The Ramsey Show - App - Dave & George Answer Your Small Business Questions (Hour 3)

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Dave Ramsey & George Kamel discuss small business questions in an EntreLeadership Theme Hour: Getting buy-in from employees on your company's core values, The challenge of hiring with high wages, How much to pay yourself when you own a business, Investing extra cash in your team.   Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6   Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the 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. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, host of the Entree Leadership Podcast, is my co-host today. This hour is an Entree Leadership Theme Hour, which means we are going to talk about business, leadership, and particularly small business, if you want to talk about it. Entree Leadership is a book that I did several years ago that was our playbook and still is our playbook for how we run this business. It's got all our Super Bowl plays in it, how we won the Super Bowl, how we've grown

this from a card table in my living room to today about 1,200 team members and a major national brand. The word Entree Leadership is one we made up. It's a combination of entrepreneurship and leadership. Who came up with that? That's clever. Was that you? Underhand pitch. Yeah, look at you. I'm just, I have no idea, truthfully. You really don't? I don't know the story. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Well, when I was sitting down to think about, I originally taught the material to our team, people that wanted to grow inside of our business. I was trying to grow our leadership development, trying to grow leaders inside the business.

And I didn't want a leadership class because I was in management class in college, taught by a tenured professor who had never made payroll. And when I hear the word leadership sometimes i have uh i get a little twitch because i kind of remember management class takes you back but real leadership i don't have an issue with but it just kind of reminded me of that and so i didn't want to just say this is our leadership handbook you know i didn't want to do that and i didn't really want just entrepreneurs because we entrepreneurs are all a little bit add and every little shiny thing we're like a bass we go after everything that's shiny it's like squirrel right i mean you know you get that uh thing and so i didn't because managing a whole building full of those people would be like trying to nail jello to a tree so i had no desire to do

that but i did want the energy of the entrepreneur and the sophistication of the leader the servant attitude of the leader so we combined them entree leadership entrepreneurship and leadership entree leadership that's where it comes from so open phones if you want to talk about business this hour this is your time george is here he has interviewed a bazillion business experts on the podcast and so can jump in and help as well on this the phone number here 888-825-5225 joe is in charlotte to start us off this hour hey joe welcome to the ramsey show hey dave thanks for having me sure what's up oh not a whole lot i just want to start out by saying you know it's such an honor to be on air with you.

You've helped me guide my life through FBU and Entrez leadership from the very beginning. Cool. So I'm just super grateful for that. Thank you. So I just want to start out with, so I have about 10 team members in my company. We're in diesel truck and trailer repair out of the Charlotte, North Carolina area. We're in the Pathfinder stage. I'm getting ready to roll out our mission, vision, and core values to the team. So my question is, you know, how do I go about doing that to create the most buy-in from everybody? And so that way it's just get it kicked off from the very beginning in the most efficient way.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you can't instill core values as a boss. You have to do it as a leader. Bosses push and leaders pull. And so pull means persuasion instead of wagging your finger, right? And so, you know, here's our core values this is who we are and this is how i teach it at ramsey the ramsey team will tell you i say this all the time if you want to be a we this is who we are if you're not this you're not a we

meaning get your butt out, right? That's what we're saying. This is who we are. And so this, you know, we're French. Oui, oui, right? This is us. And so this is us. And so, like, you know, what is one of your core values as an example, Joe?

Dignity in our work. Okay. And that's not an aspirationalational meaning it's not what you wish it is instead actually who you are okay right i mean sometimes people put sometimes corporate america in particular which is really bad about worried about optics and their virtue signaling and all this other crap that they do instead of actually getting their work done. But corporate America is real bad about here's our core value, which means that's what they wish they were. That's aspirational.

We aspire to be that. We hope to be that. And our core values at Ramsey, we didn't do that. We wrote down who we are. And then anybody that's not that is not a we, you know, and so dignity in our work. And so, you know, and you said you guys are what, diesel mechanics? Is that what you said? Yes, sir.

Okay, and so if you look down on diesel mechanics as beneath you, and you don't see that as work that matters, you don't see that as a work that has dignity then you're not a we because i own this place and i see this as a calling i see it as a great service that we provide to some of the hardest working americans people on the other side of a diesel are generally some of the hardest working people you're going to run into right yes sir and keeping them on the road and keeping them in the field and keeping them operating is is is a mission with dignity and if you can't really get excited about that you you know i probably messed up when i brought you in here and i'm so sorry i owe you an apology because this is

who we are i believe this has dignity i believe this is work that matters because we're keeping some of the hardest working most productive people on the planet engaged in because we keep their stuff running and that if you can't get dignity out of that man i mean you don't you don't you don't love hard-working people and instead you just think you're some kind of grease monkey i don't need you in here man and that's how that's how i would do it from the stage at ramsey wouldn't i george joe i wish dave could just go over there and do it for you but uh you're the leader buddy and i know you're like well i'm not the most you gotta care and so you can't just read this off a slide like you're just communicating some information you have to show your passion and know that this is just level setting you're setting a foundation this is not the first and last time they're going to hear these core values

you have to do i do we talk about it all the time we do them a couple times a month in staff meeting we're doing one of them again and and people go you know i've been here 20 years i've heard you do that a whole bunch of times yep you're gonna hear it again too because we talk about it all the time we talk about it all the time if you don about it all the time. If you don't repeat it, it's not going to happen. You don't get to make one announcement, Joe, and this is over. This is just the first of 8,000 announcements you're going to make regarding this. And then you're going to live it out day in and day out. And you're going to let the culture build with the team as they live it out.

That's how this stuff sticks. Yes, sir. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I think you can explain to them this is not who we wish we were. This is who I am. And in a small business, you know, who you are is the DNA of the place. So this is our values. And, you know, I think that what you guys do and what we do at this company is is important. I think it's work that matters.

I think it has great dignity. And so if you can't get on board with that, then, you know, it's not going to work out here for you. And you don't have to threaten them with that on the first day you announce it. But you're just going to start to describe, this is who we are. This is who we are. This is who we are. And don't be shocked if one or two of the ten someday decides that they're not that. And, you know, as a country friend of mine says, you ain't going to fit in around here, boy.

This is The Ramsey Show. george camel ramsey personality host of the entree leadership podcast is my co-host today we're taking calls this hour on entree Leadership. Business questions, small business questions, leadership questions. Thank you for joining us, America. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Cindy is in Boston. Hi, Cindy. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thank you. Thank you. How can I help? Okay, so my question is, how do I hire when everyone applying is looking for wages much higher than ever before and out of our comfort zone also looking for benefits that we've never accommodated before including longer vacations sick time retirements etc. Yeah small business has never been able to compete with corporate America on packages um and so like when we had 30 employees uh we said our benefit package consisted of your checks

going to clear we didn't have back in those days we didn't have health insurance we didn't have squat but what we did have was you actually were going to be eating lunch with the ceo every day because there wasn't that many of us right we all fit at one table and what we did have was you're going to be treated with dignity and you're going to be treated like family and you're going to have a whole different kind of environment than working in stupid corporate america that's lost its soul and so you don't you you're from an employee standpoint you're in a much better environment without all the crazy optic virtue signaling garbage in corporate america if you want to be in that world head on over there baby i don't want nothing to

those people and uh and if you want to work for them you're actually not the kind of people we want anyway. So we brand differentiated by the quality of the culture, the quality of the environment, not by the benefits package. And as a matter of fact, today with 1,200 team members, we don't try to compete with huge companies, you know, whatever policy that they have. I don't even want to get into it. We're not going to do it. We're just going to be us. And if you want to work here, you're working here because the work matters, because it's a big deal to be working on something that changes people's lives. And we're going to pay reasonably.

We're going to pay competitively. But if you want eight weeks of vacation, you know, we're not about how much vacation you have. We're about how much work you do, including me, by the way. Hello, I work. And so, you know, but if you want, if they come in and right off the bat, the thing they're concerned about is the benefits package, you don't want to hire them anyway. Because they're there for what they can get rather than what they can add and so it's always a problem now what we do have that we're facing and that is a legitimate thing is the wage issue

the cost to hire somebody has gone up dramatically especially in uh certain uh certain disciplines okay developers for instance uh software engineers way up in just uh 24 months just way up and i'm even just talking about the retail so in a retail environment yeah you're competing with people who want to pay 20 and 30 bucks to work at target right yeah right i mean and that that's so what we're having to do and what you're going to have to do there is uh we're gonna we're having to look and go um we can't afford it so you said comfort zone it's not in your comfort zone does that mean you're not really roi-ing on the payroll the i'm roi-ing currently on the payroll but to add like one more person would just be yeah yeah yeah and so i'd love to i'll give you an example if a developers

if a senior developer's three hundred thousand dollars a year writing code and they used to be two hundred thousand dollars a year if i could make money with the code they wrote at 200 and I can't at 300, it means I'm not hiring them. Right. They price themselves out of the market and they have to work somewhere else. And we're, we're, we're actually having that conversation in the last six months here, that exact conversation right there. So, I mean, it might not be numbers that big with someone working retail but if you can make it work at uh fifteen dollars an hour but everybody else is paying 25 and when you hire them at 25 you actually lose money on the activity that they are engaged in then uh you know the idea in business is if you're going to take on payroll you make more

than it costs you otherwise you go out of business right absolutely yeah and so you just have to look up and go i can't i not able to hire anybody to do that because i can't pay that and so one of two things is going to happen then wages are going to adjust on that type of position or you're going to figure out a way to get a return on investment on that, that that person working is going to make you more than they cost you. But they have to make you more than they cost you, or by definition you're heading out of business. It's frustrating as crud right now. What kind of retailer are you?

Jewelry. Jewelry. Interesting. Yeah, we do custom design and bridal mostly and a lot of in-house work. Okay, are you trying to hire a jeweler or somebody to work the front counter? Oh, both would be great. Yeah. You know, but trying to find anybody, too, that's qualified is really difficult as well.

That's another topic. That doesn't think carrots are on salad yeah right yeah so it's interesting it's been very difficult and especially since we shut down and then everybody comes out there everybody lost their job or everybody like is looking for a new job because they can and then they're coming out just looking for a lot more, like a third more, 50% more than what we were paying before. So what is the hourly you're trying to fill? Rate? 25.

You're offering 25? Yeah, between 20 and 25, depending on the job path. And that's to work the front counter, and they need to know something about diamonds. They need to know something about diamonds. Yeah, and you used to pay how much? 18. Okay, and so they're asking for 35?

No, they're asking for more. They're looking for salary. They're looking for extra vacation time on top of that. So it's like I'm paying you to not be here when I don't have anybody to cover for you except for me. And, you know, that's the thing. If someone is in that spirit, I'm not interested in having them on my team. Right. But there's more and more of them coming through the door.

I know. I know. I mean, i got the same thing and you know like we used to say around here that uh we i got a ton of millennials on the team and a ton of gen z's on the team and people used to talk about how bad a worker they are and they're all self-centered and they're all arrogant and all that stuff they're all snowflakes they're not they're not there's a percentage of them are participation trophy idiots and there's a percentage of them will charge the gates of hell with a water pistol they're not there's a percentage of them are participation trophy idiots and there's a percentage of them will charge the gates of hell with a water pistol they're the most crusade driven wonderful team members i've ever had but you've got to get the ones that actually you know

that like weren't raised by by uh uh nintendo and instead actually had parents in other words they have they have a work ethic they have value system you know instead of sitting around going the whole axis of the world runs through the top of your pointed little head and because it doesn't and so what you're running into is the frustration of the percentage of that population that is self-centered entitled and arrogant and you don't want them on your team for any amount of money if you could get them at 16 if you could get them at 14 you wouldn't want them because they're there for what they can get rather than what they can add and it's frustrating as crud hiring and running a team managing culture in the team is one of the hardest business problems i've ever tried to solve and it's a

constant day in and day out battle to go oh you can't work here anymore look at the what look look at you you just misbehaved that's unbelievable or nope we're not even going to have another conversation about it this interview it's over and you just end it i mean it's very hard isn't it george we fight it we fight it here yeah and you're there's always the worry they're going to leave for a nickel more because if they came in the door with their demands they're going to go to the next place as soon as they can find an extra nickel there and that's that's one of the problems you got to find people who care and you might need to give them room to grow we've had some people leave because they wanted to work from home and we don't work from home and so we said

you know what that's a good move you should leave self-select because we don't work from home. And so we said, you know what? That's a good move. You should leave. Self-select. Because we don't work from home. Because, you know, we don't not work from home or whatever it was Elon said, right? That's the deal. Yeah. No, thank you. We're not doing that. We actually believe that it's not good that man be alone.

It's good that man be next to man and, you know, talking to each other and having brainstorming sessions and creative. That happens in person. And these companies are finding out that work from home is killing their productivity. This is The Ramsey personality host of the Entree Leadership Podcast is my co-host today this hour is an Entree Leadership theme hour where we're talking with business owners business leaders about business questions, leadership questions. And like our callers today, if you're a business owner, you've got questions about the tactical how-tos of running a company. We run one every day here.

So we are not theoretical people in some classroom somewhere. We're actual practitioners, and we put together a thing called the entree leadership master series and we will show you the tactical how-to's of business it is a serious hard long week and the conference is a crash course and all the tactical lessons that we've learned in 30 years of doing the business you will leave tired overwhelmed totally informed we've learned in 30 years of doing the business, you will leave tired, overwhelmed, totally informed. We've had people say stuff like, I learned more in this five days than I did getting my MBA. And we're hosting the Master Series in Nashville, our own hometown, here on the 25th through the 29th of September, about a month away,

and less than a month away. We have like 15 or 20 seats left, something like that. It is almost sold out. But we thought since we're doing an Entree Leadership Theme Hour, we'd give you a chance to come if you want to come. You got a month to get ready and you got about a day to buy your ticket because they're going to be gone. So if you're interested in coming to Entree leadership enjoying nashville and learning more

than you have ever learned in a leadership course because boy we pour it on i'm teaching most of the lessons this year so uh personally so it's a lot of fun i love being with small business people love being with business people it's my favorite thing i think business small business is the backbone of the american economy and i've got statistics to prove it. So go to RamseySolutions.com slash Master Series to reserve your seats. As the podcast host, are you doing something there this year? I will be in attendance. I'll make a cameo at some of the events there. A cameo?

Yeah, that's what they call it these days. Is it? Okay. But these are my people. If you're a star, you get cameos. I am inspired by just meeting these business owners. They're incredible. And one of the things that is fascinating is one of the best parts of the event is them meeting each other. Because business is lonely as a business owner.

And so to talk to someone else who may be in your field, may be across the country, who knows, it just gives fuel to your soul to keep fighting. You know, we've been doing these over a decade and almost two decades and uh we have people that come to these events every year and they've been friends for a long time and they met at this event but they're running businesses across the country sometimes the same industry sometimes not but they just strike up a chord because there's something about small business people that are cut from the same cloth. So if you want to come, Entree Leadership Master Series, September 25th through the 29th. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash Master Series, and you can reserve a seat.

RamseySolutions.com slash Master Series. Sabrina is in New Hampshire. Hey, Sabrina, welcome to the Ramsey Show. What's up? Hi, Dave and George. Thank you for taking my call today. Sure. How can we help? All right. So my husband and I own a small business, a heavy equipment repair shop. The business is debt-free, and personally, we're in baby step seven. So my question is, how much do we pay ourselves and what do we do with the rest of

our profits? Do you have suggested budgeting guidelines for giving, marketing, retained earnings, and investing? We're doing well and have great profit margins, so we just really don't know what to do with our money now, which is a good problem to have. Oh, it's wonderful. Congratulations. Very well done. Very well done. Well, what we do is we set a percentage for different categories inside the business that we're going to use. Like you said, marketing is an example. And then we adjust it. If it ends up being too much, we adjust it down. You know, one of our categories that we spend a ton of money is on our team on hr and so events that we do for our team gifts that we do for our team uh team members that are in crisis and we come alongside them um all of that is as a percentage

of budget and sometimes it runs and you're covering the christmas party and by the time we come up on the christmas party at the end of the year sometimes that percentage wasn't enough and we have to beef it up sometimes it wasn't more than enough and we've got too much going in and we end up doing something else with it but um we're not obligated by law to spend any of that so it's just something we made up right same thing with your marketing and so you say all right we're going to spend x percentage and with that we still make a fine profit. And, uh, but if you end up saying, gosh, we don't really need to spend that much to get the business in the door, we could spend less than you dial it down a couple of points.

Right. And then as far as the profits go, it's all yours. Just take it home. What's the problem? I mean, set aside, set aside. We do set a percentage that has not changed in years uh for growing retained earnings and so if you've got cash stacked inside the business that equals half your half a year of operating you probably got enough cash in the business okay and you could

just start you know you could reduce that amount. But I would put a percentage of my profits into the retained earnings, which is for future growth. It's for buying things, equipment. It's for emergencies. It's the business emergency fund. It's all of those things. And just put a percentage of your profits towards that and then take the rest of it home.

That's what it's for. You run a business or you make a profit and take it home. There's no obligation to leave it sitting down there okay that was that was my concern was i didn't know if it's safer to stuff it all away or if we can enjoy some as just well i mean you don't want to be down there with no cash right but you also don't need i mean uh if you have a $5 million a year business, you don't need $20 million sitting down there in cash either, you know? Okay.

Do you feel like you're not paying yourselves enough right now? We are, gross household income is $110,000 right now. So I feel like we make plenty, especially now that we don't have a mortgage payment. Yeah, but that's just the salary you're taking out that's not your profits correct your profits are all taxable whether you leave them down there or not because sub s and llc are both passed through and so all your profits are taxable every year whether you leave it at the office or whether you take it home so you're already paying taxes on the profits you might as well just take them home and enjoy them if the business has got the cash that it

needs for retained earnings and for marketing and for doing the operation of the business you know and then the rest of it i take home in my case and uh you know now i am investing in uh our our building complexes out of my personal income around this campus here. And so take it home, and it ends up staying on the property, but not inside of the Ramsey Solutions business. It moves over into family stuff. We're building these buildings and that. So that's the difference there.

So, yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. Jeff is with us. Jeff is in knoxville hi jeff what's your business question for today okay kind of tagging on what she had but um we have extra cash as well and i'm just wondering if you had a a you know income to profit ratio of you know like what what how much when when should we take that cash out and invest it in something? You know, that's kind of what we're trying to figure out, that ratio.

Well, I mean, as far as retained earnings go, very few businesses need more than six months of operating capital. Gotcha. Now, in addition to that, if you see some big purchase in the future, you know, you need to buy a half-million-dollar piece of equipment, then you would tack on something to go do that with, right? But your retained earnings cover cash flow fluctuations since you're not borrowing money with a line of credit. Your retained earnings cover emergencies. You know, your retained earnings cover some purchases of items. But if you've got a, something that is a major thing,

you probably want to budget for that over a period of time. But, uh, there's not a set margin rate. I mean, I've got like 14 different profit centers inside the business and publishing operates on different margins than live events do. And so, you know, whatever kind of business you're in is going to have different margins right right yeah we basically have you know three divisions um in our business you know yeah but the industry that you're in may have a a fairly standard margin for those three things that

you can look at but you know there's not one that all small business should have x percent of margin no especially people dealing with hard goods like for instance publishing the margins are smaller You know, there's not one that all small business should have X percent of margin. No. Especially people dealing with hard goods, like, for instance, publishing. The margins are smaller. If you're dealing with digital, your margins go through the roof because your cost of goods sold is air. You know, it's just the production of the item. These are good problems to have. Running your business debt-free and having too much money.

These are great problems. I love these business owners. This is horrible. Well done. Horrible situation. You have too much money and don't know what to do. Send it to Georgia's Bahamas problems. I love these business owners. Horrible. Well done. Horrible situation. You have too much money and don't know what to do. Send it to Georgia's Bahamas Fund. I'll send you my Venmo.

That's it. Open phones this hour. 888-825-5225. Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 24, 16, For the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity. Winston Churchill said, success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

There it is. It's an Entree Leadership theme hour as we talk small business, business, and leadership. This hour, George Campbell, Ramsey personality, host of the Entree Leadership podcast, is my co-host. If you want to come to our Entree Leadership Podcast, is my co-host. If you want to come to our Entree Leadership Master Series at the end of September, there's a handful of tickets left.

Go to ramseysolutions.com slash events, and you can find out everything that's going on there. ramseysolutions.com slash master series will put you right on the page, actually. But if you hit events, you can always find out all of our events that are going on. And we did announce earlier today that the San Antonio event for Building Wealth is sold out in September. The Phoenix event, the second one we launched, is within a handful of seats being sold out. We'll probably announce it tomorrow as a sellout. So if you want to go to those, Entree Leadership just has a handful of seats for this summit left if you want to go to those entree leadership just has a handful of seats for this summit left if you want to come so we'd love to have you at all of these things but don't dilly dally around get yourself in there and get you a ticket all right toby is with us toby is in

bowling green kentucky hi toby how are you doing well mr ramsey how about yourself sir better than we deserve brother how. How can we help? Yes, sir. So we have grown our company in a very good fashion, and we are moving more towards owning the infrastructure through the family or the family trust and leasing back to the organization as far as the infrastructure with some of the tax benefits there. And what I'm looking for some advice on is how to protect the family more when they own the infrastructure. And it'll be several dollars worth in the several million.

One plant could be a couple million. One could be two or three million. So we're talking about some significant dollars there okay so the plant that's worth a couple million dollars is in a trust that the family is a beneficiary has a beneficial interest on the trust and you're leasing it back to the company yes sir that's correct what protection what do you need protection from uh well i'll give you a small example uh and i'm just looking for input on this we have several gasoline convenience stores uh had a lady pull up got this on camera got fuel uh was a drop top mercedes took off with the gas pump in her car hose whipped around poured uh fuel

into her car and naturally uh got an ambulanceaser, sued us over it, started out about 15 grand. That's when I found out the good balancing act with insurance company. And as the first time we had to settle for like $5,000 over something that was clearly not our fault. So when I look at us owning infrastructure personally through the families and leasing back to the companies, my concern is this. Say somebody drives up, runs in your front wall. It could be their fault. If an ambulance chaser lawyer type then represents that person,

naturally they could sue the company for a settlement. But if they do enough digging, they're going to find out that the family owns it, leases back to the company. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Okay. The family doesn't own it. Trust owns it. The trust owns it leases back to the company doesn't matter doesn't matter okay the family doesn't own it trust owns it the trust owns it correct they can sue the trust yeah okay so the building i'm

sitting in is owned by my family trust and it's leased to my company okay all of which by the way i control but that doesn't mean you have access to it if you run a bill run a truck through the front of it you can only sue the trust you can sue the company that's operating you can sue both of them uh but you know you're not getting me personally because i'm not the owner so when you guys do that you guys didn't get like a one recommended recommendation that happened so like let's say one physical plant the company has general liability insurance for $5 million. Of course you ought to have that. Yep.

You need that, but that doesn't, but if the lawsuit's for $50 million, that won't help. Correct. So the only thing you can do is keep the assets, is what I've done and a lot of folks doing from a risk management scenario is you spread the assets into different ownership groups and so like i would not have one trust on all six gas stations i'd have a

different trust for each gas station okay it's a pain in the butt because you got you got five tax returns to file you got five sets of corporate crap with the state you got five sets of everything but then if they take one of the gas stations away from you in a lawsuit because they beat that deal on that trust you hand them the keys to it and you close it down and you got the other four uh that makes sense i just visited an oil company out west and they own a whole block they're they're a lot larger than us and they have i don't put more than i don't put more than five million million worth of real estate in one LLC. I open a different LLC.

Okay. So, like, I've got some houses as an example, and I'll total up the houses when it gets to be about $5 million worth of houses in rental properties. I form another LLC. And so I've got multiple LLCs. I don't even own my cars. I don't own anything anymore.

Nothing is in my name. Good luck. Sue me. Yeah, that's where we're at. The only thing me and my wife own personally is a personal checking account. And maybe we should get that out. Yeah, because there are idiots out there, and there's two lawyers for every idiot. That's the problem you've got.

And so you've got a target on your butt because you managed to become successful in this economy. It's aggravating as crud, but it's the reality. So you carry large lumps of liability insurance, lots of umbrellas, lots of general liability insurance policies in your operational policies that kind of thing and you don't put more than you keep your assets the target size small so if an idiot gets drunk and falls off the front porch of one of these rental properties and decides it's my fault that he got drunk and fell off the porch and sues us then he might get those four houses but he's not getting nothing else and that's if he gets all the way through the umbrella policies and everything else and gets past me being pissed

off and funding the lawyer to kick his drunk butt but i'll do that too but aside from that the actual you know the actual thing of the size of the target has been diminished because once it gets to a certain size, I just build another one. Yep, yep. Can I ask one question on that point you made? One last one. Okay, so if you make sure one LLC, let's say it's no more worth than $4 to $5 million, and you have general liability for $4 to $5 million, I understand if they sue you for $50. I get that.

Well, you're just going to hand them the keys if you lose. Walk away. Yeah, exactly. You're now in the gas station business. Good luck with that. Have you ever gotten a personal general liability policy on what you own personally, even though it's in the trust? I don't own anything personally.

It's an additional insurer. Okay, because it's all in the trust. Yeah. No, it's all in a trust. It's all in an LLC. I it's all in a trust it's all in an llc i don't own a thing yeah except the interest in these different companies but that you know anything we own personally that's not in the trust we need to make sure we're getting that stuff in the trust yeah i started buying my cars in LLCs. You know, my lake house is in an LLC.

Okay. Everything. So because of these idiots that are out there running around thinking that you owe them something because you became successful. It's just the world we live in. There's a bunch of evil people out there. Yeah, we've had to put cameras on all of our trucks, front, sides, and backs, because we literally had people pull in front of us and slam on the brakes and then try to sue us oh yes yep for sure i mean i i you know can you imagine me bumping into to you and coming up and going oh you know sorry about that uh here's my insurance and they go uh oh dave ramsey oh god and they fall on the ground and wrap you know and start

foaming at the mouth i mean this is why i carry a 10 million dollar liability umbrella you know because of this stuff it's just sad it's not funny really but it's just it's the world we live in and uh it's one of the expenses that you have to take on protect and to protect yourself and it's just it's risk management category is what it falls into you're just risk management so big chunks of insurance where you can and keep the target bite size instead of a whole buffet. Yeah. Makes perfect sense. Cool.

That was a fun discussion. I didn't got to have that one on the air before. I've talked to my friends about that stuff. We're nerd now. Yeah, we're completely nerd now. You want the right kind of insurance, enough coverage. Did I just tune into the Ramsey show? Yeah, you did.

Diversify your risk portfolio. There you go. I mean, that's exactly what we've done. Smart. And get to review that again tomorrow night in the estate plan. Oh, good. This is a warm-up, Dave. The Monty Python meeting.

I'm feeling much better. I'm really not. It's a flesh wound. The Dave will die meeting. The Dave's going to die this year meeting. I think you're going to outlive us all, Dave, just out of spite. Dead gum right. Just dead gum right. Count on it, George. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books.

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