The Ramsey Show - App - I Don't Have a Good Reason, but I Want a Divorce (Hour 3)

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

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Thank you. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studio, this is The Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. I'm Christy Wright, and joining me today is Dr. John Deloney. We are celebrating the kickoff of the pre-order of my new book, Take Back Your Time, The Guilt-Free Guide to Life Balance. We are celebrating it, talking about time management today. If you want to get your copy to get all the pre-order bonus items, you can go to RamseySolutions.com and get your copy.

And we're taking your calls, as always. 888-825-5225. We are talking about all things life and money. We want to help you get the advice and direction that you need. That's 888-825-5225. Hold on. Before we go to the calls, give us 30 seconds on this book. I'm excited about it.

Well, it's like we were talking about earlier, John. A lot of people feel like they want balance, but they don't know what it is. They just know they don't have it. And so I've taken this elusive idea of balance and then given them a very specific path to get it. So I don't think life balance is doing everything for an equal amount of time, doing the right things at the right time. And when you do that, you feel the sense of balance you've been looking for. And it's been cool to see the feedback already from our early readers. They're like, oh, wow, this is so practical. And that's what I wanted for a hard topic like balance.

So if you are listening to this and you have to drive 90 miles an hour to get to work every day, or you're eating lunch in your lap while you're on the phone and you're driving with your knee and you're reaching back to hand your kid their sippy cup or if you're married to somebody or dating somebody and you feel like if one, if they just misplaced their toothbrush, this whole house of cards is coming down, this book is for them and for you.

And this is me looking in the mirror. The book's for me. Hey, let's be honest. It's for me. That's why I wrote it. Authors write what they need. Whether you're scattered, you're overcommitted, you worry that you spend

too much time on your phone like we all do. All the things. You don't need more time. You just need to spend the time you have on the right things and it'll help you do it. Let's go to Denver. We've got Amber in Denver, Colorado. Hey Amber, how are you? Hi John and Christy. I am calling because I am struggling with my marriage. I've been married for two and a half years. It's actually my second

marriage. And when I married my husband, I had a long list of things that he needed to check off before I decided to get married. And he checked off a lot of those boxes and Hold on, hold on, hold on before you go any further just humor me what are some of the things on your magical, mythical

fantasy list? Kind let's see, reliable Keep going those are the easy ones give us the ones that are gonna make me roll my eyes um sturdy stable um sturdy sturdy like i'm looking at a guy out in the lobby that's got about 150 pounds of just raw beef on him he's ripped i just think somebody that kind of sturdy and easy easy going is the right way to put it passionate and easy going okay continue no no not not passionate not passionate easy going okay um compassionate

yeah um and he he i think for him his checklist was more like um you know stable good with money has comes from a good family type thing and we're kind of coming to this pivotal moment in our relationship where we are realizing that we don't have that we never had like the love spark. And I'm really struggling trying to figure out if, if that's actually a necessary thing to have. So a, yes, you should, you should,

man, you're saying all the things. If this feels like a, like a, I might've been to go there. You're saying all the things. so yes, you have to love the person that you're married to. That's, that's a like uh i'm not even gonna go there you're saying all the things um so yes you have to love the person that you're married to that's that's a one of the cornerstones of marriage is i love the person um i often wince when somebody says we're coming to this apex moment especially when

it's two and a half years in um that feels like you have set yourself up for a determined outcome that you want, and you want to blame it on a moment. Right. So why'd you marry this guy? If he's sturdy and compassionate and kind and lovely, and I promise that he wanted you for more than you were good with money. Yeah. Right, right. My first marriage was pretty tumultuous. There was a lot of passion and love, but it ended badly. Yep. There was infidelity and addiction.

So I knew that I guess I feel like I didn't trust that anymore, and I wanted something a little bit more stable and reliable. Okay. And I'm just like, I guess I'm struggling because I always believed we could just cultivate something that was worth it, but it feels a little bit more like an arranged marriage type situation. And it's been a few years since I looked at the data, but arranged marriages over time, when they decide they're going to put the work in,

they love each other, the data on that suggests that they last a long, long time. Yeah. And so what I'm going to tell you is you've got a lot more choice in this than you're allowing yourself. Christy, I can feel you just moving, like almost, I can feel it from you. Well, when you were saying the checklist, Amber, when you were saying the checklist of what you wanted in a spouse,

I already knew what your previous relationship was because your checklist was really consistent. And typically when someone is passionate, I'm looking for these things, kind, compassionate, stable. I'm like, well, she's been somewhere where she didn't get that because otherwise she wouldn't be so definitive. I need these things. Like you've been hurt. You've been wounded. I think there's an element of this.

And John, I actually want to throw it back to you on this, on this aspect of, I think people view marriage differently as a believer, as a child of divorced parents. I'm like, no, I'm in it. I'm in it unless I'm in it. But that's how I view marriage. Everyone doesn't view marriage like that. Everyone doesn't view marriage depending on your faith. And so I think how you view marriage greatly,

I would imagine, affects how you make decisions. Because I hear this as make the choice to love each other work at it stick with it and and turn it into what you want it to be but everyone doesn't see it like that and i feel like you need to you just said something that is countercultural yet scientifically accurate which is make the choice to love esther perel is the one um who first put me on to this which is it used to be historically that we put um we got our security and our stability from our institutions right from our small villages from our churches from our local schools and as those institutions have shifted and changed over time we've looked at a our marriage partner and said, you are everything. You're

stability. You're my love. You're my romantic. You're my passion. So here's the thing. You've got stability. You've got kindness. You've got a person of character. Desire is something that you practice. It is something you say, I'm going to be about, and he's going to be about it too. And y'all are going to have the adventure of a lifetime practicing desire. You've got the stability and the safety. Now you decide this marriage is not going to end. We're going to practice desire and we're going to be all in. You're going to look up in six months and you're going to be so in love with this dude

that your house is on fire. That's good. That's good. Do you think Disney movies have ruined us? I think they have. They've destroyed everything. This is The Ramsey Show. Your number one wealth building tool is your income.

For business owners, this comes as no surprise. As you're used to putting in extra hours and watching your bottom line. That's why Christian Healthcare Ministries, or CHM, is a great option for those who are faith-focused and budget-conscious. CHM is not health insurance. Rather, it's a health cost-sharing program. It's not harder, but it is different. To learn if CHM is a fit for you or your business, visit chministries.org slash budget. I'm Christy Wright.

Joining me today is Dr. John Deloney. And, you know, John, you have actually been a guest on my show, The Christy Wright Show, which is my weekly podcast and YouTube show. And when you were on recently, I asked you about something that I think is so perfect for what we were just talking about in the last segment and something else I want to talk about. And this is something that you have helped me and my husband with. You gave me some advice a while back, and we were talking about expectations and communication. And you said, you've got to talk in pictures. You've got to talk in pictures instead of saying, what do you want to do Saturday?

Oh, let's have a fun day. Specify what fun means to you and what that means to Matt. Because so often in marriage, I think we miss each other. And he says one thing, I say another thing. We think we're saying the same thing. And then we end up, somebody's frustrated because we didn't do what we said we want to do. And you said, speak in pictures.

That was one example that you have given me such great advice in marriage because we do this now. So, hey, what do you want to do Friday night? What does that look like to you? I know you have worked with a lot of couples. And you actually have an event coming up, Money in Marriage, with Rachel Cruz. Tell us about your event because this is one of those things where if someone was listening to the last call and they're relating to that going, hey, we're in a tough place. We want to do what you just said. We want to make an effort.

How do we do that? Sometimes it helps to have outside people come alongside you and support you and encourage you and give you practical steps like you gave me in terms of speaking in pictures. So talk a little bit about the event, when it is, how people can get tickets, all that good stuff. Yes. When I think about that couple, I mean that woman that was just on the call, if you're sitting in a counseling context, that's a dream. Nobody's cheating on anybody. Nobody's unethical. Nobody's mean.

Nobody's abusive. It's just we don't have the spark. And because since we're thinking and we haven't thought in pictures, we're just thinking, I should be feeling this way. I don't feel this way. Oh my gosh. That tells me that we're missing some tactical skills, right? Just some things we can practice. So this weekend we got money and marriage event. It's Friday night. This Friday, listen, put the kids to bed, put them in another room. I'll even give you a pass just to hand them a screen for an hour and a half. Just hand him a screen in another room and say, hey, Deloney approved this.

For one night, you can do this. It's me and Rachel. Listen, we are six months out of 2020. Everybody hit the gas. It's like shaking up a two liter bottle. I was hoping that we would just open the top gently. We didn't. We opened it up and now it's, stuff is everywhere. Everybody's

exhausted. They're flying by we've had vacations this everybody's just running chaos and the thing that gets put on the pack burner is our marriages right so it's time to reconnect bring back to spark romance we are gonna be talking about sex we're gonna be talking about connection we're gonna be talking about all new stuff and listen we can't like man we are halfway through this year. And I'll just leave it at that. It's going to be awesome. I think prices are $30. Text marriage to 33789.

It's going to be me and Rachel. It's all new content, all new stuff. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a lot of laughter. And you're going to walk away with some real tips on how to, just like that last couple. I said, hey, you need to practice desire. I know millions of people just listen to that and go, what are you talking about, practice desire?

I just look at him and he's just sitting on the couch with Cheetos on his shirt. How do I practice desire with that guy? I'm going to give you some tips and tricks, okay? So text marriage to 33789. It's 30 bucks for crying out loud. You can't even leave your house for that much. Set it up.

Watch it. It's going to be fun. Marriage. Marriage. Text marriage to 33789. For some of you that may struggle with spelling that word, like I do. I get the I and the A mixed up. Listen, M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E.

You're going to have the misspellings being texted, that number. They're not going to get the information. 33789. It's this Friday night. Man, we'd love to see you there, and it's going to be a blast me and rachel cruz and i just want to call out some people that are listening listen especially for the women or men if you've been complaining to your friends about your spouse listen it's time to actually invest in your marriage stop complaining about things stop making excuses actually do something

about it invest in this part of your life if you want it to be better so often we complain about things and then we just don't do anything to make it better. This is a great practical way to invest in it in a way that will make it better where you actually get different results. So you guys get your tickets. I'm so excited about this. Go ahead. Yeah, no, tell me. If you have been married, I don't know, more than a couple years, I don't know anybody. You may be the first. I don't know, more than a couple years. I don't know anybody.

You may be the first. I don't know anybody who hasn't sat down with a friend or two and said, hey, I don't know if this is the right thing. I don't know if I made, man, we're too far apart to come back. We should not have done this. I think I'm ready to cash out. I don't know anybody who hasn't had those thoughts, those experiences. This is a low-key, lo-fi, fun way, yet very serious way. As you just said, just sit down on the couch together.

Sit in the opposite reclining chairs together. There you go. And do something together. You don't have to leave your house. You don't have to get all dramatic and make a counseling appointment. Do this together. Don't quit. Don't quit.

Don't quit on your marriage. Yeah. There's one thing I would speak to with people that are maybe in my season, because I'll tell you what I struggle with more than that, is being in a season of young children, six, four and a half, and one and a half, they will suck the life out of your marriage. Marriage becomes business.

Do you have the kids? Do you have the dry cleaning? Who's getting dinner? Who's cleaning the house? It's like we are just managing our household, and we miss each other. You become co-workers, yes. And we miss each other. And it takes-workers. And we miss each other.

And it takes us getting out of that, getting childcare, getting out of that to go, oh, there you are. There we are. We, there we are, you know? And, and so for anybody, even if you're not in an extreme like crisis mode in your marriage where you're doubting your, your marriage or wondering what, you know, a really hard season, it might just be the grind. Yeah.

Marriage has become business of running errands and keeping up with kids and changing diapers and this is a great way to remember who you were before kids who you are in addition to kids to get back to that and like you said practice practice build something new practice loving each other yeah can i ask you this question yeah a few words in the world get my heart rate up and my adrenaline and cortisol spiked more than the word snacks. Christy Wright, if my kids say the words, I want a snack, I can't handle it. Am I crazy? Let me tell you.

While they're eating dinner, they will say, what's for snack? While they have food in their hands. Sure, yeah. No, I'm with you. America, I hate the word snack. And I would like to propose on behalf of the Ramsey Show that we just get rid of that word completely. That we never say the word snack again. I'm sick of it.

I can't handle the word, man. We have a snack. We have a snack. Oh, my gosh. One of my morning routines that I have instituted a while ago, and I actually talk about this in the book, but I wake up before my kids, even though I have little ones, even though they wake up early, I set my alarm for about 30 minutes before them. Even if it's only 15, I have to wake up as mom because if not, I wake up to, I want a snack.

Where's my milk? Where's my clothes? He looked at me wrong. He put on Mickey Mouse. I just get screamed at from the moment I open my eyes to consciousness. I just need to wake up to me. I just need to wake up to not being mom and that small moment in time gives me 15

minutes before I get yelled at about snacks because it's snacks the rest of the day and every other need that they have. The other needs are fine. Change my diaper. Sure, you got that. Hey, can we go fishing? Not today but hey, we need to mow the yard. Great. Can I have a snack? Can I have a snack? Can I can i have a snack hey look that place has snacks it's just a word i think snack is latin for i i hate you i think that's what that means all right so money and

marriage this friday night invest in your marriage you will be glad that you did all right we've got lee calling in from portland Lee, how's it going? It's going pretty well, thank you. How can I help? My question is, is it ethically and morally right to accept pay to care for my special needs adult daughter? So I guess if you want that round. Give me some more details there, yeah. Okay, Yes. So I have friends, family, acquaintances that have been advising me this is the way to go.

I can get paid to care for her. But I've been struggling with this for quite a while because I know that it's quite possibly, you know, tax money that's probably paying for it. And I just, I don't know if I feel right taking it, being paid to do something, to be mom. Yeah. Okay. Lee, this is a really interesting question and I want to make sure that we give you a good answer and do it justice. So we've got to hop to break here in a second, but stay on the line, and we will pick it back up when we come back from break. And Dr. John Deloney and I will dig into this for you. Stay on the line for us. Thank you. I'm Christy Wright and joining me today is Dr. John Deloney. And just before the break, we were talking to Lee in Portland and we kind of ran out of time.

So we want to go ahead and pick up that conversation. Lee, John Deloney and I have just some follow-up questions for you. Can you tell us a little bit more about the details around the arrangement? I know you were asking about is it morally and ethically okay for you to accept payments to care for your special needs adult daughter, but what are kind of the regulations around that? How much money would it be? Can you work? Give us some more specifics there.

So what I understand is I can apply to be my your child's caregiver as opposed to someone coming from the outside to do the same thing. And so why do you feel guilty about that? I don't know, because it's my job to be mom. Right. How old is she? 25. Okay. Do you have another job? Yes, I do Do you work, do you have another job?

Yes, I do. What do you do in your other job? I work in member services. What does that mean? For a fitness center. Oh, okay. Gotcha. So, Christy, feel free to weigh in on this.

I see absolutely no problem with this, and here's why. Number one, you're going to hire care anyway for your adult daughter. There is no better care on planet Earth than you, mom. Someone who loves their daughter has known her for 25 years. Number two, this is going to require you to cut back some hours for your day job, if not all of them. You're going to have to make a number of financial concessions, and I actually love, I'm a taxpayer, pay a lot of taxes.

I don't have a problem with this type of arrangement because you're going to have to make that financial, you're going to have to make that money up somewhere else. And so at some point you're going to have, your daughter's going to need care. I have no problem with it being you. I do understand where you're coming from, but there is a time for being mom, and there is a time for that medical care, that special needs care, that driving back and forth to appointments. Don't get those tangled up. Mom's about love and showing up, and it is about caring and doing whatever. I'll go to the ends of earth and all that stuff, and it's all right and true. But I've got absolutely no moral or ethical problem with you doing this.

Christy? Lee, the other thing I just want to commend you, first of all, your daughter's 25. And it's all right and true, but I've got absolutely no moral or ethical problem with you doing this. Christy? Lee, the other thing I just want to commend you, first of all, your daughter's 25, so she is an adult. You have been mom of a child, and you raised your child to be 25. And because of the unique situation with her having special needs, I'd be willing to bet that no one, other than maybe our listeners right now that have been in similar shoes of having a special needs child, no one understands what you have been through. No one understands the sacrifices you've made. No one understands the money you've spent.

No one understands how hard that road has been for you and even will continue to be as you care for her. And so for you to have some additional money to help you offset the cost of what you're doing to care for her. And additionally, the sacrifices from whatever you have to cut back on your own income. That is absolutely appropriate. That is absolutely appropriate for you to have that additional care, for you to have that additional income. And I would be willing to bet that every single parent of a special needs child would agree with me on that. That's a hard road and you need all the support you can get. So I hope that answers your question. I hope it also just gives you permission to get what you need to do what

you want to do, which it sounds like is care for your child. So thanks for calling in. I love it. What a heart, Lee. Good for you. We have such a, gosh, when it's money, there's so many emotions tangled up in it, isn't it? Like, it's like we've got all these feelings about it, whether it's something like that or even, I mean, this is a completely opposite example, but I see similarities with women I help with business. They feel guilty for charging. Right.

And they're providing a product or service. And they're like, well, I feel bad. Yeah. I'm like, why do you feel bad? I don't know. I just feel bad taking money from people. I should just be, it's that magic word, I should, right? Oh, my gosh.

We have so many emotions with money. Speaking of emotions with money, a lot of times I think our emotions can drive our decisions and our behavior with money. We get in a situation we don't want to be in. We need help getting it together. If you are struggling with money, if you're struggling with keeping up with payments, you know what it's like to be so scared and so overwhelmed you can't think straight. Emotions have taken over. But here's the

good news. You don't have to live like that anymore. When you pay off your debt as fast as possible, like we teach and like millions of Americans have done with our plan, you will never have that kind of stress in your life again. You can do this. And here's where you start. Financial Peace University. Millions of people have taken this class and learned how to pay off debt and take control of their money.

You can stream all nine lessons right now or get some extra support by going through the class with other people. And the only way to get Financial Peace University is with a Ramsey Plus membership. You can get rid of that debt that's holding you back and end the cycle of worry and stress. To start your free trial of Ramsey Plus, just text TRIAL to 33789. just text TRIAL to 33789.

That's TRIAL to 33789. You know, John, I went through Financial Peace University in 2012, and I was already on my debt-free journey, but it just kick-started it even faster because I actually had a plan. Like we were talking about earlier, whether it's managing your time managing your money running a marathon when you have a plan on paper you know that you can do it because you can see it you can see what the steps are yeah and hey if you if you text um trial to 33789 and you are part of the free trial you can stream the money and marriage event for free oh how about that ramsay, these kind of cool things show up and you get free access to the live stream events

and this is one of them coming up Friday. So if you take advantage of this free trial today, you can also stream that event this weekend for free. All right. That's trial to 33789.

Trial to 33789. You get your Ramsey Plus membership, kickstart your money plan, and you get access to a money in marriage event with john deloney rachel cruz this friday night we've had kind of a theme today with marriage calls and so i think it's perfect timing with that to show people things that you can do habits that you can create to change your outcome john what is uh one thing that you are most excited about teaching

people talking about speaking on this fr night? What aspect of it? That's a great question. Probably that I, for some reason, we can make humans together. We can share bathrooms. We can share meals. But when it comes to talking about sex and intimacy,

when it comes talking about money, and when it comes to talking about sex and intimacy, when it comes to talking about money, and when it comes to talking about dreams, what do we want? What's the picture of our life going to look like? Our mouths go dry. We don't know what to say. We don't know how to talk about it. We're so nervous about rejection. And, man, when you talk about intimacy and you talk about money, there's so much baggage there.

There's so much baggage there there's so much hurt there there's so much um cultural narrative and family history and old stories we tell ourselves so much goes into that and so at some point somebody just has to turn all the lights on turn the music off and say hey can we just be honest with each other for a minute yeah and it's the same way dave does it with money just says hey i know what the culture's telling you know what the world's telling you just listen if you do it like this um and so it's it's the same way dave does it with money just says hey i know what the culture is telling you know what the world's telling you just listen if you do it like this um and so it's it's the same it's just teaching people how to talk to talk to one another you know this is a silly example but when i was in high school i joined the track team and i you know you you expect that running is one of those things you're born knowing how to do right like you crawled and

walked and run and kids run all over the playground. So you think running, what would you learn in running? And I remember in the track team in high school, I learned form and drills, and I got faster and faster. And the faster I got, the more I wanted to run because I learned all the proper technique of something that I thought I was supposed to know how to do. And I think that we feel that way about marriage. Yeah, and friendship.

Even sex and intimacy, you think you're supposed to know. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like what to talk about, how to do. And so because we expect that we're supposed to know how to do all these things,

raise kids, communicate with our spouse, whatever, because we expect that we're supposed to know how to do it, we're just supposed to be born knowing how to do it,

we're afraid to ask. Yeah. We're afraid to get outside help. We're afraid to talk to our spouse about it. And that's why I'm so excited you guys are doing this event where you are going to talk

about those things and give people the language around it to talk to our spouse about it. And that's why I'm so excited you guys are doing this event where you are going to talk about those things and give people the language around it to talk about it, but also the specific steps they can take on these things that, guess what? You're not born knowing how to do. If we will just take a deep breath and step back and look at relationships, marriages, friendships even,

we have a loneliness epidemic, and look at them as a series of skills that we don't have and now I can go grab some skills the same as I do when I want to learn a song on guitar when I want to fix something under my sink I just need some skills man, you can take all the drama out of it

and we can go get some of this done and heal relationships all over the country so good this is The Ramsey Show. blinds.com 100 satisfaction guarantee means that even if you mismeasure or pick the wrong color they'll remake your blinds for free you get free samples free shipping and with the new promotions they run every month you'll save even more use promo code RAMSY to get the best deal. All right, today's question comes from Lori in California. I'm a single mother with a 17-year-old son.

I'm working the baby steps to financially prepare for the end of child support and my future retirement. I'm in baby step two with $50,000 in debt and make about sixty five thousand dollars a year i attended business boutique and have a side etsy business which i had to put on hold to tutor my son through some school challenges this year now that he's on a more solid education footing should i focus on building the business again to get more income for the baby steps there's a lot going on here yeah there is um you know what's interesting is a lot of times when people ask about business, should I focus on building the business again? It's there. There's usually some more information that's missing because if you can build the business and not spend any money on it, yes. If you can build the business and you have the time or can make the time, yes. But if you're in a season where it's going to cost a lot of money to get it off the ground,

or you just do not have the time, it would be your time would be better spent in a full-time job or something than no. So I think it's one of those things where one of the things I love to help people do, John, is I love to help people in their business, regardless of their type of business, get profitable fast. So sometimes people will come to me with this big idea, like, I want to buy land and build an event space and I want to have big events. I'm like, that's awesome. Can you just sublease a warehouse down the road and put some events there and prove your concept first? You know what I mean? Because I think sometimes we have the Cadillac version of our idea or we just want to

put a bunch of money into it. And I want to help you figure out how to build the thing and not put a bunch of money into it i want to help you make a bunch of money growing slow i mean this this business is an example we started on a card table in dave ramsey's living room right you know growing at the speed of cash so i got a letter today which i love like handwritten letter um or it was typed and so walk me through what this would look like so somebody wrote in and said my husband and i want, we're looking at the data, the stats on minister burnout. And you can put doctor burnout, dentist burnout, teacher burnout. We just fry helping professionals, right? But this particular family was interested in starting a retreat center, getting a bunch of land,

starting a place for ministers to come heal their marriages, heal their lives, and get stuff back together. Walk me through what you would tell that person. It sounds like they're starting with the end in mind, which is this magical ranch with 30 tiny houses that you can be full of all the time. That's not reality. Reality is we're here.

We have no land land we all work construction jobs i think what would that look right well i think that there's two implications there's the financial implication of you have to have the cash to go buy that land and build that place but there's also the risk implication that you haven't proven this idea yet you think it'll be a huge success do people want to come spend time with you right and i and i hope that it is but we need to prove the concept so i'll give you you an example of a friend of mine, actually. This was years ago. He had an idea to start a cookie delivery business.

He worked a full-time job. And instead of going and leasing a retail storefront in the middle of downtown Nashville, committing to a 10-year lease and spending all this money for a build-out and all this stuff for an idea that he had not proven, what he did was he found a commercial kitchen downtown that only operated from eight to five. He went in, proposed his idea and said, Hey, I want to start a cookie delivery business in the evenings. Can I come in your off hours after 5 PM and bake and use your kitchen? And they said yes. And so he had no risk, no commitment. The financial investment was almost nothing. It was just his ingredients,

right? For the cookies. And he cash flowed it. He continued to cash flow it, cash flow it, cash flow it, built this awesome cookie delivery business in downtown Nashville, delivered to Vanderbilt students.

Parents would send cookies to their kids studying for exams, built it up, built up over years of working in the evenings after his full time job. So he had the stability of his income, but what he was doing was proving the concept. He was getting cash in and proving the concept. And then I think it was after a couple of years, got a storefront. And then eventually after the storefront was so successful, sold it. And so he's just had this awesome evolution of his business, but it's not

because he had an idea and turned that idea into a big risk. You grow with the speed of cash. And so in that case, I would find what is an event venue look like? What is a, is there some non-traditional space that you could use to do the, that's in their off hours and they're off weekends, dates, times,

whatever to host events there, provide the healing, provide the concept on a 1.0 version. I use the iPhone as an example. The iPhones on the iPhone, what now, 12? They started with the iPhone 1. It didn't do half of the things that it does now. It didn't have the camera that it has now.

It didn't have the functionality that it has now. But they put something out there in the world, the 1.0 version, and they listen to the market and they iterate and improve and iterate and prove, improve concept and get money in and then put 2.0, 3.0, et cetera. just i recommend people come up with their 1.0 version of that idea what is a creative low cost low risk version of that idea where you can prove concept and get cash and then cash flow it out over time so that you have low risk in in all of the ownership and so i think that's just a safer way to do it how How do you teach somebody, Christy, to, let me say it this way.

I love feedback. I like to, okay, you gave a talk to Ellen. It wasn't great. Here's how we can make it better. You didn't hit the mark on this. Or this was kind of funny. We could have done this better. Your show needs to do this.

I like that because I don't want to spend my time and my life is too short. But I also know sometimes those things are sensitive. So let's take your cookie friend. The proof of concept, hey, can you make cookies? Can you work hard? Yes, I can do all these things. I've got this great business plan. It actually looks good on paper.

To me, the cornerstone question there is do people like your cookies? Are they good yeah right or are you a kind of person that people whose marriages are struggling want to come spend time with you or do you bring people peace or how do you teach people to go out on that limb and solicit feedback accept feedback be able to say well I want to start a cookie shop. I'm not great at baking. Yeah. I think you have to reframe failure because if you're all sensitive about your cookies

or your marriage counseling and you think that someone giving you feedback that isn't perfect is a failure or a criticism, then you're never going to look for it. You're never going to seek it. You're not going to listen to it. But view business like a scientist. Scientists never fail. They're just experimenting. They're just trying to be less wrong everything is an experiment yeah if an experiment goes wrong it's like well learn from that and another one went wrong i learned from that everything is an experiment so see that as an experiment in my cookie friend example

he sent all of his friends cookies and said are they good he sent me some he said matt and i some to our house when we lived in sylvan. My friends are the worst. They never do that. My friends want to. But he literally asked this question. Were they warm? Were they soft? I mean, did they taste good? Which flavor was your favorite?

He sought out that, but he saw it as research. He saw it as an experiment. And so whatever idea you have, if it is a business idea, if it is a ministry idea, nonprofit, for-profit, it doesn't matter. Seek out that feedback, and then you make changes based on the feedback. We do that internally. We put out surveys. This cover of my book is the cover that the survey people picked. We had six covers. This is the one they picked.

And so ask people feedback to know what they like and what they want, and your idea is going to be better. But then in business, I love what Dave Ramsey says, business is a conversation with the marketplace. You never just come out with the iPhone and you never fix your iPhone. You never come out with a cookie recipe and you never update it probably. You're probably always making it better, figuring out how to deliver them, where they're going to stay warmer. You're always iterating on whatever your idea is to make it better for your customers. It's a conversation with the marketplace. You're always iterating on whatever your idea is to make it better for your customers. It's a conversation with the marketplace.

All right. I want to share with you guys our scripture and quote of the day. Our scripture is Matthew 6, 26. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns. And yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Our quote today, the invariable mark of wisdom

is to see the miraculous in the common. Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Limmerson baby, I love it. Man, what a perfect quote for what we've been talking about in marriage. It's the little stuff, man. See the miraculous in the common. See that your spouse is showing you love by taking out the trash

see the miraculous in the common even in the day-to-day grind that's so good john this was fun thanks for thanks for hanging out with me and congratulations on the launch of your books go to the ramsay.com solutions.com and get your copy so good can't wait thank you thank you also want to thank producer james, associate producer Kelly Daniel, and you, America, for listening. This is The Ramsey Show. Have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of Ramsey advice in their life? Let them know about the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast.

It's a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes. Check out the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.