt-free for about 13 years now. We have cash in the bank. The problem is when you're shut down, and legally we cannot open, and the governor shut down all non-essential businesses, and they did not say when they would reopen or allow us to reopen. It's indefinite, probably May 1st, could be into May. By then, we could have burned through what cash reserves we have to pay everybody and keep the bills paid.

So we're looking at, just want to see what you thought about, like the CIDL or the PPP grants through the government or loans, whatever they're calling them. Because at the burn rate we got, we can probably hang on for six or eight weeks but it'll be over yeah um well number one i'm not going to tell you to borrow money uh they're the sba loans uh that are supposedly going to be forgiven are fraught with several problems one is the um number one they're they're obviously a loan and you're dealing with the SBA, which both of those things mean they're not going to happen fast.

The banks are getting showered with requests already, but the SBA is just not an organization that has the ability nor the inclination to move fast. The second problem is that this is a loan that has been done during a stimulus package with the promise of it being forgiven. As soon as the political tide shifts one way or the other, that will be revisited. And there's no chance I would step up on that rug and let a different person coming into the presidential into the White House or a different tide in the political climate happen. They forget the promises that they made when it was stressful. They just do because they they they build other crap into this stuff.

And it's just I'd stay away from it now. I don't think you're going to run out of cash. That's my prediction. Because I don't think you're going to be shut down as, you know, deep into May. I do not think that the economy can survive that the the amount of damage done to a hundred million families at that point would be devastating and so i just don't think that that the american public are going to sit in their homes that long even if there is a medical reason to do so um and i don't think these governors are going to be able to stop them at some point. So the governors are, you know, they're doing the best they can with the information they've got right now. But I am shocked it's gone on as long as it has.

But there's obviously some good medical data to get us to the middle of April, and then we'll see from there. But I wouldn't want to have the decision-making that they've got to make. I wouldn't want to have that on me. I can't imagine the stress of that. But the risk-return ratio on the virus versus the number of families' economic lives being destroyed is going to, at some point, those lines are going to cross. You need to just hit the on button there. There you go.

Rookie mistake here. I'm with the pros in the studio. Don't worry, the buttons are to turn my mic on. Dave, this is really key. I've been talking to a lot of business owners, and they're saying, I think we're going to take the grant. We're going to figure out how to get the grant. It's not a loan. It's not a grant.

It's a 7A SBA loan. There's a reason they didn't just cut you a check. And so people got to understand this is a debt. There are a lot of conditions to meet for potential reimbursement if that comes. And you're increasing your risk to take it and so uh no i think it's it's foolish to think this is free money which is how it's being talked about out there let's just pretend that ramsey solutions ran out of cash we would be laying people off before we would take that it's that simple and i don't want to be the worst day of my life isn't

it in 30 years we've never laid off a cell for reasons of economics. But I'm not borrowing money, even with the promise of it being forgiven. Just like I'm not going to tell you to borrow money on a student loan with the promise it was going to be forgiven. Remember that promise they made? I remember that promise they made, and they didn't keep it. And so I'm just telling you. Now, there's going to be some tax breaks that you can do. You can write off your payroll tax.

Payroll tax. And I would do that for sure. I'll be doing that. I've got a bunch of that I can write off. But anything I can do to kick that down the road and keep those actual cash dollars in the building gives you a longer survival rate, a longer burn rate. But that's the situation.

So, no, don't borrow the money. No, do not step up on the rug. No, no, no. Brianna is in Georgia. Hi, Brianna. How are you? I'm great. How are you guys doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I own a spa in Atlanta, and I also own a spa in Los Angeles. So this is really kind of hitting me hard, and I kind of want to know, like, how do I kind of damage control the spa in Los Angeles because I'm here in Atlanta? Yeah. I'm assuming they're both shut down, right? Correct, yes.

Yeah, and Los Angeles probably longer than Atlanta, if what I'm hearing is true. Is that what you're hearing? Yes, I should be able to open back up. Right now, April 13th in Atlanta. As for L.A., I have no clue. Yeah. You said when? April 13th?

Correct, April 13th, as of right now. Okay, that's what the current, the latest from the governor of Georgia is then. Okay. All right. Cool. Yeah. I don't know how to tell you. I mean, other than just what have you done?

You just locked the doors, right? Yeah. Yeah. I locked the doors. And as for my employees, I have three employees laid off in Los Angeles and here at five in Atlanta. And you laid off all your employees in both places? Yes. I'm actually running out of cash to pay them.

I should have maybe one more month for both. So I'm kind of like, I don't know what to do after my cash runs out. Yeah. Well, Brianna, I would say, first of all, I'm really sorry. I know this is a tough, tough, tough position to be in, especially for a business like yours. And I want you to hear that while you may not have exactly the same business in the next couple of months, you're still the same person. You're still a leader. You're still a problem solver. You're going to figure this out. And if revenue is shut off, you got to shut off expenses. You can't be the bank

and float everybody through this whole thing. And you're going to have to have some difficult conversations with your team members as a result. But what I want you to do is I want you to keep your relationships alive. Keep your relationships with your team. Keep your relationships with your customers because when we all come back, and we will, you can come back. You've got to turn these relationships back on. Let me give you a couple things as we hit the bottom here. Number one, lots of extra communication with your team. That's right.

Anyone that's involved, landlord, anybody, extra communication. Even if it's bad news, give it to them. Because if you don't tell them, they assume worse news. So tell them what's really going on. The second thing is run your cash model out. Do not run your cash all the way to the bottom. But before it gets that far, run it out a couple different ways. Could everybody take a temporary pay cut in half and survive? Or could

everybody skip one check and furlough for one pay period and survive? Can we all take a hit together somehow and stay together and start running your mouth on a couple of possibilities like that as well? It's an Entree Leadership Theme Hour, talking to small business people and the coronavirus shutdown. Ken Coleman, Daniel Tardy, and me. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Folks, I love telling you about well-made, well-thought-out products. Today, I'm talking about Grip6 belts. I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of traditional belts.

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dave ramsey special visit grip sixRIPSIX.com. That's GRIPSIX.com. The small business theme hour, Entree Leadership. Daniel Tardy, the Executive Vice President, Entree Leadership. Daniel Tardy, the Executive Vice President of Entree Leadership, sits on our operating board, is with Ken Coleman and I to be the panel today to answer your questions. Earlier in the show, we announced the Entree Leadership Summit has been moved from the original date. It was May the 17th through the 20th at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Spa in Orlando. It has been moved. Orlando, those Gaylord folks got in touch with us

and said they weren't sure they were going to be open at that time and suggested that we move it. And with that in mind, we said, okay, we will. So good news is by july you guys are gonna need church you're gonna need a place to come and fill your tank again so july 12th through the 15th is the new date uh same speakers chris hogan christy right ken coleman carly fiorina damon john from shark tank the one and only mike rowe uh mike will be fun especially in this environment, right?

If you've seen some of the interviews he's been doing, wow. Cat Co., the COO and president of North America at Focus. Dr. Benjamin Zander, the founder and conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. And announcing today, we're adding Coach Lou Holtz with us. Here's what's interesting. This group of folks would have been giving you a great world-class leadership talks can you imagine what they're going to have to say in july can you imagine that they're chomping at the bit to talk about leadership and how leaders in this time have shined uh that's what they'll be doing so it's going to be absolutely incredible

also another programming note, the Message of Hope series continues tonight with our own Ken Coleman. And so he'll be talking about how to control your thoughts, actions, and feelings when you're in a crisis. Ken Coleman on YouTube, his Facebook channel, the DaveRamsey.com websites. It'll be on XM Radio. All of the series have been.

We've had a series of Hope. Monday night was Rachel Cruz. Chris Hogan was Tuesday night. Christy Wright Wednesday. Last night, Dr. John Deloney, very, very popular. Tonight, Ken Coleman, very popular as well. Talking about jobs as well as how to control your thoughts, actions, and feelings in a crisis. Let's go to David in Montana.

Hi, David. How are you? We're doing great. Thanks for trying to educate us all. Anyway, I have a question on solo 401K for single proprietorship. I am a barber. What can you tell me about them, and can I have that with other entities? Yes, you can do that.

It's basically just what it sounds. It's a 401K designed for a solo business. And you can do that in addition to a Roth IRA. You can make it a Roth. But in addition to that, you can make it a, you know, you've got the same $19,000 limit on it that a regular 401k has. And if you want to do your personal Roth also, you can do that at $6,000. And if you're married, another $6,000 for your wife, if you wanted to get that high, you know, which will put you at

$31,000 going in a year if you had that much to put in. And if you're making a couple of hundred a year, that would put you at 15% your normal baby step four. But it's a really good system. And just get in touch with one of our SmartVestor pros, and they can help you get it set up. Click SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com. They don't work for us, but they're the people we endorse for your investing. And they do solos, and they do SEPs, and they do simple IRAs, and they do all this and they do seps and they do simple iras and they do all this stuff all the time and there's all kinds of wonderful retirement plans for small businesses well how does that work on matching you match both sides of it you match yourself as the employer

there's no match there's no match it's a push it in it's a solo it's just for you if you have more than if you have an employee you have to have a simple. And a simple IRA is a 401K for a small business. It doesn't have all the administrative costs, but it does have a mandatory match of 3%. So you don't have any administrative costs. Like our 401K in a bigger company like this with 1,000, it costs us $20,000 to $50,000 a year in administrative fees and audits to keep it current with the SEC and with the guidelines and everything, keep it compliant. When you're running a small operation, you've got five or ten folks, and you do that simple, you don't have any administrative costs, $15 a year.

But you do have that 3% mandatory match on any team member that puts something in. So that becomes your cost, but it's good for the team, and it incentivizes them, of course. So there's some really good retirement plan stuff out there for businesses that have one solo team member up to, you know, 50 that are just really clean, they're really easy to operate, really easy to implement. Christina is with us in South Carolina. Hi, Christinaina how are you good how about you better than i deserve what's up um i was just wondering i own a small booth rental salon and i was wondering how you felt about the loans the government was given to us although the government's trillions of dollars in debt themselves um and if you feel like i should sign up for unemployment

don't know if you qualify for unemployment as a self-employed person you might i don't know i've never done that but um uh but but no i'm not going to tell you to borrow the money uh the sba loans that have a forgiveness clause in them they are loans loans. You're dealing with the SBA. You're dealing with the government, which is notorious for changing the rules, and there's not a chance, I would tell you, to step up on that rug. I think they're going to jerk it, and I think we're going to have two, three years from now I'm going to be taking calls from people who took these loans, and they did not get the forgiveness, and they've got a mess on their hands. And so, no, I'd buckle down i'd put

plywood over the doors and you know the hurricanes here let's let's get through this and then i'd reopen that kind of month and everybody's going to need their haircut do you know how high demand she's going to be in another month i mean people like me and dave we got it figured out that's true bald boys but uh yeah people are going to need your service in a month from now. Ken does. I definitely. Yeah, I definitely. Ken does. He's looking shaggy over here.

I'm just saying. Well, actually, I'm growing my hair out to donate to you. It's got the evangelist look going. It's all slicked back. Well, there's nothing else to do with it. You know, here's a question I have for you, Christina. Obviously, the governor, I'm guessing, to shut down your type of business, and that's what we're hearing here in Tennessee. What can you do?

There are a lot of industries right now that are hiring, and I think you need to be looking at, what can I do over the next four to six weeks, part-time, even if you go full-time in another hourly position, just to kind of keep cash flow coming in because you're not going to have any problem filling up that booth once we get back to normal. So I think you've got to be looking at that, you've got an opportunity to just kind of uh slow everything down and kind of hunker down for six to eight weeks i don't think we've been into dave's book last november on the way to florida i'm prepared for this and i'm not stressed at all oh fantastic good yeah perfect then yeah then certainly don't take the loans so yeah you know from reading anything dave ramsey ever wrote he's never going to tell

you take a loan in any situation so um i would rather you know because basically what we're doing is we're trading one kind of pain for another uh if you know you get yourself out of some pain now but you got pain later and uh I'm just, that's what you always do. I mean, you're trading the pain of I want a better car than I have the money for. So I'm trading the pain of that to go borrow money on a car. But then I got the pain of the stupid loan. And every time, debt is always, it's a pain trade is all it is. And I'd just rather just go ahead and I'll take my medicine now, whatever it is.

I don't want to, but I'll do it now, whatever it is. Yeah, but anything you can do to keep cash coming in, Ken is absolutely right. Open phones at 888-825-5225. A reminder to go to DaveRamsey.com slash hope. If you have been laid off, if you are an employer who has laid people off because of this shutdown, we are furnishing our smart dollar classes for laid off people through the end of the year. But your company needs to come to us to set that up. And so whoever's laid you off, ask your old company to call Ramsey and get set up with SmartDollar. SmartDollar is the curriculum that HR folks and CFOs and C-Suiters are buying for their companies

to take their whole team through the stuff that we teach because an employee that's not broke is a better employee. And so we teach you how to do that stuff. SmartDollar free for the end of the year. So Macy's, you need to call us you just laid off a hundred thousand people and we'll put all hundred thousand through it free through the end of the year yeah that's how that's what i'm talking about oh and if you want to if you want to take a free trial on your current employees you can do that too check it all out at davramsey.com slash hope

lots of free trials and free stuff there to help all of you especially working from home with digital stuff this is the dave ramsey show for over 20 years i've recommended zander insurance and their term life programs i'm still amazed at how many families have no life insurance or not enough and would be financially devastated if a spouse or parent died. It's inexcusable since the cost of term life is just plain cheap. And Zander really has figured out a way to make it simple and straightforward. They only sell the plans I recommend and their system is built to your needs. You pick your path.

If you want to work online, you can compare all the companies and handle everything over the web, even signing up and getting your policy electronically. If you have questions or you need that personal touch, well, they're there to help. It's all about serving you like no one else so you get the protection you need. There really is no excuse not to get this done. Call 800-356-4282 or go to zander.com. You pick the path to getting your family protected. Entree Leadership Theme Hour. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. The panel is Ken Coleman and Daniel Tard tardy the executive vice president of entree

leadership joining me to answer your questions the phone number 888-825-5225 for you small businesses so guys we were talking to that commercial break um small businesses are facing obviously unprecedented times. We've been giving messages of hope to individual families for a week, all the Ramsey personalities have. It occurs to me that there's some basic things that you business folks need to hear. Number one, leaders during this time are fashioned. You are the steel laying in the fire becoming a sword right now. Some of you, you are getting good at leadership,

and this is going to fast forward your leadership, the sharpness of the metal in your leadership. You're going to learn how to love your people deeper than you ever have. You're going to learn how to fight more than you've ever fought. You're going to learn how to scratch and pivot and take something to the market quickly and easily from work-at-home people. You know, I've got all of our 1,000 people at home just about. I mean, we've got 15 of us down here doing the show, but everybody else is at home, and you learn how to pivot and create products in that environment and deliver sales in that environment. And you are stretching and, uh, it's unbelievably stressful. Uh, it's, it's fatiguing.

Uh, but the great news is you will never again return to the same shape you were before, uh, because you're, you're going to be bigger, think bigger and be better than you've ever been as a result of this. Uh, that's the only good news of all this bullcrap we're going through. Dave, I want to talk to the leader listening right now going, that's great for people whose business is going to survive this. We're having to shut this thing down. And I want you to hear, you know, as business owners, as leaders, we get so enmeshed in our identity being our business. Here's the thing. You might lose your business. You might lose some team members. Your business may look very different on the other side of this, but you're still going to

be here and you're going to figure out how to relaunch, how to rebuild, how to come back stronger. And so I just want to give people permission who are going, I lost my baby. It's all over. I'm nothing. I don't have any purpose anymore. No, your purpose is who you are and what God put you on this planet to do. And there's a, there's a big problem with the thing that you've been building that thing on top of, and your platform's been shaken. But just like when a tornado comes through a city and knocks down houses, the city doesn't go, well, it's just not putting more houses back there. You're going to come back. You know, I want to talk to the business leader, Dave and Daniel, who they are facing right now the potential of having to shut

it down. They are running out of cash. We've had a couple calls like that this hour. What do I do? And I think that there's two things I want you to know. Number one, this is a complex time, and the best way to solve complexity is with simplicity. And it looks really gnarly, but you have got to kind of put everything out on the whiteboard, everything on the table and say, what can I control? And now I'm going to have to look at the most urgent decisions to protect the business. And this involves sometimes letting people go. And that is gut wrenching. It is not easy. It's the hardest part of leadership. But don't get sucked into the temptation, this is the second piece, of taking a loan that could hurt you long term and actually threaten the business viability long term, as opposed to making the tough decisions by communicating with the team and saying, here's what we know now, here's what we have to do now, and maybe taking a hit to your heart by having to make some tough decisions about your people in order to put you in a position where you can reopen.

And I think that's a really tough situation right now. Overcommunicate to the team. Treat them like adults. That's right. They want to know the truth. Tell them everything that's going on. They're real. That's right.

Really, what's going on? They're not children. You don't have to hide news from them. That's right. Really, what's going on? They're not children. You don't have to hide news from them. That's right. The second thing is you will be amazed at some of your team, at how unbelievably generous they are if you over-communicate with them. In our case, we've already told our team the first thing that will happen is the operating board, which there are 16 of us that are at the top echelon of the 1,000 in terms of our leadership, we will go without pay a month.

That will be the first thing we'll do. We get paid off the bottom line anyway, which by definition we would be going without pay because there would be no profit. But we're not, you know, we're just going to set that aside. Then the second thing we would go to is that that uh rather than lay people off here what we've what we've proposed is and you can design your own thing but we just told our team what we're going to do ahead of time if it gets to that uh we'll have them all skip a check and uh keep working and i'd rather do that rather everybody feel a little pain than than a few of them feel a ton of pain um because we don't have anybody here that we don't need.

I would have already gotten rid of them if we didn't need them. That's right. So I wouldn't have hired them if I didn't need them. And we don't have anybody here we don't like because we already would have gotten rid of them if that was the case. And so that kind of a thing. So everybody that's here, we want here. And so we're going to, you know, but you just design out. And we just told everybody. And you know, but you just design out. And we just told everybody.

And you know what their response was? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't have anybody go, oh, no, I would rather you lay off 100 and all of the rest of us get our full pay. Not a single person said anything like that. As a matter of fact, several other layers of leadership started coming to us saying, if it'll help, we'll skip a check. And we didn't even ask them to do that. Didn't even hint that they should.

But the team will all jump in together and surprise you with their generosity for each other to get you through your cash crunch if you get to that point. We are not to that point. But we're already emotionally preparing everyone, not just the owners. Well, the team will act like family if you treat them like family. And as a family, hey, we're going to win together. We're going to lose together, but we're not going to cut one of our members off and say, well, it sucks. It sucks for them. At least I'm still here. That's not how we do it here. And that's not how your business should do it. I want business owners to think about, you know, we have the four walls in personal finance and business is a little bit

different, but you got to be thinking about how can I keep revenue going? That's the oxygen to your business. How can I keep the team morale up? How can I communicate with the team? And how do we get through this with the entire team? To Dave's point, I want you thinking about your critical expenses. Some of your expenses are nice to have. Some of them are long-term investments. Maybe you don't put all those expenses out there right now. Tighten your belt a little bit on the expenses. And then how can you show up for your customers? Not necessarily just with a sales offer, but how can you give them something that's valuable?

How can you encourage them? How can you adapt your product or service to add value today that builds customer loyalty that later is going to turn it? Your customers are not going to forget who you are for them in the season. And over the course of a year, there'll be a point where that stuff will monetize. You focus on those four things, you're most likely going to get through this unscathed. Yeah. And I got to tell you, those of you that think you're running eight weeks out, I, you know, I'm just, economists and weather forecasters are the only two people that can be wrong all the time and their job so just put me in that bucket okay all right but uh but i cannot

grasp how our economic way of life would survive another four weeks in may with a shutdown i can i don't think it's um economically possible um i have no idea what that means with the virus other than thank god it'll be summer. And my understanding from some medical people is that the virus doesn't like heat. And like a lot of, you know, colds and viruses are wintertime animals, right? And they die in the summer. So the heat in the summer will help us with that, hopefully. But anyway, regardless of that, regardless of the medical side of the actual curve

or whatever you want to project, mathematically, economically, the chances of this economy and our way of life surviving an additional four weeks of shutdown into May. So I'm not planning that because I don't I don't I can't foresee it actually working. So I'm planning other stuff at that point. I think you're going to have all kinds of political upheaval, all kinds of unrest like you've never seen in America if you if we do that in May. So it's just an opinion and it's worth what you paid for it. I'm saying make it through April

and you're probably going to be okay. That's my point. I don't know when in April, but if you can make it through the end of April with your plans, you're going to be okay. That puts a small business theme hour in the books. Thanks to Ken Coleman and Daniel Tardy for hanging out, guys.

Thank you, Dave. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, guys. It's George Camel, host of The Dave Ramsey Show video channel. You can now listen to the show on your smart speaker. Just tell your Alexa or Google device to play The Dave Ramsey Show or find out all the ways you can benefit at DaveRamsey.com.