The Ramsey Show - App - Sometimes You Have To Tell Your Business To Behave! (Hour 3)

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

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Welcome to the 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. This is an Entree Leadership Theme Hour. What that means is we're going to be talking to business owners and business leaders all across America. Questions about your business, how to operate it, issues, problems, even the mental health issue having to do with leadership.

It's a bit of a strain for the last 18 months for sure uh leaders have been through hell uh in american business and for that matter around the world and uh you know if you're facing that dr john deloney joins me this hour and um ramsey personality and of course a host of the dr john deloney show where we talk about mental health issues. And so, Dave, we went to Summit, which is the premier business leader event that we put on, right? Right. And by the way, the phone number here, 888-825-5225. If you've got a question about business, particularly in that zone, we're going to kind of concentrate on that zone, but we'll take your questions about anything.

888-825-5225. So, yeah, we go to Entrez Leadership Summit, which is one of the premier leadership events in the world. It is ours, but it is legitimately top of the top of the shelf. Right. And the best speakers, the best teachers in the world on leadership and on business show up there. And, of course, I spoke there. Of course, you spoke there this year. It was a pretty incredible event.

Yeah, it was really remarkable. And a lot of that, you know, is about strategy and how to run your business and how to use data and how to hire and fire those important business things. How do you operate this thing? And then who are you when you're running it? And man, I, I took a little bit different track and just want to talk about, man, behind a business owner is just a dad, right? Just a guy trying to run a business and raise his kids and be a community member. And, or I'm just, just a woman who's trying to keep her household duct taped together and then all of a sudden their community says you're not allowed to go to work anymore

and she's got nine employees. And I've been overwhelmed just with the response to, I'm trying to balance all this stuff. And man, I'm carrying around stuff that from when I was a kid, when somebody told me, hey, you're a loser. You're not going to work. It's not going to work for you.

And suddenly I look up and I got 17 employees. Well, I'm a business leader now. What's that supposed to mean? And how do I manage this and manage this and manage that? And then this guy comes in and says, he's quitting and she's leaving. And it's a lot for everybody. And you said it best.

It's been absolute hell. And one of the things my, I got a cohort of mental health professionals across the country that we interact with each other. We talk, and I'll call and ask them questions. Am I seeing stuff right? And we were talking that 2020 was really like taking a two-liter bottle and just shaking it up. And there was two things that were going to happen.

People were going to be – open that top slowly and let that air out. Or they were just going to pop the top on that sucker and here we are seven months later after 2021 is kicked off and everybody's out of gas they got nothing left man and then we are not even done with the year yet right yeah we're just watching people fall apart yeah the um fact that we're all human beings and we all carry our stripes, we all carry our scars. As you talked about in that talk, you know, every time you have trauma, it's anything, little trauma is a pebble all the way up to major trauma is a brick in your life. And if you don't unpack your backpack and you carry all those bricks and traumas around. Oh, and then, by the way, just go ahead and have a 2020. Right.

And, yeah, people are just on their knees. Even in 2018, you still got employee nonsense. I mean, you still had all that, but somehow you could function through all that. But you were on your last nickel of energy, your tank you're using up. But then, let's just go ahead and put another weight on it. Right. And try to shut the whole freaking thing down. So we talk about this on this Ramsey show, and you've just done like a shapeshifter event over the last 25 years

talking to people about the margin in their life financially. If you are leveraged out, the other end of that fulcrum comes due someday, right? And the same thing works relationally, and the same thing works relationally and the same thing works with your body right you got no margin that's right it's just it's it's sandpaper on sandpaper that's right man bone on bone yeah and it uh it's just gonna grind and and so yeah if you're a leader uh that is honest with yourself including me um that that's where it's been this year yeah it's like um you know i was doing pretty good leading uh but then it put another thousand pounds on your back and you look at this and you go i don't know what the hell i'm doing

and then you know what it's and it's the craziest thing dave because then the voice of that coach comes back from 20 years ago and says i told you so or that employee that left 11 years ago and wrote that letter to you you go they say and you're this kind of person you go you are evil after all see now it's proven right and you start finding proof of your own hurts everywhere you look right and so yeah give us call, 888-825-5225. Man, we'd love to talk to you. 888-825-5225. Steve is with us in Des Moines.

Hey, Steve, welcome to an Entree Leadership Theme Hour. What's up? Hey, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's going on? So my situation is I'm a 22-year-old realtor, and I've been in the business for about a year and a half now. And through the start of my new career,

I have been experiencing some new levels of stress that I just haven't experienced before. And I don't know how to deal with this stress, and it's starting to take some negative physical effects on my body. Yeah. Usually does. Yeah. The body's a remarkable ledger book.

It reminds you that you're overdue in some areas. So I just started laughing when you said you started your business as a realtor a year and a half ago. I'm trying to think of an analogy. That's like saying I got into aviation business and they put you on the rocket to Mars as your first trip, right? So how's it been, man? You know, it's a pretty brutal business to get in at the time that I did. The market is just full of realtors in my area. So it's pretty difficult to penetrate, but things have really been picking up for me at the start of quarter two of this year. But before that, paychecks were really few and far between.

What's going on with your body? When you say, I'm experiencing stress, my body's starting to pay the price for me. What does that mean? So I've been losing sleep, losing appetite, and losing weight. I have trouble breathing at times, and I've experienced some digestive issues as well. So what's that all mean? I'm smiling because, I mean, I don't know about you, Dave. I've been there too.

Like, what is your body trying to tell you, my man? um well i think i'm i think it's telling me that i'm put in some positions that i've never dealt with before but i'm i i i have to i feel like i just have to fail in order to figure it out i'm scared to fail and um hey let's do this steve hang on and we're gonna hang on we'll talk to you a little bit more after this break this commercial's bearing down on us and great question to pay our bills around here because we're debt free and all you know so this is the ramsey show Imagine a world where people never have to worry about money ever again. At Ramsey Solutions, our mission is to teach people how to get out of debt and build lasting wealth. And if that means we have to take on the toxic money culture that says you need debt to get ahead, then we're okay with that. We've seen millions of lives changed, and front-end technologies.

Or if you're a UX designer or an SEO and content marketing specialist, we'd love to talk with you. Together, we will disrupt the toxic money culture in America. Find out about all the available jobs by texting careers to 33789. Text careers to 33789 to find out about all our open opportunities. it's an entree leadership theme hour as we talk about business small business and leadership and one of the things we're talking about is the mental health aspects of leadership the things that we all deal with and we're talking with steve in montana or no i'm sorry in des moines rather and uh going into the break uh he was describing to us he's a new real estate agent, and the stress associated with that has started showing up in his body.

He's losing weight, digestive issues. Can't sleep. Can't sleep, those kinds of things. Is that a fair summary of what you told us so far, Steve? Yep, that's correct. So, man, what's stressing you out? What about the job is stressing you out? Yeah, so I've identified about three things.

The first one is that I have a serious desire to move out of my parents' house, but I feel like I'm not generating enough income to make that possible. The second one is that I can't relax in social settings because I'm too worried about my work, and I feel that I'm nervous that a client's going to call me and I'm not present at the dinner table or with a friend. And lastly, I'm still learning everything that it is to be the best realtor I can be, but I've incurred a lot of failures recently

and I replay those failures in my head a lot. How old are you? I take them very personally. 22. When you say you my head a lot. How old are you? I take them very personally. 22. When you say you've experienced a lot of failures, what do you mean? Well, I think I probably blow it out of proportion and I make it more than what it is, but I guess I think I said the wrong thing in front of a client

and now they don't trust me or i uh said the wrong thing and now they're not going to be they're not going to want to work with me anymore and um so i've had that happen before but i think i'm blowing it up a little bit yeah no you probably did it yeah you screwed up but it's not it's not the end of time right yeah you're not gonna die not going to die from it. But, I mean, I got my real estate license when I was turned 18. And I can tell you some serious butt stories of some of the stupid crap I said and lost deals between the time I was 18 and the time I was 24. Or, Steve, the first time I did radio was on this show. And you want to know about saying the wrong thing and feeling the radiant heat from Dave Ramsey next to you.

I'm just kidding. It was love heat. You bless your little heart. So, hey, Steve, here's the thing. You are in 100% fight or flight. And when you do that, your brain has one detective mechanism. Where's the threat? And it begins to identify everything as a threat.

And you can't sit down, you can't sit still, you can't enjoy anything, and then your body won't let you sleep because that's time that somebody could be sneaking up on you. It just starts to loop on you real, real quick, right? So a couple of things you identified here, you're not making enough money, man, right? You're running and running and running

and you're not making enough money and then when you finally get around somebody you overdo it because you're so tightly wound up and the one thing that's going to help you be well and whole which is hanging out with friends and laughing and putting the business down you're not letting yourself do yeah it's like it's like you you couldn't get a date couldn't get a date you finally got one and you were so excited you screwed the date up. Right. And then when you're surrounded by potential future dates, you're just staring at your phone hoping other dates call, and you miss the whole thing, right? So I agree.

There's two things pop into my head, and see if this matches what you're saying, John. One is there's a reality to your situation. You are 22 years old, and you live with your parents, and you're trying to convince someone to do a real estate deal. Okay? Yeah. Neither one of those things are evil, being living with your parents or being 22 years old,

or being 22 years old and living with your parents. Any one of those three possible BICs are not evil. My point is that if you're competing with someone who's got exactly the same knowledge and experience in real estate that you have, but they're 52, you're going to lose. Because the guy's going to, I don't mean this mean or anything, but the guy buying the house is going to look and go, I'm not going with the kid. I'm going with the old dog. And that's assuming everything's equal.

Now, if you're better, you can whip the 52-year-old's butt and get the deal, right? But you've got to be better to do that. But you are starting, because you're young, in a very expensive commodity business. You're starting at a deficit. You are starting with an uphill climb. That's a reality. And that's okay. I told you I got my license when I turned 18.

And I sucked. And I still made some sales in spite of that. And I worked my way all the way through college selling real estate, selling residential real estate. So when I was your age, I was still selling real estate and coming out of college. So I'm not saying you can't do it, but having been there, I mean, it's hard for you to imagine me being 22, but, I mean, just magnum PI, big mustache, disco suit,

because it was the only suit I had. And so John Travolta meets Magnum PI, sells real estate at 19 years old, knocking on your front door to list your house. I mean, and yet I still talk some people into it. That's right. So can it be done? Yes, it can be done. But from personal experience, it's a climb.

Now, that's thing one. Then thing two is the reason I get in that situation loads of anxiety is everything I turn, I become a drama queen, I turn everything into life or death because I don't have good perspective because I think that one deal, oh, God, I messed up that one thing, and I turn it into a big mountain instead of a molehill and if you pan back and you go in the scope of life this next 18 months is probably not going to define me yeah and that that allows you to chill a little bit so but i'm with john if you were making three hundred thousand dollars a year you wouldn't have called us right exactly right so

this is a stress brought on by not succeeding enough to make an income. You probably need a secondary career to get some money coming in. Yeah, and that's one of the cornerstones, man, when someone is completely frazzled out like you, and, man, I've been there. I've been there, is you've got to be real honest with yourself. It's a great call, Steve. Listen, I think you're a whole lot better than you keep telling yourself you are. But you are also in an uphill climb.

That's a reality. First season. That's a fact. So, hey, a couple quick things. Take care of your body. Make sure you're exercising and eating right, man, and sleeping. Do what you got to do. If you're hanging out with your friends, turn off your stinking phone.

Lose a text message if you're going to spend a couple hours with folks. And I know that sounds crazy. You've got to. Like Dave said, get a mentor. Get somebody who's been doing this for a while that will go to coffee. You can buy them coffee. And it's just going to give you some perspective. And the final thing here, talk to yourself

kindly. Be graceful with yourself, man. The last thing Steve needs is Steve beating up Steve. Peter is in Olympia, Washington. Hey, Peter, welcome to an Entree Leadership Theme Hour. How can we help? Hey, thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate that a lot. Sure.

Hey, Dave, I have a question here. I run a small, medium-sized company. I started this company when I was 18 years old. Now, seven years later, we're running, we're going strong. I, you know, I ran into you about a year ago, but thankfully I never did have any debt with my business. So, debt, so to speak, right? I use a credit, I use credit cards for my employees. Um, but you know, of course I pay the balance off every, every month. Um, and I'm not so concerned about the credit card points because I believe what you said, uh, material supplies at different vendors,

uh, home Depot supplies. Um, you know, you know, we. So what's your question? My question is how do I run my business for my employees without giving them credit cards? Mine have debit cards. But what about just pulling out of your checking account, you know? Well, that's what it does. If you're going to pay it off at the end of the month anyway, you have the money, right? Yeah, they would have the money. No, you would.

I mean, if you're going to pay off the credit card that your employee is using at the end of the month, that means you already have the money, right? Correct. Then just use a debit card and let it come out of your checking account because you've already got the money. Yeah, but what about the security side of it? You know, let's just say they go off and play for some dumb reason. If they go off and do that with a credit card, it's your credit card. You're liable even if they ripped you off.

The credit card company doesn't go, oh, your employees charged something they shouldn't have charged. We won't hold that against you. You still have to pay the freaking bill. And if you've got somebody you don't trust. Yeah, if you've got somebody you don't trust to run a credit card, they don't need to be carrying a debit card. If they don't trust them to carry a debit card, they don't need to be running a credit card.

And they shouldn't be working for you. It's the exact same thing. It's the exact same thing. A debit card has the same fraud protection that a credit card has. It's an Entree Leadership Theme Hour this day, this hour. Dr. John Deloney is my co-host as we talk to business owners, business leaders from across America with all kinds of questions about their business. Certainly the mental health aspect of leadership is in play today because we have the doctor in the house. If you're a business owner, you know problems and issues pop up all the time sometimes there's an easy solution

but a lot of times you don't have the answer and um if you have all the answers that means you don't have the answer that should be a t-shirt man that was deep maybe you've got an employee who isn't uh working out maybe your top client decided not to renew. Maybe you're struggling to find the right person to hire. Maybe you're burned up. Maybe the grind's getting you. I get it. Running a business is hard.

Leadership's even harder. But you don't have to do it alone. That's why we created the Entree Leadership Advisory Groups. leadership advisory groups. When you join, you'll get a coach and a group of like-minded business owners to help you navigate the challenges of running a business. Stop doing business alone. We are meant for community. Dr. D says that all the time. And get answers that you need to lead with confidence. Get plugged into an Entree Leadership Advisory Group. To apply for a group, text the phrase, Get Advice, one word, no spaces, Get Advice to 44222.

Text Get Advice to 44222. Allison is in Phoenix. Hey, Allison, welcome to an Entree Leadership Theme Hour. What's up in your world? Hi, thanks for having me. Sure, what's up? Elizabeth and I, we are blessed with the opportunity to do Summit. Okay, you're breaking up.

You're going to have to get where your phone's working. Try one more time. Allison? All right, I'll come back to her. Try one more time. Allison. All right, I'll come back to her. Let's go to Leah in Cleveland, Ohio. Hi, Leah. What's up? Hey, John and Dave.

It's such a pleasure to talk to both of you. You too. What's up? So my question is, so I'm a small business owner, and we've been in business for, it'll be five years in August. And COVID kind of, you know, made us put a ton of our business like online, kind of go through all of every, make sure everything's really profitable. So a year later, we're kind of experiencing this like really crazy period of growth where we're growing and we're trying to catch up with hiring and putting processes in place. My question is, as a business leader that was already kind of exhausted before COVID and then COVID happened, I feel like it's hard for me to kind of enjoy our success we're in right now because I am just mentally and physically absolutely

exhausted all the time. And it seems like the seasons kind of, even if they change from you're stressed out about not having money to stressed out about not having enough people, it's just this constant cycle of exhaustion. And I guess I'm just looking for tips on how to keep the perseverance going. That's a great question. Dave, I've got some academic answers to that. You've experienced this. I'll follow.

I think a couple of things happen when you have an explosion of growth. Two things. Number one, think of this as your harvest season. For whatever reason, the last five years, not for whatever reason,

I know why. The last five years, y'all set yourself up in a position to be successful. The integrity of your business, the excellence in your work, all those reputation things led to this moment when there was some sort of crisis and it paid off. So in many ways, your fields grew a lot more. You planted and all of a sudden you got two plants per seed, right? And so there's a part of this where this isn't the moment to celebrate success.

This is the moment to get out there and work the fields as hard as you can, right? I always think of exhaustion differently than fatigue. Fatigue, tired, is physical. Exhaustion is often philosophical, it's existential. It's that why. And what I find with business owners and small business owners and even big business owners is you go from a business of six of us and we are ragtag and this is who we are

and we're scraping by and everybody's pulling their weight and then all of a sudden you look up and there's 15 of you and you're getting a little more of a machine going. And then you have to ask yourself, A, is this what I want?

This is cool. It's everything we thought, but it's just a different company now. And so you've got to stop and acknowledge it, and you may have to put new systems in place. You may have to ask yourself a hard question. Do we want to keep taking more clients? Is this as big as we want to be? Or if not, we're going to have to get some wisdom.

Like Dave just read that we're going to have to get some coaching like Dave just read that we have to get some coaching and help us level up. But it becomes a philosophical question. Is this what we want to be doing because this is different than what we were? Even though we're still plumbing, still serving customers, still doing that, we're doing it more of a corporate level. We're doing it a little bit bigger. We're doing it across the board. We're busier.

We're later. We're missing games now. Do we want this new life? At some point, you've got to stop the flow go go on a retreat go with your top leadership team go with your husband whatever that looks like and say whoo we used to be and now we are let's talk about that and there's just something about taking a breath and acknowledging it and uh the word i always use is grief and sometimes we think grief is what you do when somebody dies or somebody gets fired.

Sometimes you just have to grieve the fact that we used to be a small, nimble gang of seven of us. And now we're a corporation of 50 or a team of 100. And it's just different. You grieve it. That's just acknowledging that what was is no more. And now we're going to lean into what is. And then you got to go do what the new thing is, right? Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. And I think that's where it's like the pressure of we're not fighting for our lives anymore in a sense but it's like is this what we want and i think that's like perfectly states it and it's good but then you feel bad about feeling bad about it no let me tell you where exhaustion comes from in this case because i've been there like eight different times over 30 years. It comes from the business is running you instead of you're running it.

Yeah. Who owns this? Yeah. That's a question. Who owns it? You? I do, yeah. You and your husband.

You own it. Yes. Then freaking tell it what to do. Yeah. It's not telling you what to do anymore. Stop it. Yes. Then freaking tell it what to do. Yeah. It's not telling you what to do anymore. Stop it. You've got to tell it what to do. You've got to tell your business to freaking behave.

You're killing me here. This is like a misbehaving kid. You're wearing me out. I was putting up grandbabies to bed the other night, and they were jumping around. And I'm like, girls, you're all going to have to go to bed. Girls, you're all going to have to go to bed. Girls, you're going to have to go to bed. And one of them says, Papa Dave's getting frustrated.

And when my mama gets frustrated, it's not good. Amen. You know, and that's what it is, isn't it? It's the same thing. This business is jumping around on the bed, and you told it six times to bathe, and you told it what to do. And now you're going to have to manhandle this business, womanhandle this business, and wrestle it to the ground and make it do what you want it to do. You own it. You grew it.

It was grown for you. It's for your benefit and the benefit of your customers. And so around here, that translates like when I quit liking, when I quit enjoying doing something we do here because I do so much of it, I get exhausted at it. It's something I formerly liked doing, but we just wore Dave out with it. I finally look up and go, you stupid fool. You own the business.

Just look at these people and say, I'm not doing that anymore. And so I stopped doing things I don't like doing and so they all pray i continue to like the thing that they're working on right well but then there's people like me who benefit from that right yeah you better hope i love your podcast you know so that's right but you know it's all it's it's got we're joking around but that's when I get exhausted, when the stupid thing starts running me instead of me running it, and I just have to throw my shoulders back and go, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. So what's something right now? That means you're going to raise your prices and lower your volume.

I can run a bunch of your customers off by doubling your prices, and suddenly you'll be peaceful and profitable. Yeah. And I think that's where the, like, it's a little scarcity mindset of, like, oh, if we raise our prices, we won't have as many customers. But you reach a point that I'd rather do that than feel like I feel right now. Right. Absolutely.

And I'm okay if, you know, and actually there's probably about 10% of those customers are taking up about 90% of your time anyway because they're freaking high maintenance. Oh, I just read your mail. Okay. Anytime you think the words, but I have to go, let me respond to this, or they need me to stop and check in with your husband and say, this is what we want to be doing.

Yeah. It's just you need to run this business. It's running you. I think a step away for a weekend with your husband. Reach over and smack it on the bottom. Tell it to behave. This, that was like a paddling. I was going to say, I said, talk to your husband, and you said, reach over and paddle it.

I was just going to let that hang there for a minute. Our scripture today, Proverbs 17, 17. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance. Benjamin Franklin said, where liberty dwells, there is my country. So here's the deal. We have, for those of you on Entree Leadership fans out there, we have a free Facebook group for you to join if you want to. And you can bounce some ideas around there. And the name of it is Entree Leadership Tribe. Entree Leadership Tribe on Facebook.

And so it's a free Facebook group that is unique to the Entree Leadership group. And you can get in there and bounce ideas around. And then that will lead you into one of the advisory groups probably as well. And that's the next step after that, a little more formal than just being in a Facebook group bouncing ideas around. But we're going to be there to help you either way. So check it out. Free Facebook group, Entree Leadership Tribe.

Private Facebook just for you folks that are doing business out there and want to share in our discussions on that. Allison's in Phoenix. I think we got our phone straightened out. What's up, Allison? Hi. So my husband and I, we were able to go to Summit about a month ago, which was amazing.

And we came back with so many things that we wanted to add to our business and we've made a lot of changes. But the problem is I'm still having a hard time separating work and home just because our situation is a little unique. What makes it unique? So I started my business a year ago in March of 2020, which probably the worst time to start a business maybe ever. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Your timing sucks. Yeah. Two weeks before the lockdown. Oh my gosh. So I, I didn't think it was going all that well until a couple months ago, and it's really started to pick up to the point that I'm passing it off to my husband, and I actually have another startup that I want to put all my time and energy to.

But I'm training my husband and passing it all off to him, and I'm still running business. Okay, so what is the unique situation and what's the problem um just that i am working throughout the day we're both working at home and we have basically three businesses um that we're running all out of our house and so we work during the day and then come home and work during the night um which we're totally fine doing for a while, but at a certain point, we want to have a normal life, have kids, all that, and it just is taking over our life. Yeah, it's one of those things that you say,

how do you lose weight? And you say diet and exercise. It's simple, but there's a trillion-dollar industry, right? This is a very simple boundaries issue, and it's going to be very complex for you to untangle it. It's going to take a lot of discipline and a couple of months of learning and practicing how to do this. Um, I'll give him credit, man, not just to toot his own horn, but Dave and his family, this is a family business. Um, they work together and I've seen them in meetings and then I've seen them hanging out at the house.

Um, they do it better than anybody I've ever seen, but it's just about boundaries. This is when you and your husband get very specific about when we are working and when we are being romantic, when we are trying to solve business issues, and then we take that hat off, and then we get into building our marriage and relationships. Otherwise, I'm telling you right now, I've seen it. It will drown your relationship completely, pull you underwater, and you won't be able to get back up. Do you have a physical office in the house?

No, we have a one-bedroom apartment, so the whole place is kind of the office and the everything. Then you've got to flip that around. So the whole place is kind of the office and the everything. Okay. Then you've got to flip that around. Yeah. Meaning you've got to have your romantic, you've got to make proximity space, you've got to go somewhere. You need to take one corner of the living room and set a desk over there or two desks facing each other over there,

and then the other corner has a television or whatever, and you don't have your business paperwork spread over the coffee table in front of the couch in front of the television and on the kitchen table while you're trying to eat. You need some physical boundaries because that will cue your mind, oh, I just stepped out of the office, oh, I just stepped into the office. And then you set each other up accountable and you say, we're going to work late on Tuesday night and Thursday night,

and Monday night is off limits, and Wednesday night we go on date night. And the only time we violate that is if we book a really lucrative appointment or something across one of those, and then we switch a night, meaning that that night we were going to work late becomes the date night. And so you just set yourself up on a rigid schedule to reprogram your brain and try to create some physical space to do that as well. Because you've got to have some visual cues,

and one of the visual cues is a clock telling you what time it is it's time to stop it's time to change from business executive to wife change from marketing executive to husband uh it's time to change from production to not working and being at home. And that for sure means set any business screens like email and so forth aside. Screens will screw up your evening more faster than anything else will, and they'll violate those boundaries. It may be something as simple as somebody calls the workday over, and you all go take a 20-minute walk alone. Different directions.

You come back to the house and now we're married yeah we're not co-workers that's our drive home we went for a walk and now now we're to a podcast and now that i'm home funny now that i'm home i'm dad now that i'm home i'm husband i'm wife um now that i'm home i'm not the other thing and that's what john's talking about that our family has worked so hard on because when we work together all day long on something we love yeah with people we love uh stopping is very hard and really it's like you know is there such a thing as too much ice cream well no actually but work skills right being really good at my job here sometimes makes those skills don't work when i'm trying to be a dad they're different skill sets right yeah it's a different sword yeah yeah you need to take your sword off when you get home put it above the

mantle yeah but take your boxing gloves off yeah and uh the one you use at work doesn't work on your family that's right and so take it off and just old-fashioned set above the mantle you know put the put the musket we've been out hunting bear all day let's put the musket above the mantle right and uh you don't you don't turn that on your three-year-old that's exactly you know it's a different set of tools and um so yeah that's it's a beautiful question alice and i love where you are too the beautiful thing is is that you've got the things working um you two of you in a one-bedroom apartment starting yet another business bothers me it sounds like you like maybe you should focus a little bit instead of being spread so thin, but that's a different question and a different answer.

So it might play into this because you might be trying to do too much with too little. There's only so many hours in the day, as they say, but that's a way of looking at this. One of the things we did with, I recommended to folks who were homeschooling their kids who were getting those boundaries was something as simple as put a hat on when you're a teacher and when mommy or daddy's wearing the hat they are mr so-and-so or they are teacher and when that hat's off then we're mommy right then we're daddy again and it gives those kids a physical cue yeah like oh i can go hug and be silly versus I got to get that assignment done, right? Yeah, I don't have to take my mom seriously, but I better take my teacher seriously. Yeah, that kind of thing.

Mom will let me get away with this, but the teacher never would. But it's a visual cue. I mean, even all the way back to when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and i was in college they um you know they said set your desk aside in an area inside the you're living you know where you're going to live the home you're living in set a desk aside and don't do anything at that desk except study so when you sit down at that desk your brain says okay time, time to study. And the same goes for your bedroom, right? Yeah. Don't do work in bed. Don't, you know, watch crazy movies. Like, the bed is for just a couple things, man, and not for work and other things because it's all about the physical.

Spread your receivables all over the bed. That's a bad idea. That's right. It's not. It's just you get it. Yeah, you're exactly right. There's something about our minds that is that simple. And it's helpful to just give us track, give ourselves tracks to run in.

Intentionality is the key there. Good show, John. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, my co-host today. That puts this hour, this Entree Leadership Theme Hour in 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 Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Ramsey Show.

If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit theramseyshow.com and register. We would love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story.