The Ramsey Show - App - How to Narrow Down a Good Business Idea (Hour 3)

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

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🎵 🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is your show. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Joshua starts us off this hour in Miami, Florida. Hey, Joshua, how are you?

I'm good, Dave. I'm a new listener, and it's a great honor to get to talk to you. You too, sir. How can I help? So I'm 19 years old. I just got a car not too long ago, been saving up for it probably a few months ago now. And long story short, I had Gaines Co. for my auto insurance, and I've decided I'm going to be moving out to Texas to live on my own. And so I switched to Allstate. Now, in the process of doing this, you know, I went to my old insurance agency to cancel. And as far as I knew, everything was all good. They sent the paperwork out to Gaines Co. And then about a week or so later,

I'm still getting stuff from Gaines Co. It's actually probably close to a month now. I'm still getting stuff from Gaines Co. I called Gaines Co., and they said that the policy is still active, but they never got anything from the agency. And now I've got Gaines Co. coming after me for debt collection because I didn't pay the bill after I was supposed to cancel. What do you think I should do? Your agency should take care of this.

Right. Did you call them? Yeah, I've called them a bunch of times. It's hard to get a hold from anybody over there. And really, it's kind of like a shady place, honestly. They're not really helping me out here. Okay. Well, I mean, you've got two choices.

You're either going to pay it or your agency is going to pay it because Gaines Co. didn't do anything wrong. Right, right. They weren't notified. Since they weren't notified, you owe the money. Somebody owes the money. Right. So either the agency says, oh, we screwed up,

and they talked Gainesco into dropping this as a favor to them, or you're going to pay, it's probably, what, a month's worth of insurance? Yeah, it's about $367. Yeah, you're going to pay it if you can't get the agency to get them to waive it. It's one of those two things. And let me tell you what not to do. Don't ignore this. Don't go, oh, well, screw it.

I'm not paying it. I don't owe it. I'm driving off to Texas. Forget it. It'll end up being $3,000 in collections fees and lawyers fees and chasing you 10 years from now. So put this thing to bed. Put a bullet in this thing stay on it it's worth a lot more than 360 for you to finish this and so i'm going to be doing two things simultaneously

one is i'm going to make a total nuisance of myself at this agency you said you went over there they have a physical location go Go over there again. Sit there. I want to talk to the manager. You guys screwed this up. Now this company's chasing me. I need you to fix it. Get on the phone while I sit here. And you fix it while I'm sitting here.

And then you get me something in writing from these goobs that it's gone. You ride their butt. If it takes you an hour, you made $367 an hour. If it takes you two hours, you it takes you an hour you made 367 an hour if it takes you two hours you made 150 an hour right right because otherwise you're going to end up paying it or you're going to you know raise cane with gainsco who really didn't do anything wrong in this story and you know guys it was canceled and i need you guys to call the agency and i need you guys to waive this it's not my fault it's not your fault either but i canceled it i've you know did you have any paperwork to showing you canceled it at all well i don't have

anything on my end when i actually went into the agency you know we had a i had to sign and date everything yeah you didn't get a copy of that. They never provided me with any of that help. Go to the agency, get a copy of that. Don't leave there without a copy of it. Okay. Because that, too, will give you a way to fight with Gainesville. Because the agency represents them, not you.

That's the problem. And so, yeah, you just got to make a nuisance of yourself with both of these people until this thing goes away or until you pay it. But do not walk off from it. It will follow you, my brother. So take care of business here. Put a bow on this. Put a bullet in it.

Finish business. It's over. And get everything in writing and keep a file because you're dealing with, as you said, shady people. Alexa is with us in Tacoma, Washington. Hi, Alexa. How are you? Hi, Scott. How are you, Dave?

Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? Well, what's going on right now is me and my husband have $22,000 in debt. My student loan just got discharged because I'm going on disability, but I want to know if I should just go back to work. because I'm going on disability, but I want to know if I should just go back to work. But I'm going through trauma therapy as well, so I'm trying to figure out, do I wait after trauma therapy and then go back to work, or just go back to work immediately? Your student loans were discharged, then you have been disabled a while.

No, no. I've been disabled for about, I'd say, nine months. And you've been permanently disabled during that nine months? Yes. Okay. Sorry. Because it usually takes a long time to get your student loans discharged. They just did it immediately. Wow. That's amazing.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, you realize if you, I don't know what the ruling is, how quickly you can go back to work without them reactivating those student loans. So the only thing is I can go back to work, but I can't make over $16,000. For how long? In a year.

For three years. Oh, okay. What did you used to make? I only made, the max I've ever made is $22,000. So that's not a big, how much was owed on your student loans? $30,000. $30,000, okay. So if you made $22,000 instead of, and you made $16,000,

that's $6,000 a year you have to work for less than you used to work for, right? Yes. And you do that for three years, that's $18,000 that you're taking a hit in order to get $30,000. None of this sounds very fun to me. What was the nature of your disability? So it's a long story, but I had a really traumatic childhood. And for some reason, after I had my second miscarriage within the first year, it just kind of all came back and I was having nightmares, cold sweats.

Um, I had to end up, well, when I was 20, I had to go on antipsychotics. Um, unfortunately, that's the, that's the nature of the trauma therapy that you've been doing. Okay. So, uh, but now you're okay? I'm not okay. I'm not finished yet. I'm still going through some intensive trauma therapy.

I go twice a week. But I really want to help out my husband, and I don't want him to feel alone, that he has to take the financial burden alone. And I really want to be helpful. I just don't know how I can be helpful. Get well. That's how you get helpful. Take the time to heal, kiddo.

You've been through some horrible stuff. Take your time to heal. Listen, what's the best 20-year plan? You go back to work too quick and still have a relapse, or you get this stuff put away because you go through a healing process, right? That's the best way to be helpful to your family is you get well. You're okay. You're okay.

Just get well. And then when you do, then we'll deal with you going back to work and making a lot of money and cleaning up all your student loans if they come back, whoop-dee-doop-dee. But let's you get well first. Don't worry about it right now. Let me tell you a story about two families that are very much alike in a lot of ways. Both families have two working parents and a couple of young kids. Each has debt and has struggled to make ends meet.

But they're starting to make headway with their budgets and smarter decisions with money. They have dreams and plans, and the only real difference is that one family has the right amount of term life insurance, and the other doesn't. Big difference. If one of the parents die, and that does happen, their well-being would be destroyed. Paying for the mortgage, utilities, food, and that does happen, their well-being would be destroyed. Paying for the mortgage, utilities, food, and other bills would be impossible, let alone saving for education or retirement.

That's why every day I talk relentlessly about getting term life insurance. Just go to ZanderInsurance.com or call 800-356-4282 and see how inexpensive it really is. Be the family that takes those deliberate steps to be different and responsible. It really does make you the hero of your story, and it puts you on course for better things ahead. Thanks for joining us, America. At the bottom of the hour for a couple of segments, Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, will be with us. She is the founder of the Business Boutique Movement, equipping women to make money doing what they love. If you're a lady and you've got questions about business, or you're a gentleman and you have questions about your lady in business or business, we'll talk to you about anything. But Christy Wright will be with us.

So make sure you hang out with us and join us here at the bottom of the hour. And you can call in now with your questions. Kelly's going to open up some phone lines so you can get through at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Jeremy is in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hi, Jeremy. How are you? I'm doing good, Dave.

How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Quick question for you. I got about $18,000 in vehicles. That's on two vehicles. They're both pretty new vehicles. We've paid them down quite a bit.

And I have about $15,000 in a deferred comp through work. I was curious if I should pull that to pay those off. That way we can get started on the next step. No, because you'll be penalized and have to pay the taxes. It'll be about a 40% hit on your money, and you wouldn't borrow money at 40% interest to pay off your cars. So tell me the cars again. What's the most expensive one? The most expensive one is at $11,000 right now.

I'm having trouble hearing you. I'm having trouble hearing you. Can you speak directly into your phone, please? Yeah, sorry about that. The most expensive one is at $11,000 right now. Okay. And the second one is at $7,000 right now. Okay. And the second one is at $7,000. Okay.

And what's your household income? $61,000. Okay. So $11,000 and $9,000. So $20,000 gets you out of car debt, right? Correct. Okay. And how much other debt do you guys have?

That's pretty much it other than the house. Okay, good. Well, the good news is you go on beans and rice, rice and beans and have no life. You get these cars paid off in a year. Okay. And that'll take about $1,500, $1,600 a month towards the cars, including the car payment itself. And that'll get you out of debt in a year. You can do that if you really crunch your budget down and back off your lifestyle and

that kind of thing. And stop adding to your 401k or your retirement, your deferred comp in the meantime. Stop doing any saving or investing while you're getting out of debt. That's a temporary measure, but stop all investing temporarily and then get on your written budget, get on every dollar dollar and get this thing turned around. Dalton is in Dallas, Texas. Hi, Dalton. How are you?

Hi, Dave. I'm doing awesome, sir. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? All right. So I'm getting married here in February, here in a couple months. Congratulations.

Thank you, sir. I myself am on baby step four. My fiance is on baby step two. She's got about $12,000 left to pay down on a car. And so, you know, before I started listening, I put some money into an employee stock purchase plan, and I have kind of that as one of my more liquid investments. And her and I are looking to, A, get her debt paid down once we get married, and B, to eventually get ourselves into a house. And so my question for you is, I've got about $8,000 sitting in my employee stock

purchase plan now. Is that something that I should go ahead and pull out to get her debt paid down, to put that towards a house? Or because I myself am already on baby step four, should I keep that where it's at and kind of use that as one of my investments moving forward? Okay, so you have an emergency fund aside from this, right? You have $8,000 in an employee stock purchase plan. Do you have any other money that's not in a retirement account? Aside from my emergency fund, no, sir. Okay, yeah.

I would stop doing any investing investing if I were in your shoes and start piling up cash to do two things. One, or do three things. One is pay off her debt when you come home from the honeymoon and using the employee stock option and any money you save up to do that. Two, you're probably going to raise your emergency fund a little when the two of you are married and you've got a larger household income. And then three, to use to start saving for your down payment. You're probably going to raise your emergency fund a little when the two of you are married and you've got a larger household income.

And then three to use to start saving for your down payment. Awesome. So, yeah, stop investing and use that when the time comes. I mean, you can let it sit there, that employee stock thing sit there. If the stock's doing well and you want to sit on it until February, that's fine. Not the end of the world. But, I mean, it's likely not going to go in half unless you work for a very, very volatile company. Right. So, you know, if you've got a pretty stable company that's doing pretty well, then, yeah, ride that thing out.

Ride it. And if you're worried about it, just pull it and set it in savings. It's not a problem either way. But you don't, as you said, and I'll repeat what you said, I don't tell you to pay off your fiancé's debt until you return from the honeymoon and your fiancé is now your wife. That's when you pay off the debt, not until. But you get all prepared to where you write those checks, and then as a couple, we're on baby step 3B,

meaning we have our emergency fund in place, we're debt-free as a couple, home from the honeymoon, and we've got a head start towards saving for our home. And that's baby step 3B. And you may spend that first year of marriage on your budget saving very aggressively for your down payment. And then after about a year of marriage or nine months of marriage, you start shopping and thinking about buying a house, and you buy the house, and then, of course,

you're on to baby steps 4 and 6, which you don't have children at that point. So there's no 5, no kids college. But you start 15% going into your income and start paying off that house you bought early as Baby Steps 6. So you're right on track to do all of that. You're thinking, man. You're thinking this is going to work. Chris is with us in Nashville.

Hi, Chris. How are you? Good, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I have a quick question. I have arrived in Nashville about five, six weeks ago on a green card that I won in a lottery last year. And I am trying to work out what to do in terms of forward planning for not only retirement, particularly, well, mainly for

retirement, but also for long-term savings. I have some shares, ETFs and term deposit accounts back home in Australia. And since I've been here, I've since discovered that things like, particularly like ETFs, mutual funds and the like, get rather negative treatment from the IRS to the point where it's almost not worth having them because they get treated as PFICs, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it gets heavily taxed and penalised. So, but my question is, or my main issue is, I'm not sure how long I'm going to be here in order, yeah,

like in terms of whether I liquidate stuff back home and then buy mutual funds or get involved in mutual funds, et cetera, savings here. But then in a year or two, if I decide, okay, this isn't really working out, moving back home, and then I've just got to liquidate all in again and go back home and start again. So I guess the question is, what would you recommend for someone like myself who's kind of between

two international taxation jurisdictions, and it's kind of difficult to pick one place to invest. Well, I mean, you want to invest where you think you're going to end up, is where I would invest. And if your goal is to move to America permanently and apply for citizenship and go through the whole process, which you started the first step of that by hitting this lottery, getting a green card,

and if you can do some things to make your residency here permanent and then apply for citizenship and so forth, then you're going to want to be in U.S. mutual funds. If you're going to return to Australia, then you're going to want your money there. So to the extent you can predict all that, and I don't know that you can predict all of it, because the immigration process is a freaking nightmare, to say the least. But, yeah, I think to the extent you can predict it, that's where I'd put the money, regardless of the taxation issues, because you want the money to land where you think you're going to be. So if you know you're going to be here four or five years and your goal is to be here,

I'd probably start with U.S. mutual funds and go that way. If you think it's going to be back and forth, back and forth, and we're just not sure, then leave your stuff in Australia. You can always liquidate either one and move it to the other country once you know or have decided where it is you're going to end up. And that's what you're looking for here. So I just, I wouldn't want to have all my investments in Australia if I was in the U.S., and I wouldn't want to have them all in the U.S. if I was in Australia.

So you're going to move them eventually anyway, and we're going to try to put them where you're going to land. That's probably the way I would do it anyway. Hey, thanks for calling. Welcome to Nashville. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Thanks for joining us, America. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, joins us, founder of the Business Boutique Movement, equipping women to make money doing what they love.

It's a number one best-selling book. It is a sold-out conference. Not quite yet, but it sells out every year. And it is the Business Boutique Academy. It's a sold-out conference. Not quite yet, but it sells out every year. And it is the Business Boutique Academy. It's a digital presence. It is a podcast. It's everywhere, the Business Boutique. And that's because Christy's everywhere.

If you've got questions for Christy about running a business for you ladies, starting a business for you ladies, or if you're a gentleman and you have questions about business maybe for your lady or just in general, Christy's here to help us this half hour. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. I had Kelly clean off the phone lines. And that means if you want to talk to Christy, you can actually get through. Dial at this second.

The phone number again, 888-825-5225. There they go. Welcome back, Christy. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Good to be with you. Well, like you and I haven't done this before. I know.

We did your podcast this morning. Yeah. A session that will air a little bit later, I guess. Yeah, in a couple weeks. Me as a guest. And the podcast is really taking off. If you haven't subscribed to Christy Wright's Business Boutique Podcast on iTunes, you should. That's another podcast that we just started around here, but very, very popular.

And what's the context? Who is usually, I mean, I know what we did this morning, but is that what it is? You're having guests on and you're talking about businesses or what are you doing? It's a lot of variety. So I spend the first, I don't know, 10 to 15 minutes teaching. So we pick different topics and really help women have this information that they need to improve in areas of their business, from marketing to sales to customer service or research, whatever that is, money and so on. And then we like to interview experts like you.

We just recently had Amy Jo Martin, a social media expert. We love interviewing experts in certain fields, in certain industries, to help us take a deeper dive and a different outside perspective. Then, of course, we have success stories of women just like our listeners that are winning. And we want to tell that story that really shows, you know, if they can do it, you can too. And for a lot of our listeners, that's their favorite part of the episode is to hear from women that are in their shoes or were in their shoes.

And man, they, you know, they just persisted and they stuck with it and they applied what they learned and they're winning. And it really gives those women hope, which is cool to see how the podcast is having that ripple effect and making a huge difference. A lot of fun. Christy Wright joins us this half hour. If you've got a question for her, the phone number is 888-825-5225. Darren is in Sioux City, Iowa.

Hey, Darren, your question for Christy and me. Yes, sir. I have an idea for a business, but I don't know how to determine if I'll be able to find customers. All right. Let's have it. What's your idea? It's sharpening heads for machining equipment. Like if someone was going to make a trim or a window casing, these heads would grind down the wood. So sharpening those heads. So are you talking about commercial application or hobby?

I guess whoever would want them sharpened. That's where I'm kind of stuck. I don't know. My father does this for a living, and I was thinking about maybe getting into it. He works for a corporation, but I would want to just do it for myself. Yeah, where does he get customers? Where does that corporation get customers? Who are their customers?

He works for a window company, so the window company machines their own wood. Okay. And so they wouldn't need an outside person to do it. Correct. And so if somebody is in a manufacturing setting, do they not normally do it with in-house help? Well, he knew of another manufacturer that had the equipment, but he didn't even know how to use it. So he was outsourcing his heads, and I don't know how many other guys outsource their heads or how to find that out. Yeah, I don't either. So I guess you've got some sweat work to do, man, some leg work to do.

You need to hustle around. But, I mean, you know who your customer is. It's a manufacturer that doesn't have someone in-house to do the work, right? I guess it's cold call manufacturing yeah we know who your customer is and it's people who do woodwork that would have these machines and then do you have someone on site that does this or would you be interesting and now interested in outsourcing it i'm doing a little survey and you need to dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and talk and talk and talk until you're sick of it. And about then you'll have a clue. Okay.

Any advice on what exactly I should be asking? How much information I should gather or just the basics for now? I think what you need to find is, okay, you know, if three big customers will keep you busy, then you need to find out if there's three big customers out there or ten big customers out there, and hopefully you could get three of them, you know? Is asking what they paid asking too much at this point? No, no. They may not know, though, if they're outsourcing it.

Do you know anybody else that does? Well, what does your dad get paid in-house? Use that number. Is that all he does? Pardon me? Is that all he does? Pardon me? Is that all he does? Yeah, yeah, all day he sharpens these heads. And then he makes templates and stuff for them, too.

But what percentage of his income is from sharpening heads, and that's about what it's worth plus a little in the open market, right? Okay. So if he makes $50,000 a year and 50% of his time is spent doing this, then somebody might be willing to pay $25,000 or $30,000 to outsource it. Okay. You see how I did that? Yep.

But you need to talk to a whole bunch of manufacturers and just get the guy on the floor that would be hiring you to talk to him. You don't want to talk to the CEO. You just got to get the guy on the floor that would be hiring you to talk to him. You don't want to talk to the CEO. You just got to get the guy on the phone and dig it out. Christy, so much of this business, whether it's a guy or whether it's a lady, these small business ideas like his, which is a great idea, by the way. That's wonderful because it's so specialized that nobody's got competition whatsoever. It comes down to scratching in the dirt to find the seeds. It's amazing.

It's like a hand looking for a bug. And we're looking for something so sophisticated. It's like, just get on the phone. You know, sometimes it's that simple of just do the hard work. You know, one of the starting point that I tell people when you've got a business idea. If the answer to your question is in Google, it's probably too easy. Yeah. The most important information they need, especially starting out, is identify the problem

you solve. Now, he knows. Darren knows because his dad's been doing this. But when you know the problem you solve through your business, you know so many other important pieces of information. When you know the problem you solve, you know your target market because it's people that have that problem. You know your value proposition. This is what you're going to charge for. You're going to charge for solving that problem. And so all day, every day, you're talking about how you solve that problem for people. But a lot of people start out in business, they have an idea, but they don't know what problem they solve.

So when it comes time to pitch or cold call or get a new client, they're just talking about their idea and the customer doesn't care about your idea. All they care about is how you solve a problem for them. So that would be a great thing for Darren to really work on that messaging. We have a good friend, Donald Miller,

that helps people refine their messaging to understand how to talk about the problem you solve. And that's the thing you're charging for. That's the thing that people are interested in is how you can help them in a way that you can serve them. Don't overcomplicate it. It's hustle and grind. Hustle and grind.

Hustle and grind. You don't have to have a four-color brochure already done to get on the phone and learn if anybody actually hires people to do this. Yeah, just ask. I mean, people get scared. Like, am I even allowed to ask? I'm like, yeah. Get on the phone and ask. Get on the phone and do some digging.

What's the worst thing to do? Hang up on you. Call them back. Go. Bad connection. You know. I mean, it's just, nobody's ever died from this. So give it a shot.

Just dig in. Hustle and grind. That's where the information comes from. And you develop an insight into your customer that your competitor will never have because you spend the time to get to know them personally. It was like we were talking about earlier even on the Business Boutique podcast. How in the early days I would get on the phone with women with businesses. And it's amazing because the way they described their fears and frustrations with business is how I talk about it now. Because you can use the language your customer uses, but you won't know what to say or the words to use to connect to them if you don't talk to them.

So when you get on the phone, it's so valuable. It shows you so much information that you can use in your marketing and pitching and calling future people. And it's how I have an unusual advantage as a CEO because I talk to my customers for three hours a day here every day I know exactly what your fears are because I talk to you all the time I know exactly what the stupid stuff that's going on in the marketplace is because I hear about it all the time and some patterns and trends develop in my mind after doing this for 30 years that are pretty accurate because I do a three-hour focus group for our business every day. Every day. In a very real way.

I know my customers. I love my customers. I'm fans of our fans. You're heroes out there. We love you, and we like you, and we like hanging out with people just like you. And so it's easy for us in that regard. But most businesses don't have the advantage I've got of doing that, so you have to do what Christy did.

Get on the phone, or what Darren's going to do. Get on the phone. Email doesn't work. Nobody answers surveys. Call them. Talk to them. Feel this. Don't just think it.

It's good stuff. Christy Wright joins us. Ramsey Personality, founder of the business boutique movement Equipping Women to Make Money Doing What They Love. Back with your calls for her here on the Dave Ramsey Show. The Scripture of the Day, Proverbs 22.6 Train up a child in the way he should go. And when he's old, he'll not depart from it. Eleanor Roosevelt said, People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously.

This is how character is built. Very true. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, author of the number one bestselling book, Business Boutique, Equipping Women to Make Money Doing What They Love, joins us this half hour. Christy, we've got a couple of big events coming. Number one, Business Boutique three-day event, November 1 through the 3rd. It's approaching a sellout. It's not yet sold out here in Nashville.

Ladies come to this three-day event from all over the world, literally. And lots and lots of fun, lots of cool stuff happening there, lots of great speakers. You guys are letting me come back this year. Our favorite emcee, Annie Downs, will be with us. And one of our favorite praise and worship people, Dave Barnes, will be with us. So great lineup there along with some other folks. Tell us about some of the other speakers and what's going to be happening at Business Boutique this year. Yeah, we're always trying to change up the sessions with experts.

It's similar to the podcast. We want experts in their space. So Amy Jo Martin is a social media expert. And I interviewed her for the podcast recently. And she really is brilliant. What she has done, the way she describes it as a renegade, is really, really interesting, and she's kind of on the forefront of social media innovation, and so she's going to teach us how to use that for our business.

Megan Tamptey has an incredible story. She's the CEO and founder of EverEve. And, Dave, her story is really interesting. She was a stay-at-home mom and really felt called to be a stay-at-home mom, but felt this stirring in her heart. And the reason I love that is because that is like so many women listening and that come to our events. And she was like, maybe I could do something more. And after years of dreaming of it, she finally took action.

And now this business is a national brand. It's 80 stores, debt-free. It's fashion clothing. We've got one here at the Cool Springs Mall called Ever Eve. And so hearing her story of success of going from mom to business owner and how she manages it all and built that business. And Sarah Jakes Roberts, who is one of the most brilliant communicators I've ever heard. She just brings the house down, will be there.

And so we've got a really, really fun lineup. Emily Lay, our simplicity expert. And it's really fun to see how she's built a business also while being a mom and really claimed that space of productivity. And so it's a great lineup and it's a wide variety of topics based on what these women told us they need help with. And so that's how we build our event. We don't just decide.

We think they know or we know what they need and they tell us and we go build the event in response to that. So it's going to be great. And a lot of husbands and boyfriends and dads are buying this for a lady in their life saying, go to this event because I believe in you. It's really fun to see that where maybe the woman business owner is in the earlier stages. She's like, I don't know. I don't know if I want to take the time away or I don't know if I could get help with the kids. The spouses are saying, hey, I'll watch the kids.

I'm going to book your flight, buy your ticket. And it's just really cool to see what a relational, what a gift that is that says, I believe in you. And just for her to take some time away for herself and her business and her dream. And it's a really, it's an awesome gift to see how that's really a trend we're seeing that's fun. November 1st through the 3rd here in Nashville, the Business Boutique three-day event. You can get your tickets at businessboutique.com or, of course, daveramsey.com. Josh is in Boise, Idaho. Hey, Josh, how are you?

I'm doing good. How are you? Better than I deserve. Your question for Christy Wright. Okay, so my wife, about a year ago, got on board with a company called 31 to direct sales bag business. They sell purses and organizers and things like that. And she does really, really good up until a point where she hits a slump. And then she gets really discouraged and depressed and starts falling down. And I'm just wondering what I

can do to help kind of keep her going, keep the steam in her lungs. She's really an amazing person. She's really good at this. I just want to know what I can do to be a better cheerleader, I guess. What do you think knocks her feet off from under her? Well, I think in part it's because the people she's working with kind of drop the ball a little bit, and so she's got to pick it up and try and reach out to their contacts. So people downline in her hierarchy aren't doing follow-up?

It's more the people who are doing the parties for her. It's not her hierarchy. Oh, okay. So she scheduled a party, but the lady lets her down. I got you. Okay, Christy? Yeah. You know, Josh, I love that you're asking this question because it already shows that you are in her corner and probably doing a lot right now even to cheer her on.

I'll tell you, the way that you described it is kind of the entrepreneurial journey, period. You know, now it may be exaggerated in a certain type of industry or business model, but there are ups and downs and that type of thing. I'll tell you that the best thing for someone that is experiencing that is just figuring out what can keep them accountable and energized and motivated. Because you will have those days. Certainly, she could do some training or maybe put some processes in place to help people follow through more to help the root issue. But for her to have something that's pouring into her, Dave and I were talking about this early on the podcast, but for her to invest in her. So I'd love to, Josh sends you a ticket to the Business Boutique event that you can give your wife. If she can get here, we'd love to have her at our event.

That's a really exciting, inspiring, energetic event that will hopefully give her some momentum to go into the fourth quarter of the Christmas season with a lot of enthusiasm. But just surrounding yourself with people that champion you, that help you grow, that continual investment and support and locking arms with people can really, really help. So just encouraging her to have those people around her, you certainly being one of them, but having other people. Community is such a big piece of this. And, Dave, we see this even at our events. We see this in the Business Boutique Academy. The community piece of it is very, very powerful and helps people in those ups and downs. Yeah, it really does.

The other thing I would do, Josh, and I've done this as a salesperson and as a business person, too, is I would just develop some statistics around this and go out of every 10 parties I book, three of them are going to let me down. I just know that. And so the way you solve it is you book twice as many or three times as many parties. And then when some of them let you down, you don't feel it. So, for instance, when I had sold five financial peace books off the back table the first time I put it up for sale and someone criticized my book and didn't like it,

it hurt my feelings and took my momentum away. Now that I've sold almost 7 million total money makeover books and it's got 94% four and five stars on Amazon, if you don't like the total money makeover, you're wrong. The law of large numbers changes it. That's right. It changes your look on it. It's not arrogance.

It's just I've got, you know, if you cancel a party and I've got seven out of ten that are doing them, then you're the one that's wrong. And I don't have to take it so personally. It doesn't hurt my feelings, and I don't have to start wrong and i don't have to take it so personally it doesn't make my feelings and it doesn't have to start over i don't have to work through betrayal every time right and somebody somebody trashing me on the internet about the total money makeover uh you're wrong right you're wrong we help a lot of people you're just a troll you're wrong i love how you're describing it too with resetting your expectations it's like i read something recently where the uh cart online cart abandonment rate is like 60%.

So if you got excited about everybody that put your product in their cart, their online cart in your e-commerce store, you'd be really disappointed when 60% bailed. So it's just reset your expectations. How many people typically cancel? What's your conversion rate? Whether it's online sales or parties that are hosting.

Figure out, like Dave said, what those numbers are and then you book twice as many parties or three times as many parties, and your expectations are reset in the behavior of the tribe, of the customers. A lot of digital conversion rates are 3%, which is unbelievable to me, that you have a 97% failure rate and can stay open. And I'm fighting with our digital people all the time. I'm going, that sucks. That's unbelievable.

So you can fix it one of two ways you get your conversion rate from three to six and you get your number of people coming into the thing doubled right and then we quadruple our revenues is what happens so that's the way that works out so you guys are doing a free workshop for the business boutique uh folks september 13th on the three essentials for business success. And folks can sign up at businessboutique.com. Talk about that for a second. Yeah, this is completely free, and it's really fun.

We're going into the fall season. It's kind of, we talked about this, the second new year where people are getting serious about their business. They're getting serious about the fourth quarter. And I've got some new content I want to teach them that I've not taught anywhere else. And so this is going to be a really fun three-step process of giving them three essentials they need to win. So if you've never listened to a podcast, you've never taken a business class, you don't know anything about business, this is a great place to start. But even if you've been in business, there are some things we're going to talk about that a lot of people in business miss. The simple stuff that they overlook.

And they're going to help them reach their goals so that they can make more money, so that they can have the time for what matters the most to them, and really make an impact through the business, which is what they care deeply about. So it's going to be fun. September 13th is when that kicks off. It's online. And then, Dave, each day after the workshop, I'm going to be answering questions on Facebook Live, so I'll be able to interact and help people even more.

So you've got about a week to get signed up. It's a free workshop. Go to businessboutique.com for the free workshop, The Three Essentials for Business Success. Christy, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Christy Wright, founder of Business Boutique, equipping women to make money doing what they love. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Our thanks to James Childs, our producer, Kelly Daniel, our associate producer and phone screener.

I am Dave Ramsey, your host. We'll be back before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey, guys, this is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. I'm excited to announce that we're now carrying on 600 radio stations across the country. To find one near you, head to DaveRamsey.com slash show.