The Ramsey Show - App - Slam Freakin' Dunk: Anyone Can Become a Millionaire! (Hour 3)

Episode Date: January 8, 2019

The show about you

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 am Dave Ramsey, your host. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. It is a free call at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Joining me at the bottom of the hour, Ramsey personality, Christy Wright.

And we're going to get some phone lines open as we move through this half hour so that you can call in and talk to Christy. She is the founder of the Business Boutique Movement, the number one best-selling book and selling out all over the place live events, equipping women to make money doing what they love, and host of the Business Boutique Podcast as well, which we've just launched and is, as you might guess, very popular immediately. So Christy Wright joining us at the bottom of the hour, 888-825-5225. As you can get through as we take some of these other calls, do that. If you've got questions for her about running a business, ladies,

or you're a gentleman and there's a lady in your life anywhere that you'd like to support by asking a question about starting or running her own business. That'll be our topic in the second half of this hour. Mark is in Boston. Hey, Mark, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, how are you? Better than I deserve, sir.

How can I help? All right, so my question is, we are debt-free except the mortgage. Good. And we do put 15% in each of our 401ks, so we're doing that. Good. Question to you is, the mortgage rate we have is really low. It's 3.5%. Okay.

Now, I recently did a CD, and it's like at 3% for a year. Should I, that extra money we have now, should that be going towards the house, you know, the mortgage to pay, yeah? Yeah, everything above your emergency fund. You need three to six months. We have an emergency fund, yeah, that's in place. But I just feel that maybe in the next couple of years, that 3.5% is going to be cheap compared to what I'll be able to get at a bank, at a CD, if I'm secure.

Man, you're going to make a half a percent? I know, I know. And trust me, I feel if we do pay that off so much, it's just lifted off of us. Exactly. It would let us do so much more. Exactly. The cash flow that allows you to invest what used to be a house payment. If you just invest a house payment from now until retirement,

you'd be so rich just on that one thing, Mark. All right. So anything extra just towards the house, it paid off as soon as possible. Yeah. You know, we just did this study, and I'll give you a copy of Chris's book. Have you ordered a copy of Everyday Millionaires yet? No, I haven't. Let me give you a copy of it, okay?

Because what it's got in there is all the stories and all the statistics of these millionaires that we studied. We studied the largest study ever done of millionaires, which is where we're trying to get to. We're trying to get to building wealth, right? That's why we're asking these questions. And so not to be a snob or a snot average millionaire pays off their home in 10.2 years, and it is one of the big things that caused them to build wealth. We found almost no millionaires that became millionaires by borrowing against their house to invest. Makes sense. You know, and so just, you know, it's like we got a bunch of skinny people.

If you want to be skinny people, do what the skinny people are doing, you know? Makes sense. Yeah, definitely. That's what we'll do. But I feel better talking to you, and I do everything you say. It's like preaching, and I really appreciate all the help. Well, thank you for listening, man. You hold on.

We'll send you a copy of Everyday Millionaires. That's the first copy I've ever given away, except for Debt-Free Screams. The Debt-Free Screams, I'll get one now, because that's the next step after you're out of debt, is to do your Everyday Millionaire, you know, to become an Everyday Millionaire. So there you go. That's it. Because that's, you Well, that's it. It's just so interesting to me.

I don't know why it took me 20 years to get this book done. I didn't do it. Chris Hogan did it, and our team did it with this research. But I knew all this was out there. I've been talking about it, but we just never got it all gathered up and put down in this kind of a format. And I've got to tell you, man, these statistics in this study are slam freaking dunk. I mean, if you know anything about statistical analysis, if you can get something that's like, like, for instance, let me tell you this.

If you get something that's like 57%, 62%, something like that, that is a slam dunk. You know? It's not a, you know, 51% of everybody knows what that is, right? But, I mean, if you've got 67% of the people. Okay, for instance, the last election here just the other day, a friend of mine just became the new governor of the state of Tennessee, Bill Lee. He's an incredible guy. And it was an absolute landslide!

It was a blowout! He got 67% of the vote none of the statistics hardly in this millionaire study are below 75 everything we find is like 82 84 79 72 that kind of stuff there's none of them are like 53 of the millionaires do this you know that's not conclusive that means like half of them don't right it's like you know it's like a like a presidential election these days you know almost all the presidential elections in recent memory are 48 52 51 49 right in there you know and sometimes even flip-flop but the you know electoral college gets them in that kind of stuff that's happened a couple times.

But none of them are like landslides. I think the last landslide was probably Reagan. And it wasn't even, I don't even know if he got 60%. I'll have to go back and look. But that's how far back you've got to go to get to a landslide, or even close. All of them have been

basically 50-50. And so it's not conclusive. It's not a basically 50-50, 50-50. And so it's not conclusive. It's not a mandate when you're elected 50-50. Trump does not have a mandate. Obama did not have a mandate. You know, there was not that, because there wasn't enough. It was just right on the line. It just barely eked his butt in in both cases, right?

But that's not these numbers. These numbers are mandate numbers. I mean, when you say, for instance, 79% of the millionaires in North America received zero inheritance, another 5% received less than $100,000. So mathematically, 84%, probably closer to 90%, did not receive enough inheritance. They did not become millionaires because of an inheritance. So easily we can say between 80% and 90%. Did not become.

That's 9 out of 10, 8 out of 10. That's all of them. Okay? I mean, when you look at that, that's all of them. Well, they all attended prestigious schools. Now 69% went to public universities. Think about that. Graduated from state school, the University of dot, dot, dot, right?

Tennessee, Kentucky, North Dakota. That's what they graduated from. 8% graduated from community colleges. 9% didn't graduate at all from college, which leaves less than 10% graduated from prestige schools. Only 1 in 10. So there's no tata points that say going to a prestige school makes you wealthy. It's just not there. It's pretty simple.

It's all in Everyday Millionaires, how ordinary people build extraordinary wealth, and how you can too. The American dream is alive and well. Number one bestselling author, Chris Hogan. That book came out yesterday. You do want to read this book. 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 a 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. Thank you for joining us, America. At the bottom of the hour, Christy Wright, the host of the Business Boutique podcast, author of the number one book, Business Boutique, and founder of the whole Business Boutique movement, equipping women to make money doing what they love, will be with us. If you're a lady and you have a business or you want to have a business, you want to ask Christy a question,

she'll be here in about 15 minutes, and you'll want to talk to her. The phone number is 888-825-5225. We've got a line open right now. We'll hold for that, 888-825-5225. And as I finish up these other lines, you can jump in with that, too. Christina is with us in Texas. Hi, Christina. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, sir. I have a question. I know you sold real estate. Mm-hmm. Okay, so I had a bankruptcy about two years ago, and then so this one company, the owner had owner's finance on a house, and I only owe $20,000 on it that's left, and I wanted to know because there's this company called The Highest Cash Offer,

and sometimes I'll see signs around the neighborhood and all that stuff saying, you know, we buy houses as is. Why would you sell your house that way? Well, because it's an older, outdated house. There's no central air. It needs fixing up, because I's an older, outdated house. There's no central air. It needs fixing up. But because I already completed step one, I'm on step two, but I just like to know what my future options are because I'm not sure if I want to sell the house. But if I do and I want to get a different house in a different city or whatnot,

I want to know what my options were if I did not want to fix up the house and just sell it as is. Right. Well, if you've got to sell it as is, it won't qualify if it's in need of repairs and so forth for traditional financing. So the buyer can't get, say, an FHA loan or a Fannie Mae loan if the house needs repairs. And so the only person that would buy it would be an investor that would fix it up and resell it for a profit after they fixed it up and so what they're going to do is discount the property obviously so that they can make a profit um and that's not evil it's just where you

are so you're selling to a wholesale market instead of a retail market is what it amounts to because you can't get the buyer can't get financing which makes it very very difficult to sell the house if you don't have someone like you're talking about but yeah those are all those people with signs up like that and that kind of thing those are all wholesale buyers um some of them are more sophisticated than others uh you want to be careful that whoever you're dealing with, if you do that, is a cash transaction and that you get your money at the closing table and the closing is soon. Well, because like on the website that I've seen, because it's called the highest cash offer, they talk about how it takes about seven days, there's no closing cost for me, and they'll take the house as is.

Yeah, but it's going to be discounted. Okay, so it'll be a discounted offer. Because they're going to turn around, fix it up, and resell it. Okay. They're not buying it to live in. So they're not an end user, they're a wholesaler. They've got to discount it, because that discount is what gives them their profit. Okay.

That's what they're after. And again, that's not an evil thing. It's like if you sell your car to a car dealer, you don't get as much for it as if you sell it to an individual. Okay. Because the car dealer is going to turn around and sell the car and make money on it. And so they discount the offer. You sell your car at wholesale when you sell it to a car dealer. Operates the same way.

So it's not ideal for you is what it amounts to. If you can afford to do the repairs and fix it up before you sell it, then you'll get a lot more for the house. Ann is in Canada. Hi, Ann. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Wow, thank you so much, Dave. This is so special to have the opportunity to be guided by you today.

Thank you. Well, I'm honored be guided by you today. Thank you. Well, I'm honored. How can I help? Thank you. Well, I'm joyfully on baby step two, have been actively and aggressively addressing personal debt from July of last year. Good. And I've been moving joyfully along. My shopping ban has been life-changing in the best of ways, and something happened in November where I didn't have enough money in my emergency fund to cover a life event. So I ended up dipping back into my line of credit to cover the expenses, and I wiped out what was four months of progress on baby step two of repaying debt, and it really threw me for a loop. So how much did you borrow in November, and why?

My mother died, and I didn't have enough to cover missed work and personal funeral expenses and hotels and things. So I borrowed $1,000 on my line of credit, which took me for a spin because it's the first bump in my road since July. Okay. And what do you make a year? I clear $22,000. And how old are you? So I'm not in the top 1% of income earners. How old are you? However, I'm dedicated to paying off what I owe.

How old are you? Pardon me? How old are you? I'm 55. Okay. And why is your income $22,000? Well, I had a few life events and have just been here kind of coasting along. Gotcha.

Okay. Cool. And you said you're 55? Yes. Great. Okay. Here's the good news. Here. Okay. Cool. And you said you're 55? Yes. Great. Okay. Here's the good news. Here's the good news.

A thousand dollar screw up, and it's not really a screw up, a thousand dollar setback. I mean, this wasn't like you went shopping. You went to your mother's funeral. Okay? You didn't do anything wrong. It's a thousand dollar setback. In the scope of your life, if you're like me, all the dumb things I've done, and I'm 58, you and I are about the same age.

I mean, of all the dumb things I've done, if $1,000 is going to sink me, I'm sunk. $1,000 ain't going to be your problem long term, right? It's nothing. In the scope of your life, all the other dumb things you've done, all the other dumb things I've done, $1,000 doesn't even, it pales in comparison, doesn't it? Sure does. So you're okay. You're okay.

What do you think of then of my newly minted plan, Dave, is that I have debt in the form of an equity line of credit, which if I consider this loan as a mortgage, shuffles the repayment of that to Step 6 as a mortgage payment and allows me to move straight now into Baby Step 3 to build up a six-month emergency fund. How much is owed on the HELOC? How much is owed on the HELOC? How much is on the loan? Mm-hmm. $72,000.

Okay. Well, that's definitely a Baby Step 6 item. What we teach you in the book, The Total Money Makeover, is second mortgages or home equity lines of credit, whatever you want to call them, that are more than half your annual income go to Baby Step 6. Okay. So you're there. That's done.

I'm there, and I'm mortgage-free on my property, so I'm really very happy. Well, you're not mortgage-free. You have a HELOC on it, and they'll foreclose on that if you don't pay it. So we need to keep that going in Baby Step 6. You may want to look at refinancing that. What I want you to work on more than anything else is I sense from talking to you, and I don't know your whole story, but I think you've probably got a big story. You've been through a lot.

That's what I'm smelling. And I think somewhere along the line, some of those wounds cause you to stop having the level of confidence that you should have. That's what I'm smelling. I think you're a whole lot better than maybe you think you are. That's what I'm saying. At 55 years old, I think you need to think about what you can do that would make you two or three times more money starting in the next two or three years, and what classes would you have to take, what steps would you have to take to become that person, to have your encore career, to let the decade

of the last little bit of your 50s and through your 60s be the best years of your life financially. But that's a choice you're going to make on impacting your income and your career as part of that. I think you can do it. I probably think you can do it more than you think you can do it. I'm proud of you. You got this. You can do it more than you think you can do it. I'm proud of you. You got this. You can do it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Your goal this year is to get rid of your debt, but here's the deal.

In order to keep your momentum going past January, you have to make small changes that get quick results. That's why you need to attack your debts smallest to largest. I also recommend you look for ways to find extra money to pay off your debt sooner. It's there, I promise you. Take a look at your mortgage. If you call my friends at Churchill Mortgage and request a five-minute checkup, they can help you find extra money.

Churchill Mortgage Checkup has helped thousands of my listeners save big. In just a few minutes, the Churchill team can tell you how much cash they can potentially save you or they can restructure your mortgage to pay it off early. Become debt-free in 2019. Call Churchill today at 888-LOAN-200 or visit churchillmortgage.com for your Churchill checkup. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLS consumer access.org. Equal housing lender. 761 Old Hickory Boulevard, Brentwood, Tennessee, 37027. Joining me this half hour to answer your questions, Ramsey Personality, and the host, the founder of the Business Boutique Movement,

equipping women to make money doing what they love. It is a number one best-selling book, a top-viewed and listened-to podcast, an event that sells out all the time, and all kinds of classes and things going on around it as well. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, joins me to answer your questions. Ladies, if you've got a question about starting or running a business, gentlemen, if you have a question about your lady starting and or running a business and you want to help her, be supportive of her, this is a chance you can get in.

The phone number is 888-825-5225. Welcome back, Christy. Thanks. Glad to be here. Cool times. So you're in the middle of a free workshop right now for people that are trying to dream up their new idea. That's right. It's called New Year, New Business.

You know, the beginning of the year, people are trying to get their lives in order. They've got big goals, trying to get their money in order. And many of them are thinking, I want to do something, but I'm not sure what. So maybe they have a thousand ideas or maybe they have no ideas. But both of those groups of people need the same thing. They need their best business idea. So this is a three-part workshop. We did part one yesterday, but it's still available on Facebook.

If you go to my Facebook page, Official Christy Wright, you can check out part one, part two, which I did today at noon, and then tomorrow is part three. We've got a workbook that goes along with it. It really gives them a framework to start to find their best business idea. All right. So let me recap because I want to make sure I get this straight. You've done two of the three lessons. One is tomorrow.

That's right. If you want to get caught up, you can do that at your Facebook page. That's right. Official Christy Wright. That's the Facebook page. That's right. And then how do they get the one tomorrow? You can just tune in.

It's 12 o'clock Central Time. That's your Facebook page. That's right. And there's actually a registration if they go to my Facebook page where they'll get the free downloads, the workbook. So it's really good to go to that link and register. They'll also get a reminder when I go live. But they can also just tune in live tomorrow at 12 o'clock Central Time. Perfect.

Okay. Good stuff. All right. If you've got a question, jump in. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Maybe it's along the same lines, New Year, New Business. Time for me to start a business, ladies. You want to dream about it?

We'll do that with you with the expert here, Christy Wright, joining us. No question about that. Megan is in Topeka, Kansas. Hi, Megan. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Hey, what's up? Well, me and my husband just got started.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Stop. We can't hear you. You sound like you're in a barrel. You're going to have to talk directly into your phone. Okay. Can you hear me now?

Yes. That's better. Thank you. Okay. Me and my husband just got started on our debt snowball. A little bit over $20,000. No, but you're still on your speaker, aren't you? No, I'm not.

Okay. Your phone just sucks. Okay. We'll try it again. I'm sorry. That's okay. We're still on our debt snowball. phone just sucks. Okay, we'll try it again. I'm sorry. That's okay. We're still on our debt snowball. We just started.

We paid off our first $300 of it. And I want to know from Christy if it's a good idea for me to invest and start my blog, which doesn't take too much money. But I just feel guilty, you know, starting that. How much is it going to cost? I'd say under $200. Let me ask you this, Megan. Why do you want to start the blog?

What do you want it to do for you? Well, I want it to be an outlet for me, but also make money at the same time. Okay. Because I feel bad that I only make less than my husband, and I want to contribute more to our income. How's the blog going to make you money? Well, I'm trying to read Christy's book on how to figure that out. I'll give you a quick summary here, Megan.

You can make money through blogs, but I will tell you, it is a very long on-ramp. The way that you make money through blogs would be through advertisers, sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and all of that is based on the views you have to your blog, to your site. So it takes quite a long time in many cases if you don't have a blog and don't have readers currently to build up those viewers, to build up those visits to where anyone wants to pay you anything. And even then, when you're starting out, it's minimal. Now, I don't mean to be discouraging, Megan.

I just think if you want to make money to contribute to your household, there are a lot of other ways to do that that could make you more money faster than a blog. A blog is one of the slowest ways that you would make money for your household. Now, I will tell you, I have a course. Dave and I were just talking about this. Business Idea Boot Camp. And this is where I walk you through how to find your best business idea. I want to send it to you.

Okay, Megan? I want you to take this course. It's a $100 course. I'm giving it to you totally free. Really take the course. And that's going to help you come up with your best business idea. And I guarantee you what you come up with

that's going to make you money faster will probably not be a blog. But it's still going to get you to your goals of doing something you love that contributes to your family. So if you stay on the line, Kelly will take care of you and get that to you. Yeah, very good. Very cool. It does. The blog is kind of, I mean, we've got blogs here, obviously.

You're a content machine. You put out blogs all the time. I've even started writing again a little bit, throwing out some blogs on my stuff. we have a dave ramsey blog but it's our content team doing most of it but i'm just writing some personal stuff for fun but even in that case where we've got millions and millions and millions of people it does not really monetize and i think the trouble dave is people see some people that have made it with the blog like the pioneer woman for example when she got in early, when blogging was popular, she had this readership that blew up.

She was able to monetize that, get book deals, get television shows, that type of thing. That's not only the norm, but it takes a very long time to do. She started blogging in, I think, 2003. This was a long time ago, 15 years ago, she's been building this. So if someone wants to do a blog, I think it's great. I always still encourage them, how would a blog support a different aspect of your business you got to think bigger than a blog if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it didn't make any sound right and that's your blog when you start that's right when we started this radio

show there were three people listening and one of them was my wife yeah exactly and now we're here 30 years later we're an overnight success right but um it these things take time it's not to say don't do them but you probably need to be working while you're doing that she said it's an outlet for her and that's valid right totally that's valid and if you got a good household income spend a couple hundred bucks on an outlet and something that you want to you know you want to start messing with this? You want to start laying those ideas down? Then that's fine. But I think getting this dialed in and starting the process is probably going to be, like you said, making money somewhere else while you're doing that.

Right. Rather than just sitting there looking at your blog and going, okay, one is now. Now I have two. Right. Now I have four. That's going to get discouraged. Totally. It takes a while. It does.

And I think it's really important for people as we're in January, and this is the new year, we're setting goals to make sure that your methods align with your goals. And I'll give you an example. I was hosting, I think I was actually hosting the business boutique version of the show here, and I was taking a call. This was a few months ago. And a woman said, I want to pay off my home in five years, and I want to do that by starting a blog. And I said, well, I think it's great to pay off your home in five years, and I think it

can be great to start a blog, but this one thing will not lead to that one thing. Starting a blog will not lead to that goal. So let's either chase that goal a different way, you know, and you do the blog and dabble in it as a hobby, but just make sure that your goals, your methods to get to your goals will actually get you there. Yeah, and it keeps you out of this extreme disappointment and or making financial decisions that turn into nightmares. Right. Because that's what you can slip into in those situations.

All right, up next is Samantha in West Virginia. Hi, Samantha. Your question for Christy Wright. Hi, Christy. So my question was I actually do a business, a small business, and it's kind of part-time. I've been in office administration now for the past three years, and I feel like I'm just kind of being stifled by it. And I really want to make my small business my full-time job,

and I'm wondering if there's any advice you could possibly give me as far as how to actually make that happen and if it would be a wise decision for me to do right now. Yeah, well, Samantha, if you want to do it, if you want to work on your business full-time and you want to be a full-time business owner where you write your own paycheck, call your own shots, set your own schedule, then I think you should.

I fully support that. That's what I do all day, every day. But I will tell you, I can give you a really quick answer to your question when the business can support you financially. So what that means is your job right now is to build up the revenue, build up the personal income from your side business so much that it can support you. Now, maybe right now you're making $60,000 a year, but you can live on 30. Well, you've just got to get the business to 30. And then when you're ready to do that, you're going to take a step into the business full time.

And it doesn't feel like a giant, terrifying leap. But you don't want to assume the money's going to be there if you work on it full-time. So for a season, it's going to feel like you're working two full-time jobs. Because you are. Because you are. That's exactly right. But you can do it. It's a season.

Very good stuff. Well done, you guys. That's good. That's good. Pull the boat close enough to the dock so that when you jump, you don't get wet. Get the income up on the side gig, the side hustle, to where when you leave the full time, it's a step, not a leap of faith. When you say leap of faith out there, people, what you're really saying is,

I'm stupid! This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Our scripture of the day, Ephesians 2.10, for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Donald McGannon said, leadership is an action, not a position. Christy Wright joins us this half hour, the author of the number one bestselling book, Business Boutique, and also the founder of the whole Business Boutique movement. They're in the middle of a free workshop. Two of the three free workshops, New Year, New Business, are done. The next one is tomorrow.

If you want to catch up and watch the first two at Official Christy Wright on Facebook, Official Christy Wright, W-R-I-G-H-T on Facebook, you can do that. And then tomorrow at noon, that's Wednesday for those of you catching this, at noon you can join her on Facebook and watch the one that you haven't yet seen. Fill in the registration form and you'll get all the downloadable goodies, including the workbook. So make sure you do all of that. And, Christy, the planner that we started selling back before the end of the year for 2019, the Business Boutique 2019 Go Planner, sold out on Amazon.

Yep. Have we got any left here? We have a few left, but I can't even get any more. I've been cut off. So I think we have a few more. We saw that we had around 100 or 200 a few days ago. How do you get cut off? I know.

I was like, I need one for gifts. They're like, well, we need to keep that to a minimum. So we just got a few days ago so how do you get cut off i know they're like i was like i need one for gifts they're like well we need to keep that to a minimum so we just got a few left wow i think we probably set that well i think they know somebody my goodness gracious yeah well so they're basically gone if you want one though there's probably 100 or 200 left at dave ramsey.com or business boutique.com yep they're going out the door they'll probably be gone by the end of this week but it's been really fun the response has been great it's got great reviews and the women are loving quite a few more than we thought we had to do a second order that's right had to do a reorder and they're showing me on social media how they're using it they're really writing down their goals and this year's going to be different for them because they were intentional and had a

tool to help them do it so i'm really excited about that and you can subscribe to christy writes business boutique podcast on itunes make sure you're doing that as well. All right, up next is going to be Dawn in Everdeen, South Carolina. Hey, Dawn, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Your question for Christy Wright. Hi, thank you. So I'm wondering, I am a single employee of my own business, my own cleaning business, and I'm wondering how to grow my business without having employees

but without having my employees just take over my clients, if that makes sense. So you mean you're scared of them taking the clients and leaving you? Right. Well, if I say, let's say I hire somebody, here's my client, they pay $35 an hour, but I pay you $20, what's stopping them from taking, or how do I deal without them taking my client for $35 an hour instead of an employee at $20? Well, nothing.

I mean, nothing's really stopping them from doing that. I'll tell you, though, it really comes down to building great relationships with your team, with the people that you're hiring, and the clients that you're working with, and having an open expectation and communicating on the front end. I'll tell you, we rent out our lake house, and we have a cleaning crew that comes in, and it's a very similar situation. My relationship is with the business. He has a person that comes and takes care and flips it for us for guests,

and my relationship is with him, and I pay him, and he pays his team members. So I think if you're clear on the front end, it can help eliminate some of that. Some people might tell you to get into contracts and guidelines, and you can do that, but it's a piece of paper at the end of the day. I would just work on really building trust and investing in your team members and clear communications on the front end to help avoid that. Because if you have great relationships, people don't really want to do it. Dave, what would you say?

Because that's tricky. I think you're hitting on exactly. I'll give you the three things to do, and they're what christy said already except i'll add one okay one is the your your brand differentiation is your the depth of your relationship with your customer to where when a former employee comes and goes well i'll clean the house cheaper they would go i would never leave dawn get out of my house you know and because they love you so much because you're so close to them and you do special things for them. And that's your that's your that's your contract is your level of service. Don't suck.

You know, and they won't want to get rid of you. OK, because you're you're so good at the relationship as well as the actual cleaning. It's not just a contract to do cleaning. The second thing is the type of person you hire and the quality of person you hire would never do that. That's right. And so, or almost never do that. I mean, I've been doing what I do a long time. I have a lot of former employees and very, very few of them because I've hired good people over the years.

I've tried to come back and steal stuff from us or steal customers from us. It's very, very unusual. Okay? And then the third thing was I would have a one-page employment agreement that says that if they were to try to attack your customers, try to take your customers, that you have the right to sue them and recoup damages and attorney's fees and discuss that with them on the front end as you're hiring them as a threat. Not so subtle.

Okay? You try to take my people later, I will sue your butt. Okay? You can be a little more kind and gentle than that, but I mean, I wouldn't actually say it that way, but I mean, I want to deliver that message to where they, if it ever pops into their little brain that they want to go do this, they go, oh, I signed a piece of paper that says I'm going to get sued.

And you might not be able to hold that up. You might not be able to. You might go all the way and do that, but they don't know that. And so we're making very clear that if you steal my clients, you're in trouble. I'm hiring a kind of person that would never do that anyway, and I've got the depth of relationship with my customer that never would allow it. You do those three things. You don't have to worry about it.

Okay. You'll be in good shape. Good job. Good job, Dawn. Hold on. We're going to send you a copy of Christy's book, Business Boutique, because I've got a feeling you're getting ready to go to the next level. That's awesome. Proud of you.

Good stuff. Ellen is with us. Ellen's in Baton Rouge. Hi, Ellen. How are you? Hi. How are you doing? Better than I deserve.

Your question for Christy. Yes. Hi, how are you doing? Better than I deserve. Your question for Christy. Yes, Christy, I'm almost 66. I have stage 3 breast cancer that I'm recovering from, and I'm trying to start a cooking business from my home to help cover expenses. And my idea is to cook Cajun food like gumbos, etouffees, and so forth. In fact, I just delivered my first seven samples to a car care center in my little town this afternoon at lunchtime. Way to go. That's awesome.

You made my mouth water. I want some. On its way. So anyway, I wanted to see what your thoughts were about that kind of an idea my grandfather was a chef and he taught us how to cook so it's good stuff uh it's way better than the local restaurants and it's um you know i'm just starting with my ideas and i wanted to see your thoughts on it and what your suggestion was for advertising and so forth since I'm very low-tech.

For sure. Well, first of all, Ellen, you're a fighter. Well done. I just love the energy in your voice of you going out there and getting after it. That is half the battle right there. I'm just so proud of your attitude and your perspective, and it sounds like an awesome idea. It sounds like an awesome business. I'm hungry, too, just hearing about it.

I'll tell you, one of the things that is very, the way that you said is low-tech, just easy form of advertising is certainly samples, word-of-mouth referrals, if you get those first few customers, getting them talking about your business for you. One of the things that will help you, though, Ellen, even though you have this great product and this great recipe, it seems like I'm not sure you're really clear on who it's for yet, who your ideal customer is or who your, you know, is it corporate events? Is it, you know, at craft fair shows?

Who are you selling to? Who are you cooking for? So I think one of the things that will really help you with that would be to identify your target customer. I'm going to have Kelly send you my book, Business Boutique. But the other thing that's going to help you. Oh, thank you so much. Absolutely. The other thing that's going to help you.

I was just fixing to order it. In fact, I think I called Dave and I'm waiting on the call back from their shop to get that in the Millionaire, Everyday Millionaire book. Well, we'll just send you both. How about that? We'll send you both, Ellen, for calling in. They'll get you kicked off on the right foot. But then I want you to do one other thing.

If you can learn a basic knowledge of social media, it is completely free advertising. And I have a course called Social Media Simplified where I really put the cookies on the bottom shelf. I take all the intimidation out of it and show you the basics of how you can have a presence on social media and use that to build your business and reach your goals. That's an almost $200 course and we'll send you that as well. So, Ellen, you're going to have everything you need.

You've got Everyday Millionaire. You've got Business Boutique. I'm Santa Claus today. I'm telling you. And you've got Social Media Simplified. Look at you go, girl. I love it. That'll get you started.

Well, that's fun. And here's the thing, too. If you just get you a big pot of that gumbo and you go door-to-door to whoever that ideal customer is and spoon it out with a business card, all of a sudden you're going to have business. I'm going to take orders. That's right. Yeah, my mouth's watering right now. I've got a feeling that sudden you're going to have business. I'm going to take orders. That's right. Yeah, my mouth's watering right now. I got a feeling that lady's etouffee is edible. I'm just saying.

Wow. Christy, thanks for dropping by. Thanks for having me. Business Boutique's Christy Wright. Be sure and check her out at Official Christy Wright on Facebook as well as businessboutique.com. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show and the books. 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. Hey, it's Blake, Chief Production Officer for the show, and here's a little tip for 2018. Go download our revamped Dave Ramsey Show app from the App Store. We're always listening to your feedback and adding new features to make it even better. Check it out.