The Ramsey Show - App - I Scrambled the Baby Steps and Am Prepared To Be Yelled At (Hour 3)

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Debt, Business, Relationships As heard on this episode: Sign Up for a FREE trial of Ramsey+ TODAY: https://bit.ly/3rZTUAx Tools to get you started:  Debt Calculator: https://bit.ly/2Q64HME Insurance Coverage Checkup: https://bit.ly/3sXwUn5 Complete Guide to Budgeting: https://bit.ly/3utmVXi Check out more Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3fHhbVE

Live Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, 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. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today as we take your calls about your life and your money.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Carrie is with us to start off this hour in Detroit, Michigan. Hi, Carrie. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you guys doing today? Better than we deserve.

What's up? So I left my corporate job at the end of February, and I finished up a certification that I've been working on for about a year and a half in animal training at the end of March. I've been working since the end of February on building website, ordering business cards, networking, but I'm at a point now where I'm, I guess I'm nervous to pull the trigger and publish my website and distribute my business cards at local businesses. And I guess I'm nervous. I guess I'm looking for some advice on just how to not feel like a fraud since I'm still new at this and how do I even go about setting my prices when

I'm still learning I'm still you know a novice um not a quote-unquote expert yet yeah Carrie I'm gonna tell you the number one way to get rid of this feeling of the fear, the insecurity, the doubt, the imposter syndrome, all that. The number one thing is to start doing stuff. Now, listen, I know that sounds simple, but there's actually there's a practical implication of this. OK, I tell people all the time the antidote to fear is action. Nothing will silence your fear of doing the thing like doing the thing so go do the thing nothing will silence your fear of publishing the website like pressing publish or taking your business cards to the local you know vets or

wherever you know the action steps that you take and every time that you take a step of faith, that you take a step of action, you actually start to do stuff with this business, your fear lessens, that voice in your head gets quieter, your confidence grows, and you go, oh my gosh, I did it, and I survived.

What else can I do? But if you're waiting around until this feeling of ready comes over you, it will never happen. So like obedience training for dogs? Actually, I'm going to be working with exotic birds who who's your market what what are you what problem are you exotic birds but you're teaching exotic birds behave i am i am teaching exotic birds how to behave and surprisingly there is a market for it surprisingly you can you can do that. That's amazing. That's the surprising part.

That's amazing. You know how to do that. So, yes, I'll be training like parrots mainly. Parrots are one of the most rehomed animals. Because they won't behave? Because they won't behave. They're not meant to be in homes. They're meant to be in the wild. They're not meant to be in homes. They're meant to be in the wild.

They're not domesticated. So they get mean. They're mean. They're destructive. And you train them to not be so mean. Instead of putting them on the grill, people re-home them. Okay. Have you checked out the market in Detroit? Do you know the market?

Where the parrot owners hang out in Detroit? I do. So when I left my corporate job, I took a job in a exotic bird store, basically just doing retail sales, which is horrible. But it's giving me the opportunity to network with bird owners um i've also been networking with local bird rescues um to so so are you afraid that you cannot train them i've i've i have had some experience but i i haven't experienced every issue yet you know and then i i haven't been doing this 30 years and i this is the first parrot call we've never so i've never experienced this issue before but i'm winging my way through it no pun intended but uh all right all right here's the thing here's the thing so the only thing i can draw a parallel on is i was with a guy who's

been a as a professional dog trainer for hunting dogs back last fall. And we had this long talk about hunting dogs just because I was interested in what he was doing and what he was selling them for unbelievable money because he's apparently very, very big. And he had this one dog he got and he could not train it. And he said, I've been doing this 20 years. And he said, this dog was an absolute butthole. You could not train it. And he said, I've been doing this 20 years. And he said, this dog was an absolute butthole. You could not train this dog. And he said, so I just sent it back to the owner, and I didn't charge him because I couldn't help him. Right.

So what's wrong with that strategy? No, that's a good strategy. That is going to be a part of the journey, Carrie. I don't think you need to dread that and fear that. I think you need to accept that. There's going to be a part of the journey, Carrie. I don't think you need to dread that and fear that. I think you need to accept that. There's going to be a bird. There's going to be parents. You don't know what to do with.

Carrie, I lived on a farm. I had a horse back years ago, and I, same situation, sent this horse to be trained, and they brought it back to me. They said, we've broken a bazillion horses. We can't break this horse. I ended up selling the horse. He couldn't be trained. So that's going to happen.

You just accept that. Rather than fear it, just accept it. But know that the majority of the time, you're going to have parents that you can train based on your education and certification. And you're going to be able to help these people. But here's what I want you to do. I've got a challenge for you. I want you to get one customer. I don't care who.

I don't care where. And I don't care what you charge. You get one customer. Tom, you're my first customer. I don't care who, I don't care where, and I don't care what you charge. You get one customer. Tell them, you're my first customer. I'm going to do it for $3. But go do it, for God's sake. Do it. And when you do it, it's going to do so much for your confidence.

Yeah. Just get out there and start swinging. Get at the plate. Swing the bat. Don't wait until you're not scared to do the thing you want to do. Do it scared. The antidote to fear is action. The first time I sat down in this chair and got in front of the microphone,

I couldn't hardly talk i was so nervous and now my pulse rate doesn't even change you know but there are people that walk up in front of an audience and break out in sweat do it scared play scared the first time you got on stage i was there you were scared i use this example all the time because i think sometimes we look at people doing things that seem scary. We think, oh, well, they're fearless. They're just confident. They just have this certain gene that I don't have. They're doing it despite their fear. And so, Carrie, if you're waiting for permission, for someone to give you enough approval, or someone to tell you, it's not going to happen.

I need you to go get a customer, any customer, anywhere, for any amount of money, any parrot, and help this person with their parrot this week and watch how that first customer that first interaction do it scared will build your confidence we work with dysfunctional parrots oh my gosh this is so awesome but i love that she said what if i get a parrot i don't know we're like jokes we've never we've never got a call on parrots before this is this is gonna be part of the journey jokes she could use she's just gotta you gotta embrace the humor in this you gotta wing it yeah i can't help you this one's a bird brain i mean you know it's just so you gotta wing it this one's a bird brain i can't help you hey stay on the line i want to send you my book kelly you're sending my book business boutique

that will help you push past your fear you're amazing chapter two carrie read chapter two on fear you got this for any of you out there that are unemployed, shut up. I mean, she's a parent trainer. My God. This is The Ramsey Show. People all over the country are discovering a faith-based and budget-friendly way of meeting health care costs through Christian Health Care Ministries. Christian Healthcare Ministries, or CHM, is a nonprofit organization that helps members carry one another's burdens with healthcare expenses, and they have successfully shared each other's medical bills for nearly 40 years. See if CHM is right for you by visiting chministries.org.

CHM is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. Thank you for joining us, America. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Eli is with us in Kansas City. Hi, Eli. How are you? Good, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

So I've scrambled your baby steps a little bit, and I'm prepared to be yelled at, but I need some advice. I like this start already. Right? I listen enough to know. So we have a little bit of a unique situation. My wife and I, we have paid off all of our smaller debts. We have no credit cards, no car payments, no consumer debt, except we have about $62,000 in a consolidated student loan, and we have $68,000 left on our home. And I'm wondering, my question is, we are purchasing our home on contract from my wife's grandmother. It's zero interest.

And we have, it was a five-year deal. And whatever was left, we have to get a mortgage for and, you know, pay off the remainder. And so my question is, we have one year left. We will have about $60,000 in excess income over the next year. Should I pay the contract off on this home so I can avoid having to go out and get a mortgage or should i put that toward my student loan debt what's the home worth the home is worth 168 okay uh you need to go get a loan and pay grandma today this is dangerous dangerous dangerous because you just told me this is a land contract you do not have this house in your name do you we have a it's a contract for deed yeah i know i know what

it is it sucks really bad okay here's the problem grandma falls asleep at the wheel, hits somebody head-on, and gets sued for the injuries, and there's a $5 million lien on her. It goes against this house that she owns. You don't own this house. You're a renter. Okay. Danger, danger. Land contracts are horribly, leave you horribly exposed if she gets an irs

lien placed against her it goes against this house it's not your house it's in her name so go so go ahead and go get a mortgage now this week and just continue on with the baby steps and pay off the student loans? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Okay. But not for the reasons you thought you were going to get yelled at. Totally different reasons. Congratulations.

So here's the thing. You need to go to a credit union or a small local bank. You don't need to get a traditional mortgage for this. It's too expensive and there's no need. You should be able to get what is equivalent of a home equity loan. But here's what you're looking for. You need to be very demanding of this bank or this credit union. Write these things down.

No closing costs. There's no reason for there to be a bunch of closing costs on a $60,000 loan on a $160,000 house. This is called a no-brainer loan. Okay? Right. No closing costs fixed rate no balloons and so put this put this on a five-year or a 10-year fully amateurizing meaning when you pay the payments the loan disappears without a call or a balloon no call no balloon fixed rate no closing costs and you may have to lean in on the young manager over at the credit union so they

understand you because they're not going to they're going to want to put this on some kind of home equity loan product with a variable rate where they change the rate at their whim or it has a balloon on it or a balloon on it or a call on it or they're going to try to sneak in some closing costs all of which are totally unacceptable they will make this loan and they'll be happy they made it what's a call a call is is they have the ability to call the loan anytime they want to anytime they want they look at it they go i don't like your financial situation anymore. Loan is due. And it turns into like something on the movies or something then, bad movies. We own a small business.

We do about $2 million in revenue, and it all runs through our local credit union. And so we have a really good relationship. So hopefully they will. It should be easy then. It should be easy. But here's the thing. What I'm telling them to do is not the way their minds normally work so you're going to be very strong and very clear you have to be mean about it

but it's like no no no no no you misunderstood me fixed rate no closing costs no call 10 year loan simple loan and then you can go pay it off after you get your student loans paid off as quick as you want the beauty of this is it didn't cost you anything to set this loan in place. Yeah. And you got rid of all this risk with Grandma. All right. We will do that this week. And Grandma will be smiling.

She got her money. And then you pop, knock out those student loans and reach over and knock out that tiny mortgage because you're killing it. You're doing great with your business. Congratulations. Very cool. That's good stuff. Yeah.

So contract for deed or land contract are the same thing. It is simply a contract that says after you pay these payments for however many years, then they give you the deed. But until then, the house is not in your name. Okay. And it's a way a lot of owner financing is done. But it is dangerous. It's not dangerous for the seller.

Right. It's dangerous for the buyer because the buyer hadn't bought anything. Gotcha. And so if the seller gets crossways, and I've seen this happen, they get some kind of a financial catastrophe that you cannot see coming. I mean, Grandma could fall asleep at the wheel. I mean, not because she's drinking. She could just fall asleep.

Right. I mean, we don't have to call Grandma bad. mean, not because she's drinking. She could just fall asleep. You know what I mean? We don't have to call grandma bad. It's just bad things sometimes happen, you know? And so, I mean, the tire could blow out on her car. And, you know, she swerves over and, you know, hits something and tears it up or hurts somebody or something. And it's just a horrible, called an accident. And yet, the whole thing falls apart over here because you didn't have the

property in your name it's in her name and her her problems are going to end up on you gotcha and that that's the danger of this it's very dangerous because you know in his case he could lose a hundred thousand dollars of equity he's got 168 000 house he was 62 on yeah but it ain't his house yeah and if that thing got sideways, he could lose all that. So get this done this week. Don't ever do those things. Don't ever do land contracts, contracts for deed. Ever, ever, ever, peoples.

All right, Mary's in San Diego. Hey, Mary, what's up? Hi, I'm selling leaves to talk to you. You too? I have a pop-a-date question. Sure. What's up? A pop-a-date question.

Yes. So I'm the youngest sibling of a big family, and my dad's deceased husband for more than a decade. My mom has dementia, and she's in care. I am in charge of a big family trust. My dad left a legacy. He was a great worker, a great man. Somewhere in between my mom being diagnosed with dementia and my dad dying, I was named trustee.

I'm the youngest. How old are you? I'm almost 40. Okay. All right. So why were you selected? There were questionable investments and questionable handling of money just in personal life and in business.

You know, so I think my mom was, maybe there was a tad of emotion in there, but I'm level-headed and conservative. Okay. All right. Because you got common sense. That's why you were selected. Okay. And how big is this trust my little it's the money in the bank is at 11 million and then the properties are probably brings a fate to about 20 something wow i know wow my little family did rice and beans

and beans and rice and we're good i have a sweet little family that we take care of but this is something else right yeah and i've been presented with a big investment opportunity from my oldest brother and i'm just struggling with the what is big um about half of that 11 million that's in investments right now and he wants you to invest it in what purchase a best friend's company that's going to do double the business of what they're doing now it's going to be multi-multi-million uh i heard you say you didn't believe it i i don't not know you don't believe it does she i don't believe it either. Yeah. I don't know much about it, but I don't. Hey, you're in charge, and you don't need to feel guilty for being in charge.

You're put in charge because you've got common sense. We may want to invest some of it rather than it sitting in the bank, but I'm not sure this deal is the right deal. As a matter of fact, you're pretty sure it's not. I don't know anything about it, but you're pretty sure it's not Thanks for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host.

Brandon is with us in Dallas, Texas. Hey, Brandon, how are you? Yes, sir, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I hope you haven't called anybody an idiot today because I want to give you the first crack at me. We are starting this strong, Brandon.

I can't wait for this. I've been listening for a couple years. That's not too bad, but I think I should know the answer, but I just don't. I want to feel like I have this unique situation. But anyway, I'm not a teacher anymore. I used to be a teacher. I taught for 12 years. I'm self-employed for

the last two years. In these last two years, I've been making good money, but I haven't put anything away for retirement. Um, and when I look at, you know, what I've made as a teacher, as far as retirement, it's just a little under $40,000. I'm not really sure how it, how that works, you know, over, over time, but I figured after 12 years, I would have a little bit more than that. Anyway, I bought some property. I kept it for a year, decided I wanted to move to be closer to where I work for my new job.

So I'm in the process of selling that property worth about 90,000. And I have bought some property in the new city where I live. And so my question is, um, you know, now that I'm making decent money and really I'm in no, you know, I'd like to build a house, uh, in the future, but I'm, I'm kind of okay renting for the time being. I'm always worried about retirement. So my question is, with the money that I make from selling this property, should I, you know, throw $125,000 into my retirement or should I put that

$90,000 towards, you know, the new property that I've just bought and, you know, try to go ahead and pay that off. What are you making? About $150 pre-tax. Wow, good for you. Nice jump. Thank you, and it's just cell phone repair, computer repair, so. Good for you. Okay. Fairly predictable then. That's good.

Okay. And that's one thing that I'm worried about, though, because I'm wondering, you know, how technology changes. You know, that's what I'm kind of worried about. though, because I'm wondering how technology changes. That's what I'm kind of worried about. Nothing is forever. It's okay. You're going to stay on top of it, and you're going to find something else to work on as whatever you're working on isn't there anymore.

We don't work on toasters anymore, but we used to. Yes, sir. And you'll find something else to work on. The guys that used to work on toasters work on cell phones now. So you're going to be fine. You're the guy that's going toasters work on cell phones now. So you're going to be fine. You're the guy that's going to figure it out. So good news is you're making good money. So here's our rule of thumb.

We work a thing called the baby steps. And baby step one is $1,000 in the bank. You've done that. Two is debt-free, everything but your house. You've done that, right? Yes, sir. Three is an emergency fund. Do you have an emergency

fund of three to six months of expenses not counting the 90 grand? I do. Yes, sir. Good for you. Okay. Then we're on baby steps four, five, and six. Four is 15% of your income should be going into retirement. You need to go to DaveRamsey.com, click on SmartVestor, get a SmartVestor Pro, sit down with them, start loading a couple of Roth. Are you married? I am not, but I do have children. Okay. You need to start loading a Roth IRA. How many employees do you have? It's just me.

Okay. Then I would look at doing a SEP as well, Simplified Employee Pension Plan. And between that and a Roth, you can get 15% of your income going into retirement with a SmartVestor Pro. Automatically coming out of your checking account every month, and it will just be on autopilot. You want to think about it again, and you're going to retire with a lot of money. How old are you? I'm 38, but can I tell you one more thing here? Sure. I guess my fear overall is that I feel like, you know, I'm making more money than I've ever made, but my fear is, you know, Apple or Samsung is going to make a phone that you can't repair or doesn't need to be repaired, and I may have to go back to teaching.

You're going to find something else to work on. In the meantime, you're going to save 15% of your income into retirement, and baby step five is you're going to start putting something aside for your kids, and baby step six is that you're going to get your home paid off. In this case, this land paid off. So that formula tells us that you're going to put the $90,000 towards your land. Okay. And you're going to set up these other accounts, so you quit wringing your hands about the retirement.

Here's the thing. Very few people become wealthy with single deposits the vast majority of wealthy people did it monthly over an extended period of time it was not a one-time hit so when you get to 70 years old and you have 10 million dollars you're not going to go it's because of that 90 grand you're going to go it's because of a steady life of investing and i had to pivot my business my business had to change and evolve because i mean back in aught 21 they had these things called smartphones you know back before we had the hologram you know or what

you know what i'm saying yes sir crap's gonna change right and you're gonna find something else to do and or a modification of what you're doing still within that field. When I started this business, the internet was not there. There was no such thing. And the one thing I would add, Brandon, is let that change inspire you, not intimidate you. Let it inspire you to stay sharp on your skills and learn new things and be excited about what you're going to know how to do in five ten years not be scared that the world's going to move on and leave you behind and you're not going to have a job because you're working on these old phones that no one uses anymore the toaster in this example don't don't look at it like that you can look at this and let it inspire you like hey i'm going to stay on the cutting edge

of what's going on the first guy that works on the new brand new X or the brand new Y because you're working, because you're looking for that, because you know that you know 10 years from now you're not working on a smartphone. I'm a thousand percent sure of that. Well,

thank you for the advice. I really appreciate it. That's how I would do it. That's exactly what I would do. I think your business is as stable as your ability to continue to innovate. Yep. And that's everybody, by the way. And it's not going to be the rug pulled out from underneath you, most likely. It's going to be incremental. You're going to learn as you go, like you did to get to this point.

Yeah. Yeah. Very few businesses do you just walk, unless you have a single thing with a single product. Now, if you bet your life on Apple, oh, you could get screwed. Yeah. If you bet your life on Google, you could get screwed. Bet your life on Facebook, you could get screwed. So don't have a business model that allows yourself to be completely vulnerable to any one thing out there,

any one vendor, any one singular process but um you know you got to have a diversified approach to it and a constant mind for innovation and the next thing but you got to have that in any business right oh yeah any business things are about the only thing you can count on is change marley is with us marley's in reddington or redding cal, California. Hi, Marley. How are you? Great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I am currently out on maternity leave. Yay! What'd you have?

Yes. I have a boy who's just turned three months, and then we have a daughter who is about to turn two. Yay! Congratulations. Man, you got a lot of noise in your house. Yeah, no sleep. They are both napping right now, thankfully. But my question is, my husband and I both make fairly good money in our day jobs. I'm a teacher. I make a little over $45,000 a year. My husband makes a little over $60,000 at his day job, but he also uh two small businesses and so he makes a little less than

130 000 right now um he did just start a new business that could potentially make um he makes 130 or we do we we okay and of that 45 is you correct okay so 85 is his. I got you. Okay. What's your question? Yes. My question is, I would really like to stay home. Good. And we both kind of talked about it a lot right now. We're debt-free. We're able to contribute about $1,000 a month extra towards our mortgage and like 40% of his income towards retirement.

But we won't be able to do those things if I stay home. That's not what we teach. We don't teach 40% towards retirement. Correct, yes. We teach 15% towards retirement until your house is paid off. If you want to stay home, you're trading kids for money. That's a good trade. What do you think? Yeah, you're in a position to be able to do it. You want to do it, do it. Make the decision to cut back on some things

and make the decision for your budget to work and to stick to it. But, you know, set up 15% of his income going into retirement.

You'll be fine. You're going to be just fine. But don't go in debt to do it. Thank you. Our scripture of the day, Ecclesiastes 10.10. If the axe is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed, but skill will bring success. John Maxwell says small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jay is in Orlando. Hi, Jay, how are you? Hey, Dave. Hey, Christy. How are you guys today? Better than I deserve. How can we help?

That's great. So I have a, I hope, a unique question. I wrote, so I'm a cybersecurity architect, and I wrote a framework similar to your baby steps for cybersecurity addiction. No, sorry, cyber addiction. And I want to know what to do with it next. You know, as cyber guys, we are always writing like root cause analysis, and I wrote that. I wrote a cause, a condition, and a cure. And there's a lot of parallels to your baby steps and that kind of thing. And I kind of, like I got it, like I figured out what to say.

Now I got to get people to say it too. So I wanted to call and ask what you would recommend. Who's it for? People that are addicted to time. More specifically than that. Right. I mean. Like what, there's cyber security. Sorry.

So the groups would be, so families, like you see a lot of pastoral counseling as Japlin. Families, interpersonal marriages, just people, right? People, the way things are working now with a lot of applications, there's a lot of addiction-type, like, UIs that are being created where it's kind of like you walk in the front end of a casino, right? And there's lots of things going on. I don't want to get too geeky on you, but there's this psychometric mapping that, anyway, I've got a way to prove all that. I've got a way to help people out of

that um i got a method very similar like i came down and i said can i can i figure out what happened can i figure out what how it's changing people and then can i figure out how to actually help them get out um and i got in terms of uh cyber addiction are we talking i'm a little bit just a little more clarification, are you talking about like people addicted to online porn, or are you talking about people just addicted to checking their Facebook 73,000 times a day? Or playing games on their apps or something. Great, great question.

So actually, it's my opinion that in all those cases, the same thing is happening in all those cases, right? It's like being addicted to food or addicted to anything else. There's a change that occurs with a high adherence to any type of UI like that. So your mind is being remapped no matter what. So I think the cure would be very similar in all those cases. Well, I think the reason I ask the question is I think not about the process, but what I'm trying to get clarification on is your customer base is different if you're going after people that are addicted to porn

than if you're going after 52-year-old women who can't get off of Facebook. That's why I was asking who's your market, like who are you specifically creating this for? I would start out with families okay the the first questions that i get most of the time is i can't connect with my kids anymore so they're they got their nose buried in a that's you know it could be like with young adolescent males there's a lot of porn going on right and there's a lot of for sure it's like prevalent but when you're talking with um teenage girls right it's a lot of first words there. It's like prevalent. But when you're talking with teenage girls, right, it's a different thing, right? And if you look at the whole family unit, really everybody's got their hook.

Everybody's got their different hook from fathers like me to, you know, everybody. So I would approach it from a family point of view first of all. I think that's the way I would do it. Okay. What you're going to struggle with is you need to, in in order to get this to market you need to narrow your persona um we've asked you the question three different ways and we've gotten broad answers every time i want to get this to families you know that's just too broad so you you need to say i want to get this families that are doing x y and z yeah okay that have families that are disconnected that aren't having conversations with their kids what that's

all families yeah that's all families but built but building that out from even a income level a psychographic geographic however you want to and then you'll know how to talk to them because where to find them yeah where to find them because that's the trick is, I mean, the irony is that you'll probably find them online. Yeah. You know, you may be doing some blogging. You may be doing some stuff to get their attention and then with keywords and then set that out into the Facebook universe and out into the Google universe and begin to pull back with SEO. But again, you need to be targeting something more specifically than you are. And the person in the family that's going to do something about it.

And it doesn't have to be a certain gender, just moms or just dads. But pick a person that you're speaking to, the one that is motivated to fix this problem. Because what's interesting about your situation, Jay, with this specific problem is many people have this problem and don't know it's a problem ironically they do with money as well they have a money problem they don't know that they do is this something the job is telling them they have a problem is this something you get to the marriage counseling community the pastoral counseling community and then they deliver it to their uh constituents um or are you going direct to the consumer and if you're the more you're going to go direct to the consumer the more you're going to have to decide exactly who it is at least for the first wave right you can broaden it later yeah but for the first wave um you know

for the first wave of financial peace the book uh we were not going after uh 65 year olds uh back then in 1994 65 year olds most of them had common sense and the book was about common sense i'm not sure i could say that today about 65 year olds but the ones from 30 years ago uh you know that are now 90 uh had common sense yeah and uh so I was not going after them. I was going after the 34-year-old mom sitting in a carpool line with student loan debt, credit card debt, and I had a fight with her husband about the money. And so that's what Christy means about a persona. Now, once I know that she's the target, then that changes the content message,

the narrative that you use, and you know where to locate them uh you know where where do you find a 34 year old mom sitting in a carpool line uh you know and where do you find a 65 year old white male you know i don't need him and so i don't need that's a rush limbaugh listener uh when rush was alive you know, and no disrespect or anything, but I just know that that's not my market. Right. And that's not where we're going with it. Right.

And so who are we trying to help? And then we're going to get it very narrow and go straight to them, and then that will help you locate the pool of potential prospects. Yeah. Let me give you something real specific and tactical that you can do, Jay, because it sounds like to me that you're in the early stages of this. It's still somewhat theory. I know you said you have steps and you have a plan and it's proven it will work and so on.

I think that's great. What I want you to do is take that to market on a really small kind of experimental research basis. So reach out to anybody you know. That could be family, friends, your church, workplace, community, Facebook. I don't care. Just people that you know that fall within the general target market of who you're trying to help maybe some families that represent you know that ideal customer and i want you to take them through it maybe it's for free just for feedback and then as you walk them through this framework have them go through the

plan you're going to get testimonials you're going to get feedback on things that need to change you'll learn more about your messaging how they describe We'll give you some words to put to it of how you can describe it to more people. It will also give you a base to start to ask for referrals and word of mouth. It's a very organic way to start as you're getting this thing to market. And then you can get a little more sophisticated through online marketing, whether that's through social media or other paid marketing, that type of thing thing once you get your language right but that you need to have real people help you with the language of how they talk about it so you can talk about how they talk about it so just start with start with what you have the people that you know take some people through it and that'll give you some

feedback to begin to grow it a little bit yeah the language that the customer uses is more important than the language that you think they should use. Yes. Actually, that informs everything we do. Yeah. The words that they use and how they use them and how they truncate some of your thoughts into single words. Yes. And that kind of a thing. And so that's what you're looking for, because that that calls you to build your content

and your narrative out then. So very interesting discussion. Jay, it sounds like you're onto something. Sounds like it's needed for sure. Oh, I know it's needed. Don't lay it down. But let's get it narrow enough that you can get it off the ground, that it has some power, has some oomph. Good question, sir. Christy Goodhour. Thanks. It's great. Good job to James Childs and Kelly Daniels in the booth. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. We'll be back with you 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. 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.