Transcript for:
Leadership and Business Principles

The tariffs are scaring the crap out of the stock market and the stock market's down. I was explaining to her how someday I'm going to be a millionaire. And we went across a railroad track and muffler fell off my car. By the time I was 26, we had about $4 million of real estate and a little over a million dollar net worth. And by 26, you had $4 million in real estate. Made 250k that year. So by the time I'm 28, I'm bankrupt. Made 250k one year and the next year I made 6,000. When I was doing really good is when I met God. I met him on the way up, but got to know him on the way down. It's harder to get on with us than it is the CIA or the FBI. I don't own the business. God owns it. Dave Ramsey, welcome to the show. I'm so honored to be here. Thank you, my friend. My pleasure. Well, I'm honored to have you and been trying to make this happen for quite some time and it's just uh you know, it's awesome to have you here. We've got a lot to talk about. ridiculous. It was so much trouble cuz I'm just right there. I know. I know. You're right. Literally right down the street. Stupid schedules, yours and mine. But yeah, here we are. Here we are. But um you know, I just I don't even know where to put this in the interview. So I'm just You've been a mentor from of mine since before way before we ever met. And uh I was doing a I was doing a contract antipiriracy stuff off the coast of Yemen. and my dad had had given me your book and it wanted me to read it and I I kind of skimmed through it and I was like, I get it. Get out of debt. Whatever. I don't need to read this stuff. But I didn't have anything to do on that damn ship other than uh possibly shoot some pirates. And uh so I dug in and I'm not I'm not a big reader. I just don't enjoy it. And I read your book from front to back in about a day and a half. And uh I was just glued to it. Totally changed changed my life. Wow. And um I was making pretty good money back then contracting, but I was spending it all on [ __ ] I bought like a $30,000 chopper and all kinds of BMW, all kinds of [ __ ] that I didn't need. And I read that book on that little deployment. It was about 3 weeks long. came back home, sold everything I had, paid all my debt off. No way. Yep. And I've lived like that. Paid my house off, sold everything, all the [ __ ] that I didn't need that I had loans on and and um and had, you know, I guess equity and some of it. And uh so what the switch flipped, you just you realize it's not giving you joy. It's not the the stress of the debt didn't offset the fun of the Exactly. And then I mean I was hesitant but I cuz I really liked my motorcycle and I really liked my BMW at the time and but the peace and the freedom that came from getting rid of my mortgage payment, my credit card debt and all the other [ __ ] car payments, it just that was [ __ ] that was probably 15 16 years ago and I've just lived like that ever since. Wow. And uh and even today, you know, I'm I'm debtree. I build my business. Never took on debt. Only only grew as much as what I could afford at the time. And um and uh and I mean, now we're building, you know, we went from the attic of my house to this. Now we're building a 7,000 ft studio out in the woods. And all of it is there is zero debt. And uh so I just want to say thank you. Well, thank you. That's a great story. I didn't know that part. Yeah, we've been friends for a while. I never heard that part. That's Well, and then uh you know, you continue to be a mentor of mine and we you know, we had a discussion at your house what a couple months ago and I was looking for a CEO and wanted to get your advice on that and you told me don't get a CEO. You have to be the CEO and uh I think you mentioned you're you're probably looking more for a COO and uh you just met Eric downstairs. this is uh the beginning of his third week. So I wound up hiring a COO. Okay. And uh so I just want you to know that you know everything you say, you know, I I take it in and uh and I know a lot of people do and and so this you know what I've built here is, you know, somewhat of a product of your mentorship. Wow. So I didn't even know. Wow, that's very cool. Well, now you know. That's neat. Now you know. But um but yeah, so everybody everybody starts with an introduction here. So where do we go? Dave Ramsey, you're a legend in the personal finance world who's helped millions climb out of debt and take control of their money. You're the host of the Dave of the Ramsay Show, a nationally syndicated radio program that's been teaching money management for over 30 years. You're an eighttime best-selling author, including Total Money Makeover, the book that changed my life. Your newest book, Build a Business You Love, is set to release on April 15th, tax day. Is that an accident? Who knows? Seemed like it was a good day. I don't know. You're the founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions, a company that that's all about giving people hope through practical, nononsense, financial advice. You were introduced into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2015. You've been a husband to Sharon for the last 43 years. You raised three children together. And most importantly, out of everything I mentioned, you are a Christian. Oh, thank you. And I'm sure I'm missing a ton there, but but 43 years. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. So, let's kick it off. What's What's the secret to a successful to a successful marriage? Well, well, the the the joke that I always use, which is accurate, I tell her if she leaves, I'm going with her. So, and then she just giggles. But the uh you know, the truth is uh I met God about 2 years after we were married. And um she probably wouldn't we still wouldn't be married if I hadn't because the guy that she married was a twerp. Um he's a hellraising beer drinking hillbilly with a big temper. And um wasn't much of a man much less much of a husband, but he's a good salesman cuz I talked her into marrying me. But um but thank God she's not still married to the same guy that his life has been transformed by Christ. And so um every year a little better. Uh, every year a little less dumb, every year a little whatever. It's not no nothing perfect obviously, but um we've both grown um in our faith and in our relationship steadily over those years and went through hell losing everything in our early days and um you know that that was um a defining moment uh in relationship and everything else. But um yeah, I'm not the same dad I was when I started. I'm not the same husband I was when I started. I'm not the same man I was. I'm not the same leader I was when I started. Thank goodness, you know, good lord, who wouldn't want to just sit in the same poop all time and not change anything, right? I mean, you got to you got to change. You got to get better. And um the thing that has impacted that is just you know uh is you know trying to figure out h how to do those things. And the the instruction manual I used was the Bible. So cuz I didn't know anything else. So um but I didn't I was pretty much a wild animal really. Yeah. I can't see that with you. Well it's a long time ago. But uh well so you didn't grow up you didn't grow up no going to church Christianity none of that none no it's in my heritage my great-grandfather was a circuit riding preacher and this kind of stuff but got his old Bible from the 1800s that's pretty cool keepsake but um and uh uh but my parents were just you know uh they weren't particularly angry about it or anything. we just didn't go. And uh the people we ran around with weren't church people necessarily or Christians of any kind. Uh if you asked them, they would have said they were. Mhm. But but I mean, we weren't, you know, I don't remember. My grandmother when I was like nine, they were in church. Uh she paid me uh $10 to memorize the Lord's Prayer. And that's the closest I've ever came to, you know, and if we went to her house, we went to church. Wow. But hated it. Didn't want to go. I mean, little kids getting all dressed up and not being able to squirm and yell and whatever and miserable and uh but that was 10 times in my life maybe. But no, I didn't know anything. I was just a character. Where did you grow up? Uh just over the tracks over here in Antioch. Antioch, Tennessee. Antioch, Tennessee. Yeah. What were you into? What was it like growing up? Uh it was uh it was uh nowadays it's a very international community. Um but in those days it was just suburbanites and uh just redneck kids. I mean we were just hillbillies and all most of our parents were had grown up on the farm and had moved to town to do take a job or something and so they bought all these little you know nice little suburban homes and it was a little suburbia. Leave it to Beaver and um so uh but I mean this is a neighborhood where it's uh blue collar maybe some white collar but um I mean it's a different world long time ago you know but a neighborhood where little boys got in fights and uh big boys got in fights and it wasn't it wasn't wasn't like we have anything today you wouldn't you and him I I can't think of one of my grandkids being in that situation today at all. But it was a um it wasn't uh horrible, but it just tough just tough neighborhood, you know. What did your parents do? A real estate business. The real estate business. Owned a residential real estate company there in the Harding Mall area. And um so I got my real estate license 3 weeks after I turned 18. That's what I was going to do. I was going to be a big real estate guy. Did they were they was were they successful realtors? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they were in it for many, many years. Uh, they did finally close it in one of the downturns, but and went on to other stuff, but I guess they were in it for probably 10 or 15 years. Most of my, you know, growing up years, that's what they did. And um so that's that was the good news because they they're very entrepreneurial and um taught us you know we took us to sales conferences and so we were you know I got to I'm sitting in conference 12 years old listening to Zig Ziggler you know and uh you know talking about attitude and I'm like yeah okay um but I learned to sell early and uh that's that's I was gripping a salesman's household. So there's a lot of wonderful qualities come out of that. And and also you get grit, you know, out of a situation like that. You don't, you know, you learn how to deal with a bully. You learn how to deal with um not back down on everything that comes at you. And Mhm. Um so it's a little little Yeah, I think that's uh some good lessons that seems like we're starting to lose these days. Yeah. I mean, you can you can you can learn them without having to necessarily be in that environment, but yeah, it's it's something that moms and dads, we have to be really intentional with our kids to let them fail, let them get a bump, let them uh develop some grit, some character, some courage. Um, you know, how do you handle a high intensity conflict situation? You know, and uh not something like you've done. I don't mean that, but I mean just in, you know, just in business, if you just got somebody that's going to bow up, what are you going to do? You know, you're just going to walk away every time. Um, no, sometimes walking away is a good idea, but sometimes metaphorically busting them in the nose is a real good idea, too. Interesting. How I mean so with you growing up like that and then you've built like this massive business how did you teach your kids grit courage stick with it stand up what you believe in? Well totally different environment. Yeah it is. And but you know we just again we we in our house we were doing it through the lens of scripture through the lens of the okay you know the perseverance matters you know uh rejoice in your suffering because suffering produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope and and so perseverance is means you're engaged in something that is uncomfortable and there's friction oriented and so put put them in some situations like that and so uh not not I mean not not with anger or not anything like that. But it's like don't helicopter them out of every little thing. Let them let them flop around in it a little bit. And uh and then talk about, okay, what would Christ do? How do we handle this? What's the tough aspect of this? What's this compassionate aspect of this? And you know, what did you learn? And what was God talking to you about while you were sitting there in that in that thing? And you know, you're dealing with this teacher that's a jerk. You're dealing with a situation, you know, a social situation or whatever is your teenager, all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, we just um walk through all that. As far as working around the business and stuff, anytime we're doing anything, I'm I'm a uh one of the things we grew up with too was hard work ethic. I mean, you just work. When in doubt, just go to work. Shut up. Just go go leave the cave, kill something, drag it home. I mean, something needs to move. And so, we taught them that. And if you're going to work around Ramsay and you're a 12year-old working the book table or shipping department or whatever, uh you got to work twice as hard, three times as hard as everybody else and you got to be three times as cheerful as everybody else and kind as everybody else and strong as everybody else because otherwise you're not going to be respected. They're going to assume you're a wussy little boss's kid that's worthless. And so um our kids, it was not it was like they were coaches kids. It was tough. We were tough on them around the business. And so, you know, my middle middle daughter Rachel was working the book table and one of the events and um one of my guys that was one of my leaders looked over and saw her goofing off looking on her phone and they're like, "You you don't do that here." And he corrected her, you know, and uh she's like, she tells that story and and that's good. That's exactly the environment we wanted to put them in. So, um, you know, those things, uh, uh, are the the building blocks of of having a high quality life. So, you got to put them in there. It's a big deal. Part of the reason I do what I do is for my family. I want to leave them a better country than the one I was born into. I also want to make sure they are taken care of financially. And that's why I make it a priority to help protect the money I've worked so hard to earn and save. 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He said, "Your lawnmowers in the basement. Go knock on the closest 50 doors." And I said, "I don't know." He goes, "Get in the car." and he took me down Nolanville Road over here, little print shop, printed up 500 business cards, said Dave's Lawns. I said, "Dad, that's a little overkill. I just wanted an Icy." He uh came home and he said, "Go knock on the closest 50 doors and ask them if you can have the opportunity to provide their lawn care needs. Don't look at your feet and say while you're standing on the man's front porch and say, "You don't want me to cut your grass, do you?" Uh you go in there and you you throw your shoulders back and you smile and you give them service and they'll hire you and dad gump if it didn't work. I had 27 yards to cut at 12 years old. No kidding. Which, you know, I think it's called child abuse now. But made me keep a profit and loss statement on my business. My income minus his lawnmowers I tore up equals net profit. But uh it was it was, you know, and I loved it. I I it um cuz I always kind of been a little business nerd I guess and so I'm cutting Slugger Carneahan's yard for $3 and my buddies are working at Burger King Whopper Floppers and you know they're making this long. This is 70s, right? So they're making buck and a quarter an hour. So I'm figuring all I got to cut this grass in faster than 2 hours or I'm making only what they're making. No kidding. You were thinking like that already. While I'm mowing, I'm like going looking at my watch going, I got to I got to get these dollar per hour. I got to keep this I got to make this work. And that's how I price the yards out so I can make more. I wanted to try to make about double what my buddies were making if they were flopping whoppers at minimum wage. And if I'm going to go if I'm going to sweat like that, I need to make some money. Wow. So 12 years old, you're going that that taught you confidence. That taught you responsibility. business. You You're already thinking interacting with adults, you know, and acting like you have your crap together. How long did that last? Uh, I guess the rest of my life. All the yards. Yeah, the yards. Oh, man. I cut enough grass by the time I was 18. God said I never had to do it again. So, I ain't cutting grass in a long, long time. Oh, man. Yeah. No, I I when I took off to college, uh when I got up into high school, I started doing home repairs, too. They because they would buy an old house and fix it up and they'd put me in there to fix it up or one of their buddies would buy a house in the real estate business and put me in there 16 years old to paint it and change the dishwasher out and that kind of stuff. So, I did all that. That's how I paid cash for my first car doing that. And um and then um it's how I actually paid for the first uh couple semesters of college, just working my butt off, swinging a hammer, turning a screwdriver. No, good. And did your would did your dad instigate that or Oh yeah. Yeah. He could do he could fix that that neighborhood we were in. Everybody had you know tool belt. Everybody could fix anything. And so you didn't uh throw stuff away in those days. You you had it repaired or you fixed it. You know today, you know, our stuff's throwaway. We don't, you know, send a te there's no television repair shops in today, you know, but in the old days, you know, you'd send it over there, they'd put a new tube in it or something, you know, or we would take it apart and look at it and see if we could figure it out. And so, yeah, those guys all turned a wrench on their own cars. So, we all learned to turn a wrench on a car and that, you know, it's a wonderful heritage to have. It's not necessary to be successful, but it's um I'm not uncomfortable. I remember when I was taking my wife out on a date in college. I think it was about our third or fourth date. I think I had a $116 in my checking account. I was so broke I couldn't pay attention. And I had a 1974 Monte Carlo that I was on the third engine and the second transmission and I had changed them. I'd run the wheels off that car and had 200 something thousand miles on. It was a piece of crap. And uh uh I was explaining to her how someday I'm going to be a millionaire. And we went across the railroad track. The muffler fell off my car and uh but I had a cra I had a Craftsman toolbox in the trunk with a towel to lay on and a towel to pick the muffler up and a 9/16 wrench to run the U-bolt up and uh it had fallen off before so I knew how to fix it. And um um just rolled up under there, fixed it and dusted my hands off and we went on the date. She's like just fixed the car and got back in right after you tell me you're going to be a millionaire. Yeah. Okay. She thought I was full of crap because I was. But what you know, just like we were talking about before the interview, I mean, I got two little kids and and I really want them to become entrepreneurs. You know, I just I I see the I'm experiencing the freedom that you get and the and and you know, with that being said, it takes a tremendous amount of self-drive and um and as you said earlier, perseverance, but and it I think your kids are your kids entrepreneurs. Mhm. So, what age do you what age did you start instilling that into them? What Well, I just um sometimes people get um from a job working for someone else, the uh illusion, and it is a delusion or an illusion that somehow that's safe. And if you've ever been on the other side of that table where you're actually the guy making the payroll, you know they're not safe cuz you know you got to run this whole thing right or oh my god, we're going to you can't pay them. And but they're under the illusion that this stuff's automatic because they just get their check on Friday and everything's okay. And so what the first thing we did was break that illusion with the kids is that, you know, your success is not dependent on plugging into some safety mechanism somewhere. Your safety mechanism is your ability. Your safety mechanism is your uh skill set. Your safety mechanism. And so even if you're working for someone else, you're self-employed. You just have one client. And you need to go, okay, if I'm an architect and I lost that job, I I wasn't leaning on that particular firm for my future, my life, the quality of my life. I was leaning on my skills as an architect. And uh and so if you're going to do that, do it in such a way that you're always marketable and that you but you view it as I'm dependent on me. I'm dep I'm self-dependent. And then what that does automatically leads you into wanting to run your own thing. You know, you want to you you don't want to work for somebody else because you want to go, you know, I I will take the risk of I will accept the fact that there is risk. I'm not delusional about it and I'm going to just do it anyway. And so um you don't necessarily entrepreneurs don't necessarily have to start something from the ground up. My kids haven't. They've come into Ramsey and you know are the next generation of leaders and owners of that organization. And um and all three of them are very capable very different personality styles, very different approach to that. But they're just not under the illusion that someone else is going to do it for them. um or that uh their success is dependent uh or entitled or it's none of that. It it's um sewing and reaping. What age did that start and and how did you how did you instill that into them? How did you show them? Um well, you want to be age appropriate. I mean, you've got babies, so don't send them to the salt mines talking about. you know, it's um but you know, uh 3 or 4 years old, we start to go, okay, there's consequences and cause and effect going on. Again, Bible talks about sewing and reaping. You're going to reap what you sow. And so, um you know, as quickly as we could, we started teaching them three or four things about money, um which were life lessons that we back into this conversation. And it's like all kids need to age appropriately, need to learn to work, to give so that they're not self-centered, they're other centered, to save so they're future oriented, not just present oriented, which is emotional maturity, which not going to have much of that at four. Um, and um to spend wisely. So work to make money, then save some, give some, and spend some. And then you get opportunities to teach them and let them fail under your wing. And so, um, you know, early, you know, it's as simple as, um, okay, you're four. Your job is to pour the dog food into the dog bowl. Mhm. This is your dog. It's our family dog, but the dog eats because you put the food in there. And when you do that, you get a dollar. or your job is to clean up the toys in your room, which when you're four usually means mom and dad clean up 80% of them and we make a game out of it and we sing songs and but you're the best room cleaner in the world. I've never seen anyone clean a room as good as you clean a room. You're amazing and here's a dollar and um and then we get some of those dollars together and we go to the store sometime and we get something and that's as a result of you being the best room cleaner in the world. And it all begins with something that primitive and that simple. Uh so it's positive reinforcement, but they're they're emotionally starting to tie work equals money. Work equals the money cuz I meet 50 year olds that don't know work equals money. Yeah. They haven't figured that out. Nobody ever taught them. And they're still waiting around for somebody else to fix their freaking life. And so I didn't want that. And you know, and by the time they're 10 or 12, it starts to get pretty sophisticated. And then we said, "Okay, we're going to do the money aspect." Like we said, we got, you know, your your car when you turn 16 is your responsibility, but we're going to help. We're going to have 401 Dave. We're going to match. So, whatever you save, I'll match it. If you save nothing, get ready for a real nice bicycle, you know? So, you you be your little butt's going to be walking cuz you're going to pay for your car, but I'm going to whatever you save. Now, I will tell you, you know, you're starting young. Uh, make sure you put a limit on that cuz the third one figured it out. Yeah, he had 15 grand and now I'm looking at buying a $30,000 car for a 16-year-old. Not a chance. Damn. So, uh, we talked that down and we worked that out and, um, he ended up giving some of that to a ministry and it was an earthquake in Peru about that time and he'd been down there on a missions trip and some of the kids down there didn't have anything. So, he gave some of that money that and we matched it, the whole thing anyway, but some of it was generous and then he bought a real cool Jeep. Um, but it still wasn't $30,000 freaking dollars. But I had to keep my word cuz I had set this thing up. So, I'm warning the rest of you, make sure you put a limit on it. But we did that on all three of them. And they'll tell you to this day that they had great pride the way they drove the car, the way they took care of the car. Their friends didn't leave crap in the car. You know, you take care of my car. I worked for this. And um, and they did. They worked. They babysat. They cut grass. They worked at the company. They sold books. they you know whatever they at the company are they working for us all whatever they had to do but yeah we just so it built built character and confidence and dignity and responsibility and all of those things got woven into this little money lesson of you're going to save you're going to save you're going to save you're going to save you're going to save you're going to give you're going to give you're going to be other centered not just self-centered this whole access to the world doesn't run through the top of your little head it ain't about you baby and so we're going to be selfless not selfish And we just talked about that like I guess all the time and they probably got sick of it but they turned out so it's okay. Yeah man, that's great advice. And so you started you start back to you. You started you were a real estate agent at age 18. Mhm. How did that start? Well, I turned 18 and I passed my real estate test like two weeks later. Um and I sold a house like 3 weeks later, which who buys a house from an 18-year-old? kind of. But I talked some guy into it, a guy from high school. $42,750 on East Ridge Drive off of Haywood Lane right over here in Antioch. And uh that house today would be 800 grand probably, you know. But um I went off to college and um uh I was to take to get a degree in real estate because I wanted to be I wanted to do commercial real estate. Mom and dad did houses, residential, and I wanted to do big numbers and I thought I was cool or whatever. And so I my goal was to be a big, you know, like a shopping mall guy or whatever, all that stuff. And so um but I went moved my license down to East Tennessee and went to the University of Tennessee and I lived in uh Merville, Mville is how it's spelled, but over there we call it Mville, Tennessee. And um drove back and forth to UT and sold real estate there. and well and to get through school. I made enough to get through school and um then I graduate from there and when I got home I had a couple jobs and then I ended up uh working for a home builder and then I left that and started buying houses and doing flip this house and that's when I got wealthy. How many years did it take you from I mean how many years did it take you from selling houses to buying your first house? Uh, well, I mean, I sold houses all the way through college. When I got out of college, I went to work for a home builder selling houses, and I worked there like a year. So, how old? So, I bought my first house probably to flip when I was um I was 22 or 23, something like that, and I flipped it. But there wasn't cable TV to tell you how to flip this house. There wasn't Tik Tok. And Chip and Joanna hadn't been born. I mean, it's so I mean, it was not this was just me going out there digging up a foreclosure deal and talking some banker into loaning me the money because I borrowed money up to my eyeballs. And um I was doing flip this house. And so yeah, we started from nothing. And by the time we 26, we had about $4 million of real estate and a little over a million dollar net worth. And by 26, you had $4 million in real estate. made 250k that year, which and that's that's a million dollars now um a year. And um but I had too much debt. And the bank looked down and said, "There's a child that owes us a million dollar." And they were right. And they called our notes and uh we spent two and a half years losing everything. And um so by the time I'm 28, I'm bankrupt. Made 250k one year, the next year I made 6,000. And the odd thing is is when I was doing really good is when I met God. I met him on the way up, but got to know him on the way down. How'd you meet him? Um, I went to a um a sales conference and with my beer drinking buddy and um we were so stupid. We would go to happy hour and then go make sales calls and couldn't figure out why people wouldn't buy from us. That's how stupid we were. So yeah, anyway, we go to a sales conference, me and him, and we're sitting on the back row up on top, and we're kids, and this guy comes on stage that makes 400K a year, and we're like, I got to I I want to be him. So like, okay, here's the five things I want to learn from him before he came up. Because we knew the guy was coming. And um he actually used that our little questions. He didn't have our questions. We hadn't submitted them, but he somehow answered every one of those questions. So, he had credibility before he walked up there, he was a great speaker. And then by the time he read our mail, he owned us. And he said, "And there's one more thing." And we're like, "No, there's not. We got all there. That's it. That's all we got." No, there's one more thing. He said, "If you don't know this man named Jesus, you need to get introduced because it will change the way you do business. You'll change the way you do relationships, and business is all relationships. You're going to be more successful when you understand how human relationships work. And you will not understand that except through Christ. And my wife had been ragging on me to go to church. And I don't go to church. Um she's like, "We're going to church." I'm like, I'm like, "Who are you?" She we got married and she remembered she was a Baptist, you know, and so she forgot that prior to marriage, but um then she comes home and oh, we're going to No, I'm not going to church. Sunday's when we drink beer and watch football. And uh she would cry and get mad and go out and find our little Baptist people and go to church. And um so then I come home from the sales conference and I'm like, I think we ought to go to church. And she's like, who are you? What you do with my husband? And so we went into a couple of churches and they were boring as crud. And I'm like, if God's here, if he was here, he left cuz nobody here is excited about it. And if there's got a God, you got to be excited about it. I mean, come on. Hello. And so we go back in the back door of this little church over on uh Oicker Boulevard over here, Christ Church. And um you know, you sit on the back row so you can eject in case they get weird, you know, or in case they get I don't want to talk to people. I'm just here. I'm checking this out. You know, you probably didn't do that, but that's how I did. I'm just I want to be able to eject. And um couldn't get away from that place cuz old school pastor, he'd stand at the back door and shake everybody's hand as they left. Only about 400 people in there. And his wife was a big squishy woman and she'd give you a big Jesus hug, you know, like grandma hug. And oh man, that woman hugged me into the kingdom. And I'm standing there and he got up on there. I thought Christians were wusses. That's what I figured. I figured a bunch of sissies, you know, and that's how I grew up. And so, uh, this guy stood up and he was a man. And he's like, "This is what the Bible says. If you don't agree with that, you're what's known as wrong." And he would call out stuff in the political spectrum and say, "This is morally wrong. Our nation, you know, stuff." And I went, you know, that right. And he's got like a backbone and stuff. Wow. And you know they had this choir up there and it's a long time ago. I mean this is ' 80s, right? So everybody wore a suit to church and all this kind of stuff. In those days you didn't, you know, you didn't come in with coffee and shorts and a hat, you know? But nowadays it's what I wear to church. But um but then you certainly didn't. But this woman in the choir starts waving her hand, raising her hand. And I'm like, Sharon, if they get snakes out, I'm out of here. This is crazy. You know, and it's like, so yeah. And um, you know, somebody said something about the Holy Spirit and I said, I don't have any idea what that means. And um, we just kept coming and we didn't know what was drawing us back, but we found out later it was it was the spirit of God. We could feel it and it was just attractive. And um Sharon was pregnant with our first kid and we were making money but you know Jaguars and Rolexes weren't satisfying. How long wasn't enough? you know, sorry to interrupt her, but you know, I I see you know, it didn't take me long to figure that out. And um you know, but I I I don't think a lot of people ever figure that out. And I mean, you see it all over social media, the the the greed and the the flash and all that. And I think it uh I think it actually detours a lot of people from they they think it's unreachable because a lot of it's fake. You know, you get people I mean they have they have businesses now where you can just go rent the jet, not even fly in it. Go take a picture in front of the private jet and you go run a Lambo or you go rent whatever. And they just put all this [ __ ] out on social media. And I I think it it it it makes people think that this becomes unreachable. And and so, you know, when I finally started making money, I bought some dumb [ __ ] I mean, I just talked about, you know, the BMW. We all did. Chopper, all that kind of stuff. And so, I'm just curious, how long did it take you to figure out that possessions don't fulfill you as a person? You know, I don't know that it was a um a singular moment. It was probably on a gradient, truthfully. Um because that was my deal. I'm going to go get some stuff. I was in acquisition mode, you know, from 18 to 27, 26. And and it worked, by the way. Um you know, except it didn't stick because of my the principles I used Build a House of Cards. But but the concept worked of I'm going to go get some stuff and I went and got some stuff and um but you start to realize pretty quick it's like you know if you eat enough lobster it tastes like soap. I I love lobster but never had lobster till I was 12 years old and red lobster came to town. I thought man I'm going to eat all that I can get. I love this. Right. But I always just laugh and go if you get enough of anything, you get enough cars, you get enough suits of clothes, you get enough houses, you get enough eventually you just go you it's it's not it's unfulfilling and it doesn't take a genius to grasp that. Um but and and so probably what happened was I start going to church because my wife was dying for me to do that and I'm sitting there and they're talking about Christ. They're talking about being, oh, it's not all about you. It's, you know, first will be last. And those that are happiest are those that serve. And uh the most fulfilling thing you can do in your life is serve and not gather up another Jaguar uh or Lambo or whatever, a jet, whatever, chopper, whatever. But um so I I'm in there for other reasons, but that's gnawing in there also. And and so I think probably uh one of the uh almost byproducts of a spiritual shift and going, "Okay, I'm no longer Lord of my life. He is. I'm going to change that. You're in charge. What do you want to do? Because I obviously screwed this up. I went bankrupt. I lost everything. My wife thought she married Sir Galahad. Turns out it was Goober." You know, I mean, it's like obviously I don't have my crap together. So, obviously, I need a new instruction manual, and I need a someone else running my life other than just me because I'm pretty self-sufficient, but I I need I need a I need some instruction. And so, um cuz when I went broke, I wasn't just broke, I was broken. Mhm. And so, you hit that bottom. And then with that, I go, "Okay, there's nothing wrong with getting you some stuff. Get some nice stuff. I just drove a really nice truck up here today. I mean, I don't mind you having some stuff, but that's not the point. The house you're building is really nice. The house I live in, you've been there is nice. There's nothing nothing wrong with that. But what's wrong with where it becomes wrong is if you are asking the stuff to do something it's not capable of, which is give you peace and only the nail scarred hands can give you peace that passes understanding. And so, um, that's what I got early, you know, there in my 20s. and then I've been able to rebuild from losing everything over the last 35 years and and you know become much wealthier than I was before but I don't have any emotional or spiritual attachment to it at all. It's uh you know a guy I got a super expensive sports car and I parked it in front of a burrito place the other night. I went to speak at this church thing and a kid comes in. He goes, "Hey, is that your car outside?" And I said, "Yeah." I thought he was just admiring the car and he goes, "I just hit it." Like, "Kid, you have no idea what it's going to cost you." I go out there, there's a little ding about like this on the thing, but that's probably, you know, gonna be 50 grand or something. It's like, and he's like, I don't I don't I don't know if my insurance I don't my parents are going to kill me. He's like 17 years old. I'm like, here's what I'll do. He goes, I said, just I'm going to go over here and puke in the bushes and you're just going to go home and we're not going to worry about it. He goes, you're letting me go? And I'm like, you can't do anything about it anyway. It's It's out of your You're over your skis. And um I'm I'm not real happy and I'm not mad at you and and I'm and I got home and and Sharon's like laughing at me and she's like, "Yeah, your problem is you just don't care. You you like the car, but you don't you don't love the car. You're not It's not You're not worshiping the car. It's just a fun car." Yeah. You know, and um and it's a ridiculously cool car, but it doesn't it doesn't it's not a I'm not attached to it. And so I can just go let the 17-year-old go home and not kill him and because it's not it's not going to it's it's we're asking those things to do something for us that they're not capable of. Yeah. It's almost like asking your wife or your husband if you're, you know, married uh uh if you're a lady watching this uh uh to be your Jesus. that they're going to fail miserably. Your husband's going to leave his underwear on the floor and you're going to realize right quick he's not Jesus. There's underwear on the floor. Jesus wouldn't do that. Possibly would. I don't know. But but you know, I mean, you you can't ask things to do things that aren't that to be God that aren't capable. That's the problem with idol worship. That's the core of it. when you mentioned that your your business mentor the the guy that you saw spoke said you need to basically you need to implement Christ in your life into your business. What did he mean by that? I think he just was saying your character is changed and you become uh other centered rather than self-centered. You become when you're selling if you're a taker buying can smell it on you. Mhm. If you're when you're selling, you're serving uh you're you're then you're there to help and they can smell that on you. And so uh again, selfish or selfless or selfish, other centered, self-centered. And um so we teach the sales team at Ramsay, you know, you work at a five-star restaurant with uh the best wine list on the planet and your job is to be the best server possible to where when the people leave that dining experience. We're not in the dining business, but I'm when they leave doing business with Ramsay that they've had an an experience like a dining experience where they were served. Um, and if you ever noticed, if you're in that kind of a setting, and I'm, you know, fine food is one of my favorite sports. And so, um, you know, if you're in that kind of a setting, the server makes all the difference, uh, because they're going to, they're they're not just slapping stuff on the table and the you can have the finest food, the finest wine list in the world and and still have a crummy experience because you weren't served. Interesting. So, how with that being said, how would a sales pitch have gone without without that implemented? And then how did it what what did it look like next? Well, it's manipulative without because my goal is for me to win. Okay. If I'm selling and so all I care is that you buy. I don't care whether you buy the right thing. I don't care if you need it. I don't care if you finance it and it the finance contract ruins your life. I don't care about you. All I'm trying to do is get a unit out the door and you are a unit of production for me. You're not a human being that I'm trying to make your life better. And so it changes the language, changes the body language. And we all know it. Even people that aren't in marketing or sales, you know it. You when you go into a ice cream store, you can feel it. Mhm. Are they there to help you or are you just another dip? You know, and so it it's are they there to, you know, cuz you ever you meet someone and they light up, you know, uh you think about it, it's very contrived now, but it's welcome to Mo, you know, I mean, it's like we're glad you're here. Come into my house. We were at a nice wonderful restaurant down in Mexico a few weeks ago, and we walk in, the guy's Italian, and it's like he went to his home. you meet met us at the front door with a glass of champagne. Come into my home. And he was he had great joy in making sure that you had an amazing experience. I think the food was good, but I got lost in the in the moment that he created, you know, it's just fabulous. I love that kind of stuff. Very cool. So, yeah, it sounds like So, be personable. Listen, listen listen to what they want. Help them be. Yeah. You know, what would you do if it was your little brother? What would you do if he was your mama? You make sure they took took care of. Yeah. And treat it like treat every one of them like that. It's a great message. Blow their mind. What went wrong? What went wrong in your business that you went bankrupt? Uh we had a I had a 1.2 two and 90 day notes because again I was buying a property fixing it you know had a rehab cruise running and so I buy a property fix it up and flip it and so at the end of 90 days you got to pay the whole thing or you can renew the note pay the interest and renew it for another 90 days if the bank allows that and they did because I'd never lost money on a deal but if I had a house that we didn't get it finished and it it took 6 months instead of three months to get fixed and sold. I pay the interest, renew it, and you know, it's not a problem. And and uh the problem was when they looked down and said, "Oh, we want it all right now." And so basically, I had, you know, 120 days, 90 days, 90-day notes coming up due for a million, too, and it's all tied up in real estate. You got to move it all right now. Well, there's a word for real estate sold super fast. It's cheap. I started giving stuff away to meet the note obligations. And and so the income stopped because the income was from the profit and the profit all went away cuz I was selling it so cheap to get rid of it. I really wasn't in over my head. I mean, I had a million dollars in equity. I was sitting at 75% loan to value ratios and things. So that was all working. Uh and I hadn't really lost money on deals. I lost money on a couple of them here or there, but I was making enough to cover that. But I was pretty good at it. Um but I had built it uh on on this fragile, unsustainable platform of the bank had control of my life. I didn't realize that they had a their hands around my neck until they started squeezing. And um when that guy walked in and said, you know, you're going to pay all this right now because we're not going to renew any of this. We fired the guy that did these deals with you. And I'm like, why? He shouldn't have done them. I'm like, he didn't do anything wrong. He was doing what you told him to do. And anyway, big argument and uh and so we had to that that bank called their notes and then the second largest bank had a 800k with them and they heard through the grapevine that Dave was in trouble cuz Dave was in trouble. And so um they they you know we spent one year making 250,000 the next year I made 6,000 cuz all I did was sell the houses. Damn. All I did was just try to try to do the right thing and pay the bill and be honorable and all those kinds of things, but it didn't matter. They were coming. They were, you know, every time I would make a move or do anything to trying to help them get their money, but they would stick me again, you know. So, I had I was I was bleeding on every pore. And um and I I was I was just bound to determine I was going to make it. And I almost made it, but I didn't. Uh, I ran out of emotional and spiritual fuel and I couldn't I I I was really struggling with that. I I was a baby Christian. I was really struggling with the idea that a Christian doesn't pay his bills and that's awful. It's not, you know, and there's nothing in the about bankruptcy in the Bible, you know, and so what what allows this? And I'm like, you know, they're coming to take the baby bed next week on one of these lawsuits. They're going to take all the furniture out of our house. I got a brand new baby and a toddler. marriage is hanging on by a thread. And I'm like, "Oh, so you had kids when this happened?" Had two kids. Rachel was born in April. We filed in September. So she was a little baby and Denise was a toddler. And Sharon would have left, but she didn't have a car. So she I mean it was awful. And I stood in the shower as hot as I could stand. I just stand there and cry. I was so scared I couldn't breathe. I didn't know what to do. And um yeah, so but I I just I I ran my tank ran dry. My emotional, spiritual, uh courage, whatever you want to call it, dry. I I just I didn't know what else to do. I just And finally, they like were coming to take the furniture and I'm like then I got all red and act like they can't they took everything else. They can't have the baby bed. Like I couldn't get another baby bed. But I So, so we filed on Thursday night, Thursday afternoon to keep them from the truck from backing up at the house on Friday morning. I took it that far. Two and a half years of hell. That was 2 and 1/2 years. Yeah. Holy [ __ ] And it was water got cut off. And I'm not proud of this, but I went and hooked the water back up and then they cut it off again. And then I went and hooked it back up again. And then they took the water meter out cuz I kept turning it back on, pirating my own water. But I had two little kids in the house. I didn't know what else to do. I was so broke I couldn't breathe. And it's awful. And um it's my fault. All of it was my fault. And there's no the shame and the condemnation and then you start to heal and those scriptures there is therefore now no condemnation. So how so was it was it a two and a half year long process of them taking everything or did it from the time they called our first notes from the time they called our first notes we fought it we said okay you know and I gave them the middle finger I said all right I'm taking you people out of my life and I started selling everything and I really was under I was so stupid I was under the illusion I could sell enough of it fast enough to just pay them all off and be done and then figure out something else to do or whatever but I couldn't get it all moved D and then they started foreclosing and I had unsecured notes out too. Uh and they started suing me on those. I got sued like 78 times. Yeah. We were on a firstname basis with the old boy at the sheriff's department that brings those pink lawsuit papers. Yeah. Sharon's like, "Come in, Harold. Got cookies on." But uh it was um it was hell. Wow. And so, you know, it's it's pain is a thorough teacher. So, it's no wonder Dave Ramsey doesn't borrow money. Yeah. When they say the borrower is slave to the lender in Proverbs, I went, "Uh-huh." Yeah. Got that one. Got that one. The rich rules over the poor and the borrower's slave to the lender. Got that one. I will never be another banker ever in my life except where I make deposits. And uh none of you people will ever have that power over my life again. I gave you that power once. I'm not stupid enough to do it again. You're not put me back in shackles. Interesting. If you take your health as seriously as I do, you know how important hydration is. That's why I want to tell you about hoist. Hoist is made in the USA and has three times the electrolytes and half the sugar compared to other sports drinks with no artificial dyes or preservatives. Hoist is on military bases globally serving war fighters in operations and training. 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And I'm making it easy. Go right now to preparewithshan.com and you'll see a threemonth emergency food kit from my Patriot Supply for $100 off. Their three-month kit provides 2,000 calories a day, the amount most people need in an emergency down to the calorie. They've studied survival and know what they're doing. If you're like me and want to help take control of your family safety, this could be your chance. Go to preparewithshan.com and get $100 off a 3month emergency food kit from my Patriot Supply. preparewithshan.com. Well, I think I know the answer to this, but I mean, we're having discussions about private equity and all this stuff. I mean, have you ever taken any any of that? Nope. Nothing. Nope. Everything's built grassroots. And yeah, we've organically cash flowed everything is the business answer to the question. The reason was that um again I I didn't simply go bankrupt and I didn't simply meet God in the process. The whole thing melded together and it took me all the way to powder to ground zero and I went okay. So, when I started talking about opening up a business again after that, when I healed, I mean, I went back to doing some real estate deals just to eat and I was able to get some food on the table. But a couple years later, I started learning this stuff. The Bible says get out of debt, you know, and learning biblical finance, which is common sense. And I thought, okay, I can I I think we can do this. And Shar and I started say, "Okay, we're going to handle our marriage by the book. We're going to handle our kids by the book. We're going to handle our finances by the book. And you know, the beautiful thing about going broke is you no longer care what everybody thinks. So, I'm not taking a poll. You know, I love you. I appreciate you. But you don't really get a vote. You know, we get one vote. Jesus vote gets a vote that he's the one gets a vote. And so, this is how we, you know, submit yourselves one to another. This is how we're going to be married. That means I got to dry dishes and that means I got to serve my wife and as a as a high quality husband, you know, and so how do you lead? How do you hire and fire? How do you you know, anything I could figure out, I'm going to do it this way? Whatever this book tells me, this is what I'm going to do. and these people in my life that are new pe new friends in my life to the extent there's that they're doing one of those things well according to this book I'm going to listen to them and so I had like one friend who had an incredible marriage he wasn't great business guy but but I could learn how to be a husband from him and I had another guy who's a great business guy wasn't necessarily incredible at his marriage but I could learn some Christian business principles from him and so I took that and put it all together and so the all That is to say that the first principle was I don't own the business. God owns it. I'm a manager. Old English phrase in the King James is steward. I'm a steward of which just means I'm a manager of other people's property. And so I don't own Ramsey. God owns it. And um uh so when I started it, I'm like, "Okay, God, what do you want to name your business?" And um sat there with a yellow pad and nothing. Couldn't hear anything. didn't know what to name it. And I kept on and I thought, what we're going to do is we're going to help people. We're going to give hope. We're going to uh you know, we're going to help people that are hurting like we're hurting. We're hurting. And you know, uh and so I sat there with a yellow pad. I'm like, "Okay, God." Next morning, an hour sitting there with a yellow pad. Nothing on it. And I wrote down a couple things and I'm like, "Those that wasn't God. That's last night's pizza." and you know figuring out the difference in the holy spir spirit and pepperoni right and so uh and uh finally I wrote down light and I I honestly looked up and I went you're just really not good at marketing light consulting I mean light that's awful I'm having this argument with God like he's worried about me and um and I was over at the church doing something helping the helping this little couple that had their car payment behind And um they had these uh concordances in the church, these books that you can look up what the Greek or Hebrew meaning is. And I thought, okay, we're going to we're going to open this business. We're going to help people and we're not going to rub their nose in our Christianity, but they're going to at least know where we got the information. We're going to This is where we're coming from. Okay? So, uh, you know, uh, and so we're going to talk about it, but not be thumping people with it, right? Because nobody wants to be thumped and Bible thumped. And so, um, anyway, I open that book up. I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if this if the word light only appears one time? Because there's always multiple Hebrew words or multiple Greek words for the word light. And so, I'll go down through there. Sure enough, there's a Hebrew word, but it applies like shows up like 10 times. Okay, that's not helpful. And so then there's a Greek word for light that shows up multiple times. And here's another Greek word that only shows up one time in scripture. I thought, well, I wonder what that is. That's interesting. It's Matthew. And I pull open the English Bible. I'm like, okay, the word is lampo, which obviously we got our word lamp from light, right? And so, um, I flip open the Bible and it says, "Don't hide your light under a bushel. Put on a lampstand for all to see." Which is what we were promising to do. That we were going to, you know, be a light to people. And I went, "Okay, that's you, God." And so, the company that actually owns Ramsay is called Lampo. No kidding. Yeah. The Lampo Group, Inc. is the actual corporation, DBA, doing business as Ramsey Solutions. um ran it that way publicly facing for a long long time but we started doing some branding shifts and but uh so God named the company it's his company he runs it I don't own it and if he decides to uh bankrupt it by decides or it's not going to be generational it's his he gets to do with it what he wants to do with it just like that stupid car that the 17-year-old backed into and so um now based on that God what do you want to do with your company how do you want your employees treated how do you want your team treated how do you want to be people to be compensated ated. How you going to treat the girl that gets cancer that works on the front desk? Oh, we paid her and she wasn't at work for 3 years. For 3 years, she's back at work. One of my best friends, I love the girl. She beat it. You know what? God would do it. Uh but what would Jesus do? He He would taking care of her, her family. He wouldn't. Oh, you got cancer. We're going to write you up for not being at work and you're get wrote up three times, you're going to get fired, right? I mean, I don't think that's how God run a business. So, we've done stuff like that. You know, we had a kid get hit in the head with a ball at camp over in North Carolina and his daddy. I was in Scotland, but my leadership team did this. And um they called me to tell me they chartered a plane to send dad over there cuz the camp called the hospital called and told the dad, "The kids's got four hours to live. You can't get to Asheville, North Carolina from here in 4 hours, but you can if you charter a jet." And um you know if that was me, what would I and my kid is over there, what would I want somebody to do for me? Well, we sent him over there on a jet. And the good news is again kid made it. Wow. The hospital was wrong. Thank God. But um but I you know we don't do any of that for any reason. But you know the interesting thing is when you love your people well the rest of them are watching and it becomes one of the best places to work in America because because it's one of the best places to work in America because God runs an incredible business. You know I run this very very similar to that. Uh I really I got a great relationship with everybody that works there. I care about them. I I consider this like a family to me. Yeah. I can feel it when you walk in. And you know, I I got a question for you, though. And this is just something that I've struggled with is is sometimes I feel like my generosity may be somewhat of a weakness. And so what I mean by that is is people people see the generosity that I have and there have been a handful of people that come here and they take advantage of that. Mhm. Mhm. And so how do you as a business owner I mean how do you how can you tell the difference? How do you have the foresight into that? How do you deal with it when it when it does happen? um that and even worse they um you find out later that somebody's uh betraying or stealing or they leave and then they say nasty things about you after you did something for them. I gave a guy a car one time and then he's on a Facebook group. I hate Dave Ramsey Facebook group and um uh I would like to tell you I know the formula for that. I don't it still hurts my feelings and I still get pissed off. It's like I want to go find the guy and choke him but you know but I'm not going to. And uh and you know and the thing the thing I have struggled with the most on that and you know I've got good friends in my life that have walked with me for 30 years and um I got a group of guys that I hang with that aren't that don't work at my company and that a lot of them I've been friends for 20 30 years through this whole spiritual journey. And so I I'll just vent with those guys. I'm like, you know, and they go, "Okay, look, you got 2,500 people or so that used to work at Ramsey. You got,00 that work there now. Four of them are twerps. Keep the ratio of how much you're get, how much rent you give in your brain to those four correct." Mhm. because it really should be about 1% of your thought pattern instead of 25% of your thought pattern. Because I don't know about you, but I get mad, I get hurt, and then I just ruminate on it. I'm just, hey, I just run over and over and I can do this, I do this, shut that Facebook group down, I'm I've called out some of these people a time or two, but um but I end up spending too much of my calories on the wrong things then. And it's hard for me is the answer to your question. Uh that's a real human emotion. Uh but it doesn't invalidate the idea. You're not going to get to the end of your life and go, you know, I regret helping that lady who had cancer. Yeah. You're not going to go, I regret giving that um you know, helping that guy with a jet. I regret, you know, whatever the story is where you did something that was generous or whatever. Use some of God's money that he let you manage to do something for somebody, one of his other children. It's what it amounts to. And um and and you know, God has some crazy kids, man. Some of them ain't right. And so, you know, you just got to go. And I I I wish I was uh better and stronger about just letting that roll off my back, but I'm not. I'm trying to tell you, it's probably not going to quit hurting when somebody does you wrong. Is it trans? But it doesn't mean you don't be generous. Yeah. Yeah, that's the point. I mean, I I can't stop that. That's just part of who I am. Yeah. At the same aspect, I mean, has that I mean, has that transformed you into somebody who's a little more guarded? Um, yeah, probably. Uh and and I'm probably a little wiser uh about the generosity, you know. I I cuz I don't want to throw good money after bad. That's not obviously I'm not going to I don't want to be a blessing to somebody who's going to do something silly. Uh that's not what I'm trying to do. That was not the intent. And so, you know, you just you're probably just a little more I was probably a little more uh disorganized or chaotic in the generosity. Now I'm probably more precise. Gotcha. And I'm going to go I think about the unintended consequences of this. And I kind of sometimes I think, well, if I do all this and then they, you know, decide they're going to be nasty later on social media about Dave Ramsey or something, how am I going to feel? Am I still going to be glad I did it? And I'm like, "Yeah, cuz when I do when we give someone a a large severance package or something, you know, we're overly generous there or we take care of somebody and then later, you know, uh we're really not uh doing that for what we get from it. So, let it go." And it's I have to just have you can tell I have this conversation myself a lot. But yeah, I'm probably more guarded. I'm not not cynical. I don't want to get cynical, but I do want to be more I do want to be more intelligent, more wise about what are the unintended consequences of this and am I overdoing it out of some kind of sense of weakness or something? Or is this exactly what God would do right now? Cuz it's his money. What do you want to do with your money, God? How would you treat this guy? You know what he's going to do. The scowl, you know what they're going to do later. And I'm trying to figure that out. I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't think I'll get it figured out this side of heaven. But it's a it's a fun journey. So, backtracking just a little bit. So, was I'm sorry. What What was the light? What was the original name of the business? Lambo. Lambo. Was that what was born out of the out of the downturn? Mhm. The consulting business. Yeah. Yeah. I first started helping people stop foreclosures cuz I was a foreclosure and I used to buy foreclosures and so I know how to stop foreclosures and uh house is three payments behind. I know how to work the, you know, the deal with the bank, the deal with the mortgage company, get them caught back up and keep them from losing their stinking house. Um, and so people was, first thing I did is people would come and pay us a couple of hundred bucks and we would help them get caught up on their credit cards and their car payments and get them on a budget. And there wasn't a class. There wasn't anything. It was just me sitting in a room with a yellow pad and a calculator. And I would call the credit card companies and, you know, yell at them and work cuz they're they're complete twerps. How did you market that? I mean, coming from somebody that's making $6,000, $6,000 a year. Yeah. To a consulting business. Well, I number one, I again, I went back to doing some real estate deals. That's what we were eating on. Okay. And I was doing the other stuff at church just as a ministry. The pastor called and goes, "Hey, there's a guy in my office getting foreclosed on. Can you help him?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'll be over in 20 minutes." And I sat down and that's the first time I ever did it. Well, once you do something good, you know, you help, you show that you have a talent in a church, they'll have you do it all the time. So, I was over there almost every night pretty soon with somebody that was blowing up in their finances. And I'm showing them this is what we learned. This is what we did. We screwed it up. And that, you know, our story of failure kind of took some of the shame off of them so they could start to heal. And um and then we could, okay, here's what we're going to do. we're going to sell this car and we're going to do this and you know I'm going to get you out of this but it's going to be painful but you can you can make it you can make the turn on this and you can get on back on top of it. And then um a guy from a restaurant chain that went to our church called me and said um hey one of our managers has got an IRS lean. Can you help him? The company's going to pay you a $250 fee to go help him. And it's the first time I ever got paid to do that. And I was doing real estate deals to feed the family back after being broke. And so I went over to that guy at that restaurant and sat down with that guy and we refinanced his house and paid off the IRS, which was really not rocket science. I don't know why they didn't know how to do that, but anyway, I helped him get out of that. And then the guy goes, "Hey, I want you to come over at one of our manager meetings and teach this stuff that you're teaching in that Sunday school class, this get out of debt, get on a budget stuff that you're teaching in that Sunday school class." I went, "Okay." He goes, "We'll give you $250 to do that. you know, pay me to talk. Oh, yeah. I'm in. And then we then he paid me uh $250 plus $500 in restaurant credit to go to the another city to do one of their other managers meetings. And I'm like, "Oh, I this is this is so fun." And uh Sharon and I and I started doing a little bit more of it and just kept and I sat down wrote a little book and so started nobody would buy it and uh there was no internet, you know, there was no platform to launch something on and um then I went on a broke radio station that was in bankruptcy and agreed to work for free and they allowed us to come down and do this horrible talk radio show. It's like a Saturday Night Live skit. Two hillbillies, Daryl and his other brother Daryl. WWTN, we're talking Nashville. I mean, it was awful. It was so bad. But the answers to the questions where people were in pain. The phone stayed lit up every day. And in matter of months, we had one of the highest rated shows in the city. Are you serious? And we were awful. But it was it was anything to do with the broadcast quality. didn't have anything to do with the ability to speak or enunciate or properly form a vowel, you know, it had to do with we love people and we were just helping them. We were doing it for free. We were just doing it for fun. We weren't getting paid. It was just kind of kind of a ministry kind of a cool thing and I'm go do a real estate deal when I get off the air, feed my family. And uh we told the guy to run the station, you know, if we're really bad, you can cut our pay in half because he wasn't paying us anything. And uh so but it just it took off and then um Gaylord bought it out of bankruptcy and it was a big FM station. It's a huge FM station here today in Nashville and we were on there for 20 years and that launched the whole thing. Then we started getting paid because the uh we could sell ads because of our ratings and we're getting paid for the ads and um and we could uh you know but it was all about just again helping people and just showing them these common sense things and it turns out common sense as Ben Franklin said is not very common. So, it was it was the it was the company that bought them out of bankruptcy that kind of you turned it into a business. Well, that's when we actually started making some money at it. And um we didn't even know we had ratings because they didn't show up in the book because we were in bankruptcy. And so, we didn't we were illegal cuz we didn't even say the call letters. You're supposed to say the call letters once an hour on radio. It's FCC guideline, you know. And so we're just talking and there were no commercials cuz nobody wanted to buy on this station, you know. No, we thought three people were listening to them were in our family, you know, but we the phone was ringing. We knew that. And um uh we we said we're going to do a little seminar at the Ramada in and 600 people showed up. Holy [ __ ] And I'm like, "Oh my god, there's people out there under this radio." What time span are we talking here? Oh, you know, we were on the air for maybe a year and then we just launch and we said and then they'd buy the thing and the they the tower was broken. They fixed the tower and it's 100,000 watt FM flamethrower. So, it covered from Alabama to Kentucky all of Middle Tennessee. It was and all of a sudden this thing's like a blowtorrch. And um uh they started telling us you got to say the call letters. As a matter of fact, we're going to change the phone number and make the phone number the call letters. So, we just started, we went from never saying the call letters to every 30 seconds saying them, which drives ratings because people would know the call letters to write down the ratings books. And so, the thing went, it was there. It was what we call phantom [ __ ] meaning it was there, but nobody knew it was there. And then we activated it with proper handling of the stupid radio. And we didn't know what we're doing. And they took us to 3 hours. And the guy running the thing, he goes, "I'm going to put uh two of your three hours against Rush Limbaugh. Rush is on the other station." And I was like, "Are you trying to shoot us in the face? I mean, we're you can't beat Rush Limbaugh. That's freaking Elvis. He invented rock and roll. I mean, you there's no way." Cuz Rush was the man. I mean, he was king of the hill. And uh we beat him. You beat him in Nashville. And that was the beginning. gave us a story to tell with ratings. We didn't beat him anywhere else hardly ever. Um, and he became a friend later, but oh my gosh, we were like, "Woo!" You know, the king and and so we couldn't believe it. The radios came in went, "This is wrong." And it's not wrong. We have a huge radio signal. It's FM. He's on AM. We got this other great lineup around you. Gordon, G. Gordon Litty, you remember that guy? He was on in the mornings before us. And so the thing blew up and um then we we were smart enough somehow to say, "All right, we're gonna uh we're gonna stay on your station, but you don't own we don't want to be employees. Don't pay us. You don't own the show. We own the show, even though it's worth nothing, but um because someday I want to syndicate this thing. Someday I want to put on other radio stations. and I'll take no money right now and I'll make my money selling books and doing a seminars and doing some consulting work. Uh I can make my money doing that. And yeah, radio lost money for 10 years on our P&L. It didn't we couldn't sell enough ads to cover our costs for radio. Well, we we started syndicating it, meaning we got other people other we went to Russellville, Kentucky, and that guy put us on. Oakidge, Tennessee put us on. Jackson, Tennessee put us on. Then Jackson, Mississippi put us on and then Spokane, Washington and then Seattle and we just one at a time. Wow. And there's 640 stations now in the network today. Wow. It's the second largest talk radio network in America. Sean Hannity's number one. We're number two. Wow. But it just it was 30 years of scratching and clawing, fighting and pushing and pulling and putting up with radio business. What did that develop into? Where did you go from radio? Well, as we're going in radio, you know, then the guy walks in my office what 10 or 15 years ago, the internet and broadband is starting to have market penetration and um he goes, "We need a podcast." And I said, "What? What's the flips a podcast?" And he goes, "Well, a couple people are doing them and they're they're they're like charging like a subscription thing and you can make money on it and you put it behind the pay wall." And I'm like, "I don't think I want to do that." And he goes, "Oh man, we got to try it." He goes, "It's where it's going to go." And I said, "I got this huge talk radio thing. Why would I want to do that?" And he goes, "Well, just take the same exact show and let's just put it on the internet." I said, "All right, but we're not going to charge for it. Put an hour on there and let's see what it's doing." And um and we ran it that way and talk radio people were freaking out about podcasts. They were afraid it was going to put them out of business or um Rush refused to do one. He didn't want to be disloyal to the radio business. And other people would put out a podcast but they put it behind a payw wall and you had to pay for it. Now we just put it on there. If you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money. So we just put it on there. Just put it out there. See what happens. And then XM radio before that. you know, XM and Sirius were two companies and we went up on both of those as soon as they came in and then they combined and they couldn't figure out what what to do with us since we were on both of them and they end up giving us a whole channel for a while on the on the pair. I think we've got probably half a channel right now on there and um so we just jumped on anything and everything because we weren't in the radio business, we were in the helping people business. So, we're platform agnostic and so you could jump to anything. So, then the podcast we were I never forget I was with uh Brian Mayfield was one of our uh he was our top he was our top sales guy and he had been promoted to run all of our broadcast stuff and we were in New York and we got off the plane. We're heading over to do a thing in there and he goes, "Hey, you know that podcast thing's kind of working." And I'm like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "I think we made a million dollars on it last year in ad revenue." And I said, "For an hour?" And he goes, "Yeah, you can't run many ads on them. They're not like radio. Radio's full of ads. You can put just a couple ads on there an hour." And um said, "We made a million dollars." He goes, "Yeah." I said, "Well, why why aren't we making 3 million and put all three hours on there?" And he goes, "Uh, we'll do that when we get home." So, we put all three hours on there. And then we you YouTube started popping up and people started putting stuff on YouTube, so we put it on there. And then, you know, Spotify joins the scene and we jump on Spotify. So, anybody comes along, we jump on all of it. And some of it is better than others and some of it's, you know, for a time one of them will shine and then it'll dim. You know, there was a time we thought Sirius XM was going to own the world and obviously they don't. And um so we're we're just trying to help people and wherever they are, that's where we're going to go. And that's worked out really good for us. I mean, rewinding a little bit when So, you're doing the radio show, but this developed into books and coaching and inerson coaching and and courses. When did all that start happening? Uh, we started on the radio in June uh 25th of 1992. I kept doing real estate again because we were doing that for free. We did a couple of little seminars here and there and I wrote a little book and I started selling a couple of those. I mean, we sold maybe 10,000 of them or something. I couldn't get bookstores to take it. I couldn't get anybody to take it. I'd sell it on the radio and then we had to they had to mail me a check to a P.O. box and I had to cash the check and mail them the book. That's how hard it was. Talk about friction. Oh my god, it was ridiculous. And so that's how but everything was analog. So that's the only option you had. And you couldn't get the bookstores to take it because I was a little self-published author and the little book was ugly. And um it worked. It was a good book. But um and so that you know I had that working and um and at at the end of the year of 93 I told Sharon I said I I I ran some numbers and I said I think I think we could do between seminars and launching a class which I hadn't launched at that point. um and the sale of these books and some one-on-one coaching, I think I can make $65,000 next year and quit doing real estate and go allin on financial peace. The book was called Financial Peace. The class was going to be called Financial Peace. I think if we go all in, that year I made 130,000. And I said, I think if we take a pay cut in half, I think this is what God's telling us to do. We're doing God's stuff. We're helping God's people. God owns the company. he's running this. I think it's time to take this and do this. And and she said, "Ma'am, I mean, she was hurting. We were still bleeding out of every pore. We were eating, but making 130 grand in 1993 is a lot of money. But, um, we talked about it and fredded over it and prayed over it. And then one morning she woke up and she said, "I I think God's saying you need to do this. I think you're supposed to do this." and I went game on. And um I stopped doing all real estate and dove all in January 1. And uh that year I made $61,000. That was pretty close on my estimate. And um I don't make that anymore. That was the worst year I ever had. Damn. Damn. When did uh I mean the book that I read was Total Money Makeover. That was the second one. Yeah, that was the second one. It was actually the third one technically, but yeah, Financial Peace, the book was the first one. It took off uh that year. And um I what I did was I kept every time I got a call on the radio that the book didn't answer their question, I wrote it down. I I kept a little log of it and okay, so I updated the little financial peace book and put in five more chapters that answered our most frequently asked questions. There was no such thing as FAQs in those days, but you know, I just okay, the book needs to be the answer to every question. And so what what I would do is anytime anybody would call go, okay, here's the answer to your question. Here's exactly what you need to go do, and I'm going to mail you a book because it's going to tell you exactly what I'm telling you right now. And I'll give it to them on the air. But that gave me a mention on the book every day. And I sold 148,000 of them that year. Uh when I once I started doing that with a new cover on it, little green cover. And an agent called me and said, "You need a publisher." And I'm like, "No, I don't. You don't know the difference between margin and royalty, do you? Margin big, royalty little." And uh she's like, "I don't need a publisher." I said, "I need a publisher when it's in the trunk of my car and nobody would take the book." Now everybody takes the book and I'm cashing the checks. And she goes, "Well, I got a big company, a Viking Penguin, wants to come down and visit with you from New York." And I'm like, "I I'll always sit down and talk to somebody. I'm not mean about it, but if they think they're going to buy this book, they need to bring a really big truck full of money because uh and I'm going to keep control of every bit of it cuz it's not my book, it's God's. I'm supposed to manage it, not some New York publisher. I'm in charge of this." And so I said, I don't think they got enough money to buy this book. And turns out they did. They did. And we did this very unusual contract where I control every aspect of the book. And um and they did a lot of stuff for me I was not sophisticated enough to do at the time. I didn't understand. And so I was still so primitive and green. But they got a world class uh publicist. And you know, I'm on the Today Show. I'm in People magazine. um um you know uh all these other major national hits and uh to to launch the book and relaunch the book in hardback now and uh we sold 293,000 of them that month and it hit the New York Times and all of a sudden thing the whole world changes and um that book has now done 3.2 2 million total since 19 including the ones I used to carry in the trunk of my car in 199 uh2 and so it's a long time then that and it's still in hardback and it still looks exactly the same cuz I control all that. So um and I still get royalty checks from those fine people. They're sweet as they can be. And um you know and then we went on and did that was a twobook deal. The other book didn't do that well. And then Total Money Makeover came from Thomas Nelson here in Nashville. Mike Hayyatt was the CEO of that. And he comes over and he goes, "You need to do another money book. It's been seven years." And I'm like, "I don't really have anything else to say. Everything I said is in that book. That's what I say every day on the radio. Why do I do another tell somebody like something new?" And he goes, "Well, that book's what to do. This is how to do it. You need to do a book on the baby steps and show people tactically, you know, how to do this." And that book's done 14 million now. It's crazy. That's the biggest thing we've ever done. It's nuts. Well, it's a damn good book. I hope everybody listen I I didn't want to do it cuz I thought it was insincere because I had this other I'd already said all a lot of the same stuff, but I didn't talk about how to do it. And so, Total Money Makeover legitimately was how to do it. And obviously, that was needed. What other what other aspects of the business did you start developing? You you started with the coaching, went to radio, went to podcast, books. Yeah, we just kept looking and going, okay, where is there a need? Where's somebody uh we can get help with this material? And so, uh, a guy, a coach up here at the Catholic school, Father Ryan here in Nashville, Coach Carson, uh, dropped by the office one day and he goes, "Hey, I just want y'all to know, um, I don't I don't I I feel like I ought to tell y'all I've been buying these Financial Peace books and I'm taking my high school seniors through it. I'm showing them how in my math class how to do this stuff." And he goes, "I I'm didn't want y'all to think I'm stealing something. I just wanted you to know we're doing And I went, you know, that's really cool because ever since I had a single book, first thing people pick up a book off the table, they look at me and go, "Why isn't this taught in high school? Why didn't I know this stuff before I was a broke 30-year-old?" You know, why didn't somebody teach me this stuff? And it's I I've heard that my whole career. And I went, "Okay, hey, coach, why don't we work together and we'll kind of use you as a guinea pig. let's start develop an actual curriculum for high school students out of it instead of you having to use an adult book for kids and the kids don't have to know what some of that crap is. And so um we filmed a little thing and put it on VHS and put it in his class and then we put it a couple other places and um then we got thrown out of uh three or four places because I said Jesus in the video and they freaked out. Um and uh so then I got to learn a whole new thing about law which I didn't know the uh Supreme Court rulings on what can be taught in public school and what can't be taught and ended up in this big legal mess. And um but we fixed all that and we've got it to where we can there actually side note you can actually use scripture and talk about God in public school uh as long as it's instructive not not uh uh you're you're you're not trying to convert them. And so you can say Jesus said don't build a tower without first counting the cost. And you can say Ben Franklin said save money. And you can say Mark Twain said this about you know what debt. And you can, you know, it's instructive, but you can't say Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. So, you can't procilitize. Uh, and there's very clear stuff on that. Now, a lot of a lot of public school uh administrators are cowards and they think anything that says Jesus should be thrown in the street. Uh, and so they haven't done it. But now, we've gotten 6 million students through it and 48% of America's high schools have now taught that curriculum. Um, and that was 25 years ago we started that. It's a massive business. Wow. And now we I opened up a full econ curriculum to go with it because apparently we need to teach what capitalism is. I didn't know that was a problem, but we need to. So, we're now doing that, too. So, um, and there's a lot of, uh, Texas, um, Florida, the late latest two that have just passed mandatory personal finance class in high school. And guess what? We can help them with that. So, yeah. And we've got a then we had okay we the financial peace class ended up going through 50,000 churches and about 10 million people went through it and we said okay let's take that class which is a very religious class it's all about what God says about money and it was taught in church and uh very in-your-face not not subtle at all and um corporate America didn't want that much in your face which is understandable uh but they wanted to teach their team that because your team if your team's worried about their money they're not thinking about work while they're at work their productivity goes down so we ended up you know reconfiguring all that in a much more palatable way called smart dollar and now U-Haul and Costco and many many other companies teach that uh buy it from us as a curriculum an HR benefit to the team they can go through the class and so we just keep doing stuff like that something pops up and we launched a a budgeting app um gosh uh almost 10 years ago now and iterated every day almost updated updated updated and it's freaking incredible. Uh every dollar and I think we've got 56 million downloads now on that or something. Holy cow. It's just um it's just but you know again none of it's easy. You just stumble backward into it. Look confused and stumble forward and uh but we just keep pushing and keep pushing and keep pushing. But yeah, you just monetize the connectivity and the service that you're providing and um and sometimes you do stuff just because you need to help people and you don't make any money on it and that's okay too. Did you ever I mean I know that you know back at the beginning you said that the the money kind of came to you. People just came to you and offered you $250 uh to go speak to their to them and and their employees. I mean, when did you when did it have to start kind of transitioning from a from hey people coming to you to somewhat of a sell and did you find that well I mean we have a sales team that sells the curriculum to high schools. Yeah. We have a sales team that sells the smart dollar to corporate America. Okay. So we're going after they're not calling they're not lining up around the block. We got to go get them. Yeah. Um we got to tell them we're there. A lot of times they don't even know we're there. And so you have to go through the whole process of being approved as a curriculum before the school board. at the state level and then the local county can decide whether they want to buy it or not and so you got to go and then some character will stand up and go you can't have Dave Ramsey here because he likes Jesus and we don't have Jesus anywhere and all this stuff. I'm like hey dude you need to actually read the curriculum. You kind of sound foolish. Um cuz it's really not a preaching curriculum son. It's just a teach little kids not how to get into debt and you probably wished your kid had learned it. So you probably ought to before you just start being leftwing barker. But um anyway, we just work our way through that stuff. And yeah, there we have to be proactive in sales. And when we were doing the church, uh thing, we had 38 people calling churches all day long. And you know, putting the pastor through the thing for free and so he would see what it is cuz pastors aren't comfortable usually talking about money cuz they don't want to be like one of those churches that talks about money all the time. And so they're they're they end up going too far the other way and never talking about what the Bible says about money, which is also a disservice to their congregants. Um because you you know if you're pastoring, you ought to teach people what God says about marriage, what God says about money, what God says about leadership, what God says about that's your job as a pastor. And so you know, what does God say about money? Uh I mean there's 2500 scriptures dealing with money and possessions. Um, some of it's very nuanced and almost funny. Um, and uh, I mean the four or five main things that you think about is debt. You know, borrower slave to the lender. There's not a debt is not a sin in the Bible. Not even close. Um, and uh, but 100% of the scriptural references to that are negative. And so it's your heavenly father who loves you, who's crazy about you, saying, "Son, it's dumb." That's what it amounts to. And there's a lot of scripture about planning and budgeting. You know, the mind of man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. And I already quoted the one from Jesus. Don't build a tower. You know, don't build a build. You're building a house. Don't do that without a blueprint, you know, and don't don't handle your money without a detailed thing of where the freaking money's going. And so, have a plan. Get out of debt. The house of the wise or stores of choice, food and oil. Wise people save money. Saving, investing. Uh Ecclesiastes says, "Spread your portions to seven, yes to eight, for disaster may come upon the land." Diversification's in the Bible. Don't put it all in one place. Um foolish man devours all he has. If you spend everything you make, you're a fool. God said that, not me. Um and so, you know, there's scriptures like that. It sound like grandpa. It sound like grandma. It's common sense, you know. There's nothing in here is like, you know, right? I mean, there's just it's just like, no kidding, dummy. And but I didn't know any of it. And I didn't I thought you just borrow all you can. That's what I thought. And I did. And I And it cost me. Um and so and people don't people don't know. And one of my one of the funny ones is almost nuanced is um uh Proverbs 17:18 says, "One lacking in sense cosigns for another." Cosigning alone. You're lacking in sense. The contemporary English version, the CEV, says um if you cosign for someone else, you're an idiot. That's what that version says. And so, you know, but and guess what? But I've co-signed some loans and 100% of the time they turned out bad back in the day, you know. And when I was going broke, one old boy stepped in, tried to help me and co-signed for me and it cost him. I had to go back and pay him later and his wife still don't talk to me. It cost you 100%. You know, you co-sign a loan for your little boy and then your little boy is an idiot and runs a car in a ditch with no insurance and now you're stuck with a $30,000 bill cuz you were trying to do a nice thing for someone and you did it a dumb way. That's cosigning. That's in the Bible. Who knew? You know. Interesting. How how are you at the How are you at the work life balance? I mean, you have a you have a a business empire. Your husband, your father. Are you grandfather, too? Oh, eight kids. Eight grandkids. Eight grandkids. And so, how I mean, how do you balance it all? Are you able to switch it off? Oh, yeah. You are. Yeah. Um, how do you switch it off? Well, uh, full disclosure, let's go back to launching the thing when we opened that first little office at $61,000, right? Um, my wife grew up in a hardworking farm family in East Tennessee. Her daddy owned a market. And when you own a market, um, a convenience store, you work. You come home at 11 o'clock at night. Mhm. You work. And on Thanksgiving, we waited Thanksgiving dinner on her daddy until he could get the store closed at noon cuz he opened for breakfast. They sold biscuits and he opened for breakfast and he closed at noon on Thanksgiving. Came home that. But Thanksgiving, Christmas, the only time he closed. He was there all the time. So that's family she grew up in. So she's not going to whine. She's quite the opposite. She's kicking my butt out. Go get some work done. You know, what are you doing sitting here? And so we're hungry. you need to go do something. And uh so but the first two years um were maybe two and a half years from the time we opened that second office under Lampo and we start teaching financial peace with an overhead projector and a bad suit and I'm teaching it at night every night. I'm doing the radio show every day in the afternoon and I'm in the office in the morning doing counseling and so I get up go to the office at 7:30 I get home at 11:00 at night for 2 years. So, I didn't have work life balance then, but it was agreed upon that that's what it took to get the ball mo moving. Yeah. And it was not going to be forever. We've got to figure this out. We got to staff it. We got to change the business model. We got to do something to get it where we can. But you, it takes oomph to get the thing over the hill. Once you get it rolling, then you can start to back off a little bit. So, from then on, I start learning. And I'm again, I'm a young guy at that point trying to heal emotionally and financially and spiritually from this horrible event we've been through. So I'm still, you know, this guy, right? Still freaking out. And um but uh we quickly figured out that uh work life balance is um I is not a true thing. Yeah. What you need to do is wherever you are, you need to be 100% there. And so what happens is people that say they want work life balance, they go home at 5:00 in the afternoon, which is fine, but then they turn on Netflix or they open up their stupid computer and they're looking at their Instagram account. They're not interacting with their family and so they're or they're doing work emails once they get home and they call that work life. That's not work life balance. Work life balance is when you get home, game on. I'm looking at this little three-year-old's eyes. Yeah. I'm in the floor playing and rolling around. I'm, you know, my wife and I are actually having a conversation without a phone laying there, you know, and so that's, you know, be where you is is a big deal. Yeah. And so, um, you know, that's the first thing we did. The second thing we did was as the kids start as we start going along, then we said, "Okay, I'm going to work my butt off and I might go on like a total money makeover book tour is 42 days." I was gone. I was like a some kind of musician or something living out of a bus. And um but we knew that going in. We said, "Okay, at the end of 42 days, we're taking everybody to Disney." But but there's going to be a period of time here, Dad, you're all you little people's part is don't drive your mom crazy because there's going to be a time that we're all going to be right together. And there's on and then on. And when we're at Disney, we weren't worrying about the book. Gotcha. You know, and so we're there. So then the next thing we did was we said, "Okay, no birthdays and no proms and no uh hockey ice hockey championships." They're on the calendar first. No events during those days. So we did a lot of live events in those days. We traveled a lot doing events, but if I'm going to be doing live event, I may do six or seven in a spring or something like that. I'm getting ready to do a six city tour right now. Um, but they're none of them over my daughter's prom date cuz I need to be standing there when that young guy comes in. So he he understands I'll be cleaning my gun when he gets home. And so you know 9:00 I'm not kidding you. And uh you know so he needs to know and and my daughter you know we're going to be there and I'm gonna be there for that picture and I'm gonna be there for that thing and and so I didn't miss those things but I didn't make every hockey game. Yeah. And I didn't make my daughters were cheerleaders. I didn't make everything, but we were there a lot and we but we put it on the calendar and we said, "Okay, that's and when we're there, we're not sitting and doing emails on our phone in the stands while they're doing it. We're watching the freaking game." And you know, I coached Daniel in hockey for a while and my son. And so, uh, you know, we put it on the calendar. And then lastly, um, we went to a marriage conference and, uh, I picked a Christian marriage guy teaching. It was really good. And I picked this up from him. He said, "You have, if you're going to turn it off when you get home, it's a uh, it's an intentional act to turn it off. This doesn't happen automatically." He said, "Two things. One is when you and I started doing this. I would turn into the uh street the the where our house is, the culde-sac where our house was, and I would stop at the bottom and I would play two praise and worship songs. Switch. And he said, "The other thing is you don't use the same tools on your family, the same weapons on your family you've been using to fight the wars all day long." He said, "When that pioneer comes in from hunting all day, he takes a musket, he puts it over the mantle and he turns around and there are no bears in the room to kill. These are children. There are no things to be done here. And this is my wife." And so I have to put my sword above the mantel. I have to put my musket above the mantel. I got to quit using the same mental gymnastics and processes because it's a different skill set. Yeah. To to run a business or win in business or to, you know, the rough and tumble of what you and I do every day that you you don't use that on a three-year-old. Yeah. And so I had those three things helped me a lot. Yeah. You know, I'm a I'm I'm that wasn't a general question. And I'm asking for myself cuz I I struggle with that. And I've, you know, I I think I'm through the 16 18 hour days of lifting this thing up and and you know, I mentioned I' I'd hired a COO and we had a producer now and and uh you know, the team that we have is is amazing, but well, I started getting enough people on the team that were better at stuff than I was that I went, I don't really need to be doing that. I suck at it. He's good at it. Let him do it. And you know, I can delegate. In other words, cuz I had highquality humans working on the team. That helped a lot. And then occasionally Sharon would go, "Um, you're not the Messiah. That's Jesus's job. You cannot be somewhere and people will survive." I think that, uh, you know, for me, it's it's not just it's not just a worry of not being here. And, uh, I know these guys can run this without me. It's it's I [ __ ] love what I do. Like I love this and it's it and I also love my family and it's but I'm just always I'm all my mind is just going 1,000 miles an hour all the time and I it's really hard for me to shut it off. I mean new ideas are popping in my head. New business verticals are popping in my head. new guests are popping in my head and and and and just engineering the engineering the business to to grow and to grow and to grow and Mhm. I find it and obviously it's working really. It is working and I I just find it really hard to to make that mental switch, you know, where you go home and and you are 100% present with with your wife and kids and um so well nothing's perfect. I've gotten emails when I'm on vacation. I mean, that happens. There's no none of this is pure, but it's just an a series of intentional acts. And you know, my dad used to say 90% of solving a problems realizing there is one. And so, just the idea go, okay, if I can just turn off a whole lot of it, but not all of it at night. And you know, the inverse is true, too, by the way. You can't be constantly worrying about every little diaper needs to be changed while you're down here trying to get your work done. Yeah. And you know, I had one old boy working for me. His wife called him 52 days. 52 times in one morning. O and I'm like I'm like there's a receptionist came in and she goes this is nuts. All I'm doing is answering the phone for this guy's and I said what is going I went and sat down his desk. I said man she called you 50 times. He goes yeah. I said you probably ought to just go home. It'd be easier. Take the day off. Go figure it out. And he goes I don't want to. Not bad. But yeah that's the other side of it right. You got to be able to leave your home at home. Yeah. And truthfully, you've got the kind of wife that I do. Um, to where, you know, I'm not getting, even when the kids were little, I've never gotten stuff dumped in my lap from family problems in the middle of the day. She's not a highmaintenance woman. Quite the opposite. Um, my wife did not say, "Wait till your father gets home." She took care of it. I can just tell you. So, um, and that's one of the reasons we were able to grow and do things cuz I was able to concentrate and I didn't have a wife that called me 52 times in the morning. wasn't needy, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. It's My wife's very much on board with this. It's it's it's but the one thing she says to me is, you know, Sean, you you need to be present when you're here. Yeah. You cannot be at work. And she's right. And um making that mental switch has been it's been tough. I'm still working on it. But yeah, it's not hard. It's just worth it. So, how many So, you grew from doing this out of a church. How many employees does Ramsey Solutions have now? Uh, just under,00. Wow. 1100 employees and your your facility is it's incredible. Yeah. Well, he's got a great campus. I'm real proud of it. Go God has blessed us beyond our wildest imaginations. Crazy. Out of control. Let's talk about culture. Mhm. So, I know culture is extremely important to you in your business as is to me. I I'm building out our culture. I I've been building it since the beginning. And I And you know, I want I just want everybody to be proud of where they work, enjoy coming to work, not going home and going, "Oh shit." You know, everybody complains about their work. Almost everybody. And so I'm really curious and to hear how you build the culture of Ramsey. I never hear anybody when we do a hire, we get a lot of people from different networks around the area that apply that that can't stand where their work. We've never had one person apply from Ramsey. No. Why? because they love what they're doing there and they believe in in what you're doing and and so I'm just curious to hear how you built the culture and how you keep your employees so proud of of what they're doing. I've only seen a couple of places like this and uh well number one it's not perfect. Um we need to say that out loud. Um but again much like the other discussion we were just having a matter of being very very intentional about it. The first thing I think that I remember is we got to about I think we were 60s something people and I hired a an HR director which I didn't want that felt like corporate crap you know I didn't want I didn't want to do that right it sounded like and one of the first things I told him is you're not hiring anybody manager the leaders are going to hire their own people that's not your job but your job is just to help us understand some of this HR stuff and because HR has in corporate America has way too much power. As far as I'm concerned, I I don't want him to have the power. I want him to just help us get the work done. And so, the guy's name was Rick Perry. He was brilliant and he retired from Ramsey not long ago. He worked there for many for decades. And um we would have something blow up and we uh some kind of a problem with the team or with whatever. And um the way I've always done everything is we just the leadership team makes the decisions um in in a collaborative style. We just all get in a room and we argue about it and we figure it out. I don't walk in and go da I have the answer. I cuz I don't a lot of times. Um or I may and but I don't go I'm the I'm the guy that owns it. You have to do what I say. It's it's not because I'm uh afraid to tell somebody what to do. If they need to do it, I'll tell them. But um it's very much a uh a thing and uh I told you I did a an exercise with a ministry thing uh with Seal Team 6 one time and you and I talked about that offline one time and I just loved watching those guys get together at the end and debrief and I'm they I asked if I could stand you know just got in a circle there was um one squad or whatever and um I asked if I could stand there with them and the guy you know the guy said And I don't don't say anything. Just listen. I wasn't planning on anything to say. But I I didn't know who was the senior officer by body language or by input or by criticism. They all took down problems. They were very blunt, very clear, very kind, but you couldn't tell who was the leader. It was very democratic, so to speak. uh I want to watch them debrief that mission or that exercise we had done and what went right, what went wrong, all that kind of stuff, right? And to learn from doing the exercises, I guess, is the point. So, that's kind of what we do, but I didn't know that that was a common thing. I just did it. And um so, everybody's more than welcome to argue with me. As a matter of fact, it's preferable if you argue with me cuz if you don't have anything to add, why are you here? And so, um let's get in a room. Let's do the same thing. Let's debrief this thing. So, we would debrief it and Rick would sit in there because he's the HR director and we would go, "Okay, we got it. Here's we drive it, take it to ground. Here's what the answer is. Here's what we're going to go do." And then Rick would say, "Whoa, whoa, let me make sure because I'm going to write it down. What the value was? What was the value system? The the core value that drove this decision? What why did you all come to this decision?" because all of you seem to you went around and around and around and boom you landed on it. Why did you do that? And he write it down and he goes, "Okay, that's a core value. I don't even know what a core value is, but okay, sure." And we get up and go on our way. He started collecting those and he wrote down like 16 or 18 things. He said, "This is how Ramsay makes decisions. This is who we are. It's not who we wish we were. It's who we are. It's not aspirational. It's this is it. This is the the way we decide to do stuff." And the stuff he wrote down, I mean, it was accurate, but it was horribly worded. And so we got in a room after a few years of looking at that stuff. Yeah, that is how we make decisions. And this is a training tool. We can show everyone in the organization, this is how we make decisions. These are our core values. And if you get these core values, then you will know what to do if we're not there. You will know that if I'm in Scotland, you can send a jet for the guy. You know, you you you will know that's what Ramsay would do. You can finish my sentences because these are the core values that cause my sentences to come out of my mouth. And this is what Dave would do. What would Dave do? What would we do? What would Ramsay do? What would God want us to do in this situation? Write it down. And and so we some of them were a little bit redundant. So we ended up with um 15 and later 14. And we put little better titles to them and a little better stuff. And then we use those to say this is who we are. And we reinforce those. I taught one of them uh for 30 minutes in staff meeting to all 1100 people yesterday. I do that. We do it over and over and this is who we is. This is who we is. You want to be a we. This is it. If you're not this, you're not one of us. This is who we is. This is who we is. This is who we is. And the one I taught yesterday was marketplace service. If you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money. And so your job is to blow the customer's freaking mind. If you help enough people, go make sure they get help. They called you. They came in contact with us. God sent them to us because they were hurting or they had an opportunity. And we need to give them hope in that area with a biblical common sense answer. Your job, no matter what you do here, is to blow their mind. If you're shipping a book, if you're uh writing a line of code, uh if you're in HR and you're recruiting, your job is not like crazy in the building. your job is put people in a seat that are going to be crusaders because our job is to help people because and we won't have to worry about money and we haven't had to worry about money. So that's one, you know, another one is we don't, you know, gossip. No gossip. Um you hand your negatives up and you're going to have negatives. There's 1100 opportunities in the building for you to be pissed off. So you're going to have problems. Human beings are in this building. You're not going to like one of them. Something's going to happen. is going to hurt your little freaking feelings or you're going to get frustrated with leadership or you're going to have this. Welcome to life. Hand your negatives up. You can have your negatives. Don't be belligerent, but you can come into any leader's office and sit down and go, I don't understand. I'm really frustrated. Help me. You can do that anytime. You cannot do that at the water water cooler with a co-orker and go, "Leadership's a bunch of idiots." Cuz that's disloyal and I will fire your butt. I have no tolerance for that crap. If you're going to do that, you need to do it in a Facebook group after you quit. Leave me alone. I'm not going to I'm not going to give you money to run me down. Henry Cloud says, "I don't understand why people pee in their own cereal and then gripe because it tastes bad. Don't [ __ ] in your own backyard." Exactly. And people do it all day long at jobs. All they do is sit around talk about how stupid the place they work is. And these are the people that give them money to feed their family. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. If the people you work for are stupid and you stay, what's that make you? Stupid. So, hit the road. Don't let the door hit you in the butt. And we have this talk all the time. And about once a year, we got to fire somebody. But most of the time, there's no gossip because we don't do that. And if someone starts to say something, they go, "Uh, wait a minute. We don't do that." And you don't have to have even a leader. It could be somebody that joined the company 3 weeks ago and they go, "Hey, wait a minute. They told me in onboarding, "We don't do that." If you got a problem, you probably ought to take it to leader cuz I can't help you with that. If you're sharing negatives with somebody who can't help you fix it, that by definition is a bunch of crap. And we don't do that. That's one of the 14. And it's weird. It's very weird. Very strange. But it's very clean. The air is clean in the place. There's no bad smells. Everybody holds each other accountable. Yeah. We just love because everybody wants to work in a place where you're you don't have to watch your back. somebody's not knifing you in the freak from behind. Yeah. In most places, you know, you're you're trying to get your work done while looking over your shoulder and that's just counterproductive, you know, and so it's stuff like that. We just kept doing that and it's just reinforcing reinforce and you you know, I was having lunch with my son who's our president yesterday and he was telling me about a thing that's going on. I said, "Yeah, you know what that guy says that we we all talk about?" I said, "Yeah." He goes, "Yeah, I know what you're going to say." And I said, "Good. What am I going to say?" He goes, "We get what we tolerate." And I said, "Okay, then don't freak. You're gonna let that go on. You know, you don't sit here and tell me how frustrated you are about fix it. You know, you you get what you tolerate." And so I can be kind, be clear, and be gentle. But sometimes your job is that you don't get to work here anymore. Um because you're not a wei. And you you're more concerned about your little toxic problem or whatever it is you've got than actually being a part of this team and getting work done and helping the people that aren't here. This organization's been blessed and we are blessed to be a blessing like Abraham. That means that we exist for the people that are not inside the walls of that campus at Ramsey. We exist for the people outside those walls. And if you don't be centered on them, you're not one of us. And we just talk about that with that kind of in the voice, you know, all the time. And we have for 30 freaking years. And so people choose, they run out of steam. They choose. They start to think we're incompetent. That happens all the time. And they leave. They quit. They go do something else. That's okay. That's fine. Just, you know, if your spirit leaves, for God's sakes, take your body with it, you know. And that that's our stuff we talk about until everybody's sick of hearing it, but then it sticks, you know. It's it's interesting too that you I mean you've always done it but you pick that up when you when you did the exercise with Seal Team Six is you know I wasn't at six but that is that is the culture of the SEAL teams is everybody's vested everybody has ideas everybody y nobody dies at Ramsey that's serious you know and so uh you know that's that's something that I brought here is I I I love to hear ideas I love to hear the to flush it all out we call it a hot Yeah. And and and I and I love to hear critiques. I don't want I don't want Yes. men that are just like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes." We we flush everything out, all the positives, all the negatives. And so, it's just Thank you for sharing that. It's reassuring to hear that that But then sometimes folks that you thought were going to be with you a long time, their brain goes and leaves. And then you got to sit down and have a hard conversation and go, you know, that's not can't be here. And you know, I've had uh some of my best friends that work there because they've been with me for 20 years. I mean, these are band of brothers, band of sisters. We fight together. We take on freaking COVID idiots and we take on all this other crap that we all have to deal with out here in the marketplace and all the haters and you take on all the whatever the negative press or cuz somebody's always got something to say, you know, and you take on all that stuff together and you fight and then you win and then you fight and then you go to the Super Bowl and you lose in the last play but you almost got there and then you you know and you do that for a long long time and then after 20 years they decide that they're not going to be there or that they don't want to participate in this culture anymore. And it's really painful, but you can't they can't stay because I'm not quitting. Mhm. So, we're going to keep doing it this way. And so, somebody's got to leave. And it's not going to be me. So, it's not how this works. So, and and it's uh but man, we just have to have those difficult conversations, we call them, and they're a regular part of the rhythm, too. Um, you can't, uh, John Maxwell says you can't sanction incompetence because if you sanction someone not doing their job, now if they got cancer, that's different, right? But I mean, you don't sanction someone that's just a half butt because all the other studs are looking at the halfb butt going, "Wait a minute." Yeah, that's okay. No, that ain't okay. Now, you can give somebody some grace if they're going through a personal thing or, you know, lots of grace. But I'm talking about just in general, we're playing to win the Super Bowl. You better you better take your block and hit it. Yeah. Well, Dave, let's take a quick break. All right. And uh when we come back, we'll get we'll dive into your new book. Okay. If you're like me, health and wellness is extremely important to you. But how do you know who to trust when it comes to the supplement industry? We have all these companies. They pop up every other day. They're all selling snake oil. How do you know who to trust? 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Interest rates are high. What advice do you have for Jenzers? They a lot of them seem, how do I say this? A lot of them seem to think that it's impossible to be able to afford a home and to to get ahead financially in in today's economy. You know, I I'm actually in love with Gen Z. It's one of my favorite generations. Um we've got about 450 of them on our team. Wow. And um they are um they they do share one characteristics with the millennials. They're they're very bifurcated, meaning they're either awesome or they suck. There's no middle ground. They're not posers. Gen Z's really not posers. They're really not. They don't do facade. They've grown up with a magic wand in their hand that they can push a button and stuff happens. They've grown up being able to answer any question instantly. They've grown up um with influencers that aren't real uh that that uh haven't earned the right to influence. And so they're very um careful. They're wise beyond their years in that sense. Um, and so what we end up with is the ones we end up talking to in the money space. I'm talking to ridiculous 22 year olds that are calling in that have this guy called me the other day. He's got $150,000 saved. He's 22 years old. I'm like, how the freak did you do that, man? I didn't I couldn't do that. I was 22. I borrowed it, but I couldn't do it. This is imp. They're very impressive. Very seriousminded. And then there's another group that's entitled and victim-based and they're like, "Capitalism has failed me." You know, oh, bull crap. Um, but you know, there's kind of been that in every generation. There's always a group of entitled whiners and there's victims and there's always the ones that are victors. Um, and there's always a percentage of each. So, but anyway, the overall answer is that I give uh to folks in that are struggling with the ability to afford life or to afford to buy a home. those kinds of things is the you you're making the mistake of thinking that because something today is your situation that it's going to be your situation tomorrow. Life is not a still shot. It's not a single frame. It's a film strip and a 100% chance the next frame is going to be different than the last frame and the next frame and you're you're going to go through this thing because if I you know when I went bankrupt and I was in my 20s if I had said okay that's the definition of Dave and now that is my identity I'm an idiot you know I would have been still sitting there right but instead I go okay no wait that's just where I am today that doesn't necessarily define tomorrow and and so maybe today you can't afford a house with current interest rates uh and your salary, your income. Uh that does not mean that's the case tomorrow. uh interest rates will change, house prices will go up, and hopefully your income will go up, and maybe you need to adjust where you live because when I started the radio show 33 years ago, there was a large number of people that could not afford to live in downtown Manhattan in New York City. Mhm. 33 years later, there's a large number of people that can't afford to live in downtown Manhattan. some of the most expensive real estate in the world. You can't live in Silicon Valley and make minimum wage today. You couldn't 20 years ago. You can't live in San Diego and buy a home, which would be double the national median average on homes if you live there making entry level and you throw boxes at Costco. You can't do it mathematically. By the way, you've never been able to do it. So, you're going to choose to live somewhere else or do something different. And when you make those choices, the frames change and you're going to be okay. But you have to say instead of I'm going to sit here and whine and I'm going to be a victim of the circumstances, I'm instead I'm going to control the controllables, which is what I make where I live. And what am I doing to better myself so that I make more and choose to live in a place that I can buy a house? I had a couple on my radio show do a debtfree scream yesterday. They paid off their home at 37 years old. He is a middle school math teacher and she is a stay-at-home mom. How in the world did they do that? They live in a town that is in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. It's outside of Witchah, which means there's nothing there but groundhogs, right? Prairie dogs. Sounds like where I grew up. But and I said, "What's your home worth?" $125,000. and they paid off their home. But he's a middle school math teacher, makes $65,000 a year. His wife stays at home with the kids and they've chosen to live in that location for whatever reason. They may have started there. I don't know how long they were there. I didn't get the full history and bio on the family, but they did a debtree scream. They're 37 years old and have a paid off house, but they they're not sitting in the middle of San Diego going, "Oh, I make 65,000 as a middle school math teacher and middle school math teachers are underpaid, so I can't buy a house." No, you doofus. You're sitting in the wrong place with the wrong number of wrong set of numbers. You've got to change something here. And and when you change, then you'll go on to the next frame and you'll be just fine. So make more, move both, wait on the interest rates to come down, save some money, pile up some money, get ready for the market to slow down, pick up, whatever the market's going to do. 100% chance that it's going to be different 5 years from today. What do you think about crypto? I mean, I've I've heard you speak on crypto. You hate it. I don't know if that's changed at all. I mean, uh I believe the Trump administration just put some into the what is it? The the reserve. Mhm. Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, and is it XRP? Yep. And um you know, I'm I'm just curious, you know, that the space just seems to be getting bigger and bigger and evolving and more people are taking it seriously. I was just curious. I think it's going to continue to get bigger and I think it's going to continue to get better and it's going to continue to stabilize. I mean, it was a volatile Wild Wild West crap show for a long time and it kind of still is really, but it's not nearly as bad as it was what when we first started talking about the subject. So, I think it's getting better. It's getting more sophisticated. It's probably therefore getting safer. But here even when it stabilizes and becomes more normalized so to speak and it's got a little track record to it and you can look back go okay the last 15 years here's what it's done not the last 15 days um then you still got to say okay what do I want to invest in and what happens with people with gold or crypto or um a lot of other things I is they confuse the concepts of spec speculating versus investing. And that's why I've come out so hard on crypto because I have people calling and saying, "I'm not doing investing. I'm doing cry investing in crypto, which is an oxymoron. You can't. The only thing you could do in crypto is to speculate. The only thing you can do in gold is to speculate. Speculating is a short-term play. Um because if you look at a long-term play on something that doesn't have a track record, crypto, you can't look at a long-term play. You're you're you're really, you know, gambling is here. Speculating is I'm I'm I'm putting some money in, playing with this. I think I might make some money, but I'm really not thinking 40 years. I'm not thinking 25 years. I'm not thinking I want to retire from this. But this is speculating. Even if you're bu a home builder and you build a home that doesn't have a buyer, they call it a speck home. They're speculating. It's a short-term play. They didn't build a rental property they're going to keep for 25 years. They built a piece of inventory that they want to turn right now into money. So speculating is short-term. Investing is over here is long-term. They're not the same thing. If you want to speculate, which would not be your not betting the farm, you're not betting your quality of life. If you're not betting your wealth building portfolio on it, you know, I've got friends that are worth $100 million and they've got, you know, they put a million dollars in crypto, but if they burned a million dollars in the middle of their kitchen floor, they won't miss it ratio-wise. That's speculating and that's a proper view of that. If you want to do that, I'm not going to yell at you about it. But the reason I've come down so hard on it in the public eye is because I got people not putting money in their 401k and good mutual funds. They're not buying a house. Instead, they're putting 100% of everything they have in the middle of the roulette wheel. And that's stupid. You know, it that's just ridiculous. You wouldn't do that with anything that doesn't have a long wonderful track record. And so, and generally where you want to be with investments, what Buffett talks about is true. I want an investment that is creating wealth, not changing in price. There's a difference. So when Home Depot stock goes up or Apple stock goes up, it's because they made a profit. It's because they put products in the marketplace. There was wealth created. When crypto goes up or gold goes up, it's just because somebody else wanted it more. There's it's not creating anything. It's a it's a what's called a commodity. And and so you speculate on commodities. If you wanted to buy futures in corn or if you remember the old movie with Eddie Murphy trading places, right? You know, frozen orange juice futures or something stupid was that what that was or it's kind of funny. But you know, if you want to play the this, you know, if you want to day trade in stocks, that's speculating. You're you're it's a short-term play and it's it's just right over here next to gambling. It's not what you would do for your long term. And so it should be money that you could set fire to, okay? And you'd be okay with it. If you do that, then we can talk about, okay, how does Bitcoin work? What is bit what is the actual chain? How's the whole thing? Yeah. Yeah, sure. I get all that. That's not the issue. The issue is I talked to 26 years old 26 year olds who go, I've invested everything I have in Bitcoin and it's 200 or it's 50,000 bucks and I don't have anything else but that. Well, why didn't you go to Vegas? Same dad gum deal, man. I mean, you you know, if you're pretty good at Texas Holdem, you probably got as good a shot as you do at Bitcoin. So, um you know, it's going to be okay. But, I mean, any if you chart Bitcoin and you don't see risk, you're dumb cuz it's all over the freaking world. And that tells you it's a highly volatile short-term play and you're you're trying to trying to ride this thing out. It's got a cool factor to it cuz it's technology and everybody wants it's a fad and everybody wants to be in on it and all that kind of stuff. And the funny thing is in my world I get so much hate because these guys they they it's like a cult. It's like if you don't do if you don't believe in it, you're going to hell. You know, you know what I'm saying? They're like, "Ramsay's Ramsay's completely invalidated everything he's ever said because he doesn't believe in this and I'm so emotionally and psychologically sold out on this one particular thing." And it's like George Camel, one of our guys says, "It's like Mary Kay for young men." But, you know, I don't care if you want to do it, but just be able to burn the amount of money you put in there in the middle of your kitchen table and not miss it. Makes sense. Back to Gen Z. I mean what you got 400 and something Genzers working for you? Yeah. Half over half our team is in their 20s. Very very innovated. Yes. Generation. We were talking about culture earlier. I mean they'll charge the gates of hell with a water pistol. Man, they're passionate. They're missional. And you give them a mission. You give them something work that matters and we're helping people and they get enthused about it. It's they're crusaders. They're wonderful for Ramsay. What do you what are some things that they you think they could work on? I'll I'll tell you a frustration I have is is our social media department. It's always you have to have a Gen Zer running your social media in my opinion. You shouldn't have anybody over under over 30 years old doing that. Yeah, I don't think we do. I think all of them are in their maybe early 30s, but yeah, we contract some stuff out and time and time again, you know, we we I think Gen Z is very entrepreneurial mindset. It does well. Yes, it seems to be. and because they've lost faith in the traditional systems. They're cynical about traditional systems and some way sometimes in a toxic way, sometimes in a good healthy way, suspect of the man, you know, almost like old hippies or something. Yeah. One of the things that I see is when we contract stuff out to somebody from Gen Z is is they seem to be in in my experience which is very limited. It's not like we've gone through a million of these people or anything is but they st they seem to stack too much on their plate. Whereas whereas is is like they want to they want to they want to do our stuff and then they add more and then they add more and then they add more and we see we see productivity and quality of the content creation start to diminish. I I'm just curious if you if you have any insight on that or any advice. No, I think it's um just back to uh probably some real clear guidelines and accountability to certain behaviors that we want. Mhm. And so um what we've had to do with um it's not just Gen Z, but it it does appear there is in content creation. Um, I I don't understand this because I did not grow up with this thing in my hand. It's not native to me. When I was a kid, there was a rotary black dial phone on the wall with a cord, you know, and so if you're talking to your girlfriend, the rest of the family was hearing it, you know? I mean, it's But these guys, they've been content creators since they were six. and now you're asking them to create content. And so what we've run into sometimes is they're just so accustomed to doing it's just part of their psyche. It's not it's it's a developed skill set just to exist in their in their generation. And so sometimes we run into some arrogance with that. Like because I've been doing this my whole life, you're I got socks older than you, but because I've been doing this my whole life, I'm going to tell you how to do this. Like no no we're got confused. you work here and so now we got to start again. You're really good and that's why we brought you in here, but you're not the only one who ever had an idea. And no, you just stepped out over the line with that piece of content and that's not it's not in our voice. It's not in our brand and and it's in your brand, but your brand's now going to conform to ours if you want to stay here. And it's just it's accountability and it's um but it's very seldom with it isn't a level of kind of arrogance but it's not malice. It's not like they're being belligerent about it. They just it's it's native to them. And so um it just requires some uh some kind clear leadership and accountability. And so, you know, in the instance what you're talking about, what I might do if I was facing that is I would like go, "Okay, look, if you want to take on some other projects, that's fine. Other than just hours, you're a freelancer, you don't work for us. Uh, but uh let me go ahead and warn you that we're looking at the quality of our stuff. And the instant you get too much on your plate, we're probably not going to be able to work with you anymore. So, you really need to temper this and you need to manage it. And as soon as I see it, I'm going to bring it up again. And if I bring it up two times, it's starting to be a real issue. Uh, you know, I just be real clear like that and just not mean, but just go, I'm not okay with you filling your plate till the food falls off, and that's not cool, and I don't want to be the food that falls off. And I've had that. We've had that. Um, and again, it's comes from a positive place because they're so empowered. They think they could do anything because they can. and they can just push a button and crap happens. And our minds are like, wait a minute, they have an it's an abundance mentality, but it's a weird one. It's versus a scarcity mentality where you and I are like, okay, resources are limited. Act like it and it doesn't even occur to them that you can't get something automatically because they have their whole life. It's a damn good point. Let's talk about the Trump administration in the first what first couple of months here. How do you think it's going with the economics? Well, economics um the reason you and I and Joe and Theo all did interviews with President Trump and um obviously Joe's the 800 lb gorilla in that, but the uh we all have major top 10 podcasts and we all uh and then Joe came out and in um endorsed him and um probably three weeks before that I did um and I don't do presidential. I don't do politics. I don't do endorsement, but I did it mainly based on the economy. It was not the only thing, but I'm concerned about some of the same things other people were. Border woke, all that stuff, but um happy about all that stuff. But the uh um economics, and I said this on that show, an hour because I knew I was going to get flooded with anti-Trump hate um because a fair portion of my audience are not conservatives. Um but the uh uh economics are oddly enough is as much psychology as it is math. Let me give you an example. If I as a small business owner believe that things are going good and they're going to go good, I hire I buy equipment. I if I I uh stock up on inventory. So I create an economy. Hiring people creates a positive economy. So I'm acting based on my feeling, based on my psychology. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that if enough people believe things are going to be good and they start taking actions as a result, they cause things to be good. And that's what I felt like and I still think the Trump administration is going to deliver. It's what Ronald Reagan delivered when he turned the economy around. It was more about hope than it was some tax change. Okay? It was more about I this guy believes in America. I believe in America. He believes in capitalism. I believe in capitalism. And I believe that the free enterprise system and freedom and the ability to go open a business and live my dreams. I believe in that. He believes in that. He's going to cause that to happen. He's going to create an environment where that works. And so, I'm going to go do it. And that's what we did under Reagan. And that's what uh Trump is delivering when he's making these fabulous vision casting statements about we're going into a golden era. You know, he's speaking it into existence almost. You know, he's trying to. And if he makes enough people believe it, they'll go do that. On the off side, then uh he's doing that fabulously. And then the um the games he's playing with the tariffs uh are scaring the crap out of the stock market. The stock market's down. Mhm. Uh since he's in office and it and it had been up considerably before that. Uh but there may be method to that madness. I don't know. I'm not privy to the inside workings of this administration. I don't play in that world. Um but you know there's one benefit that'll come from that is the bond market could prices could go up which will drive the interest rates down which also will drive the economy. So if you drill baby drill which is about somewhere around 17th of the national economy is energy related. If you get 17th of the economy, boom, and you get interest rates down and get real estate moving again, even if the stock market goes down, the stock market will come back because that'll stimulate everything. It'll get it'll get to moving. And it's not him physically doing anything. It's all of these words. And I know he's I I think it's obvious he's trying to do some other things with the tariffs other than tariffs. He's trying to get compliance on borders being shut down. He's trying to get compliance on them dropping their tariffs down, which they've ridiculously cut our throats for years. A lot of these compan countries have the trade deficit and the, you know, they're charging us 100% tariff and we don't charge them any and we're all sitting around and now we decide we're going to charge them something. We act like we're the bad guys, which is ridiculous. So, politically or policy-wise, that's ridiculous. But the the offside is is that it's destabilizing the markets cuz people are worried instead of inspired. If you can get more of them inspired than worried, the thing will pick up and it'll get moving. And I still think that's what's going to happen. Uh I think the offset has just been the destabilization of all the tariff discussion has destabilized and offset some of the positive feelings that would have caused. So in other words, a business person sitting today is going, "Okay, I think all this stuff's going to get really good over here, but I don't know what these tariffs are going to do to us." And so instead of hiring and buying equipment, they're going to kind of wait and see how that happens. So we've had a delayed effect on Trump having a positive effect on the economy. And this probably because of all the yak yak yak yak yak around the tariff cuz the actual physical tariffs that have actually happened, there's almost zero. Not. It's just been discussion. Wow. I didn't realize that. He's just throwing grenades over there and shaking things up. And you know, I mean, actually, how much have prices actually already been affected by a tariff? Almost zero so far. Cuz they get right up to it. And then they go, "Oh, wait a minute. They conceded and we're going to wait. We're going to give it another 30 days and, oh, well, that one, we're going to do that, but we're going to take out all these others." And you know, if you It's hard to follow even if you chart it at all exactly what all is really happening. Uh, I guess if you're in the middle of it, you would, but I don't care enough to chart it, so I'm not going to fool with it. But the um, but I I I'm really excited about where we'll be in 12 months. Okay. Still am predicting that. I really I Ramsay's gearing up. We're getting ready. We We think there's a wave coming and we want to ride it. Nice. What about, you know, and I I agree with what he's doing with the tariffs and and I like to I like to see us like stand up to this [ __ ] On the flip side, too, you know, I also really like Doge and what they're doing. Oh, man. That's just incredible. But, you know, in in look, I don't know [ __ ] about economics or the economy or anything, but but I do see, you know, I just had Secretary of the VA on um earlier this week, and you know, VA, nobody likes the VA. And it's overstaffed. And, you know, just for some context, there's 480 something,000 employees at the VA. The US Army has 450,000 active duty members. So, they're definitely heavy and and they've gone through US A and all these other places. And it's a good idea gone bad. They're they're they're they're they're cleaning out. I I I get what they're doing. They're trimming the fat. I think the fat needs to be trimmed. You know, the national debt. Understand all that. My fear is I mean, the VA, Secretary of the VA is looking to slash 83,000 jobs here. So when you look at the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are going to get cut from government positions, are we going to see I mean that's is that going to affect us? No. No. Cuz there not it's not enough in total jobs to to cause like an unemployment crisis or something. um which you would have to have to go you know that would lead towards probably a recession contraction of the economy cuz there's not enough people that have money from their job to spend so they spending and that contracts and that's what a recession is. So, but I don't I think it's small enough, you know, it's it's a little bit like um you know the old joke major surgery is surgery that I had, minor surgeries you had. And so, I mean, when you lose your job, you're 100% unemployed. Um you don't really care what the unemployment rate is and you really don't care about the philosophy of the Trump administration or Elon Musk's ideas. You just lost your job. Mhm. And so that for that person that's losing their position, it's huge. But but in ratio in the entire economy, the number of jobs, it's not going to be the end of the world. Um and it's offset by the the savings, the deficit, and the debt going down uh and the chance we could actually get a balanced budget again. That's very productive for the economy because every time there's a deficit remember what happens is okay those jobs are harm lost jobs are harming the economy but also if you don't have the lost job and that job creates extra debt deficit is financed by debt right when you spend more than you make they finance it by debt that debt is sucking money out of the economy and so they be it becomes a parasite it's a tick on the butt of the economy sucking the blood out of it and so that that That's the problem with the overspending is it pulls money out of the currency which if it's out here moving around between your business, my business, and and we're buying, you know, we're we're buy we're spending money at the restaurant and we're going on vacation and we're buying a Southwest air ticket and we're doing all these other things. We're we're moving the money around. They put it on the shelf and now the economy is smaller and so that's not as bad because of all these lost jobs. So there's an offset there. Okay. So, you know, again, I think what what little trouble would be would be more than offset by that. And the other thing it has to be offset by what we're talking about earlier. Okay. What does the average business person like me that's got, you know, a substantial business but not a huge business. I'm not General Motors. Okay. I'm not Apple, but somebody running a business like mine, which 54% of the domest of the economy is companies that are 500 people and smaller. Small business is the mathematical backbone of the American economy. So the guy that has a heat and air company that's got 400 people and a a little small fleet of trucks and they fix heat and air on people's houses, what's he looking at? Okay. He feels a lot more positive about government waste being chopped off at the knees than he does negative of some of those folks losing a job. Oh, good. And again, he's the one making the decision to spend or to hold his cash because there's a storm coming. Am I going to invest because there's sunshine coming or is there a tornado coming and I got to put a put plywood on the wind windows and pile cash and get ready cuz he pile when when he piles cash in macro when a whole bunch of he piles cash because they think a storm is coming that freezes the economy shut. But when they believe the sun is coming and they believe more in Elon causing Doge causing the cutting that the sun is coming than he does those lost jobs. Okay. So again, I think it's an offset. Both are very real and they're very personal if you're in them. I'm not trying to discount if you work for the VA and you're going to lose your job. I'm not happy for you personally. I'm happy for our that our nation is addressing addressing waste though because 100% of the intelligent human beings walking around realize that the waste is really freaking ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm with you. It's just I think it's something we have to go through no matter what. Oh god. It's like uh and the fact that they're actually doing it, not talking about it. For the first time in modern history, everybody's talked about it. No one's ever done anything. Not in the GOP and not in the Dems. None of them have ever done anything. It takes this wild animal to go in there with a dadum machete and and a bunch of Gen Z's with algorithms and start stacking those cash flows and looking at this going, "Well, look at there." You know, we've got a transgender college that we just put $150 million in in India or whatever. I made that up. But I mean, the stuff is coming out. It's just it's it's not even It's insane. It's like science fiction is so bizarre. Yeah. It's not even qu It's not even a debate about how whacked it is. It's just whacked. Let's move into your book, Build a Business You Love. What's the What's the premise of it? Well, um, you know, we talked early earlier when we first started talking about the total money makeover that you read, and it goes through the seven baby steps. If you'll go through the the follow that clear path, it's the shortest distance between normal finances, which is broken in debt, to wealthy. It's the short if you follow those seven baby steps. It's a clear path and and it's proven. Tens of millions of people have done that now. And and so when we're working with small businesses and and Entree Leadership is one of our brands that we work with small businesses. I love small business people and I am one. I've been one my whole life. I believe it's the free enterprise system. And I just like the type of man and woman that does that. They're just they're my people, you know. I just like them. And um they're no nonsense. they get crap done, you know, and they they the same things make them afraid or mad that make me afraid or mad. And so I just connect immediately and and I again I am one I've been running a business almost my whole life. So we started working with these businesses and we in most cases what we were teaching them was stuff like core values or how to hire and fire or um you know the basic some basic marketing stuff some basic accounting stuff some basic finance stuff that they weren't doing because they were too busy doing the business rather than actually running the components of the business. So we're teaching them all of that and have been for almost 20 years and a number one bestselling book called Entree Leadership that was the playbook. It was the Super Bowl playbook that we used to um run our business to grow it from a card table on in my living room to where it is today. How did we do that? We did these things. And so we've been teaching them and coaching them about 10,000 businesses now we've worked with and um been doing events for them for years and big leadership events and that kind of stuff. We've been doing um uh you know again the bestselling book. We've got software. We got all kinds of stuff to help them, apps, all that. So, um, one of the things we figured out about four or five years ago, we started working on it was that businesses that win go through five distinct stages. And there are six drivers of business that drive you through those stages. And um, it helps immensely. it becomes the baby steps for business if you know what those are and what it takes to level up and go through them. Um, you don't necessarily want to go through them super fast. That's not the point. Uh, on baby steps, you'd want to go through them as fast as you could. You know, uh, like you said, sell all your junk and, you know, we move on, get out of debt, now we move on up a step, now we start saving and investing and that kind of stuff. With this, it's more the m maturation of the business cycle as you go along. And um and it it it's what we went through and then we started observing it's what they were going through and then we figured out that if we can show them that these that this clear path exists that it gives you hope that you could go through it. When you're just out there wandering along and you don't real even realize there is a path or you don't even realize there is a stage. You don't do the stuff to level up to get better. And and so once we start showing them this system these five stages and they go okay I'm I'm I'm in stage two. What do I need to do to get three? Okay, this is what you do. And here's your six drivers. And here's here's how that applies in this situation. And we figure we've gone around those six drivers at Ramsey in 30 years pro probably um we've as we went through the five stages, we probably went around that those drivers probably uh somewhere around 10 times 10 times. Yeah. In in 30 years. Um and because every time you go through you get a different version of it. Okay. Um, and so, you know, driver number three is people. And so, you know, the the way we hired and fired when we started was way different than the way we hire and fire today. So, every time you come around to people and you go, "Okay, I'm going to get better with culture. I'm going to get better with hiring and firing. I'm going to get better with attracting the right talent." But then I move around it and I I and I that leads me into planning, which is another one. It leads me and you go start going through it. Then you go, okay, when I when I go up as another stage, it's a whole different set of problems with people that I didn't have before. And so I have to have a whole different level of skills with that that I didn't have before or a whole different level of planning than I had before. You know, if you're planning a small thing, it's not as hard as planning a bigger thing, obviously. So, um, you know, the drivers cycle through and we end up going through those. You know, stage one is is when you open a business, when you first start, and sometimes people stay there the whole time, God help them, is the treadmill operator, which is what it sounds like. You're on a treadmill. This is the drivers of the stages. No, this is stages. Stage one is is the treadmill operator. And so when you start, all of us are treadmill operators. And the treadmill operators run run. Don't feel like you're getting anywhere. Um, but we're real passionate about it. We're going hard. And you get home at night and you flop back on the couch and your wife says, "What'd you do today?" And you go, "I don't know, but I work my butt off." You know, and you're just working like a crazy person. And you're responsible for all the producing of everything. If you if you don't do it, it doesn't get done producing. You're responsible for all the revenue. If you don't come to work, place doesn't make any money. So, in a sense, you don't even own a business. you just own your own job because if you take a vacation, everything falls apart. If you're not there that day, if you're sick, everything falls apart. And uh so it's very self-dependent, which is kind of gratifying. It makes you important for a minute. It's also exhausting. Mhm. Um and you don't want to stay there. It's not a good you you will flame out if you stay in that one, but everybody starts there 100%. Now, you may only be there two weeks. You may be smart enough to start hiring people or have enough capital to start hiring people immediately. You may be this is not your first goound on a business. And so you you're better at time management, but the thing you do to level up from treadmill uh to Pathfinder, which is the next one, uh is you have to get time management going. And you start talking about stuff like I was talking about earlier that I was doing 16- hour days and I'm I'm on the radio and I'm doing overhead projector teaching financial peace university at night and I'm at work all day long and my wife was like a single mom for a short period of time there for a couple of years and we're talking about work life balance and that's treadmill. If I didn't go do the radio there was nothing. if I didn't go do the teaching that night. And I remember standing in that Holiday Inn one night and I had a kidney stone and I'm completely covered in sweat, but I had to finish the lesson. I didn't finish the lesson. I just start giving refunds and I couldn't give refunds. I had to get the money. And so I finished at 11:00 at night and went to the emergency room and and so but you that's what you do in the treadmill stage, right? You you suck it up, buttercup, and you get it done. But but you can't stay there. It's not sustainable for your family. It's not sustainable for your health. It's not a good business model. So, you start to learn to manage time and get intentional and go, I'm going to switch it off when I get home and I'm going to hire some people so I I'm not the Messiah. Other people can be important, too, and bring ideas and carry some of this weight and they can I can have other people that produce revenue and other people that produce the actual goods and services. So, I don't have to be the producer and the revenue producer. And then you get, you know, you get to that next stage. And and so that's what this whole thing is about is just walking through those stages. And um what's the next stage? Uh you go from there to Trailblazer. And Trailblazer is a it's a fuzzy middle. Um it's the middle stage and it's kind of whacked. Um the um you're really kind of getting your traction. Things are starting to happen. You've actually got some other people on the team that are intelligent and you can count on. you're starting to build your band of brothers and sisters and that are going to get her done and you know all that stuff. But you really suck at systems. You suck at processes. Too much stuff is um manual and it could be automated. Your accounting software usually sucks at that stage. You're not really keeping good books. The books aren't automated. They don't automatically produce the payroll at the end of the month. You're having to pull stuff out. We had we had like 22 spreadsheets going and an accounting system and then we would take the numbers off of those and stick them in the accounting system and then try to create payroll once a month and it was this ridiculous thing. It was just very unsophisticated but it was just all it was was we had scaled up a very primitive system and it was now a very large primitive system and so we had our systems and processes were broken and we weren't doing hardly any planning. We were very tactical. It was much it was just like whatever's in front of us get it done. Whatever's in front of us, get it done. We didn't think about a year from now. We didn't think about two years from now. We had to make payroll Friday. And we're just trying to make sure get the dad gum receivables collected. I need the money in here. That advertiser hadn't paid us. Why is he still on the air? You know, this is stupid. And I don't, you know, and why we got a collections problem. We we did we sell them wrong? Did they understand that they had to pay us? I mean, what's the, you know, all this kind of stuff? And we're just it's just like there's a lot of chaos, but there's a lot of business happening. So, it's kind of exciting, but it's very chaotic. And so you got to put the systems in pro place. You got to put the processes in place. And entrepreneurs like me, we this is the part where I really push back. I didn't want to I never want to be corporate America. Negative parts of corporate America. I mean, there's big companies that are good companies, but corporate America to me is bureaucratic bull crap. And you know, some little twerp is his little domain over here is interrupting business getting done cuz he wants to protect his little thing. and we're not doing that. So, you know, well, the, you know, accounting said we can't do that. Bull crap. Get it done. You know, the legal teams, no, they work for me. You they don't I don't work for them. And so, that's the kind of guy who's I push him back in the middle of that trailblazer stage. But we still we had to get enough governance to get things to get the quality consistent and to to get the uh systems that were broken fixed and get we were we were like filling out pieces of paper. we were killing trees and it should have been in a dadum computer program, you know, and that kind of stuff. So, we kept pushing and pushing and pushing. The other thing we didn't do is we didn't do any strategic thought. As I said, we were all tactical. There's everything's hands- on, hands-on, hands- on, hands- on. So, I I started I hired some guys that were and some gals that had an MBA, had a masters in business, and I don't have that. I've just I've got an undergrad. But um and I started realizing as I had talked to different MBAs at other companies that we were coaching and I was talking to these guys that there's I don't know all the details about getting an MBA. I mean I know basically what it is but I did figure out that roughly 100% of the NBA programs do a really good job of teaching strategic thought. Get above the problem and get the 30,000 foot view. then you know how to navigate. And rednecks like me, I'm just plowing through. And the guy goes, "Look, if you would turn right and then turn left, you don't have to kick the barn door down every time. You could just It's easy, right? And you got to get above it to see that, though." And and so, you know, you just took off, put the pedal to the metal, and hope you find Florida. How about a map? You know, and if you're going to go, you ought to have a map. And and so that's their thought. And so I always laugh and say the MBAs that we hired um they taught me strategic thought. It was not my nature because I'm very much in your face at in the moment entrepreneurial tactical. Go mow the grass, collect the money, you know that kind of thing. And u so they taught me strategic thought and I taught them how to work. So but anyway, that that's our joke around there. But it's also true. But so we, you know, because we work our butts off and and so that kind of stuff then started to help us move to the next stage, which is the peak performer stage. And that's the fun one, man. You're just printing money. You're just bailing money. This stuff starts to come together. It gels. The culture in the team starts to come together. You quit hiring doofuses because your hiring process gets better. You quit keeping them because your firing process is better. you um your systems and processes, you start to realize the importance of them, but they work for you. You don't work for them. You're not a bureaucrat. Um you know, we we stand on principle. We've got our core values. We know what we're doing. We're serving the customer. And now all we're doing is making each product better or new products that are even better, our concepts, and we start we can add things to the portfolio. say we start adding a high school curriculum or we add you know a a budgeting piece of software an app and um you know we can start doing that because we're we're working in just strength now. We've got cash cuz you're making more money at this stage than ever and you never dreamed you'd make this much money when you get to this stage. It's a lot. And um you can make good money in the others, but this is like and I can go home at 5 and I don't there's stuff happening in the organization that I have no idea happened and it's all the exact right stuff and I'm happy about it. I don't have to be in every little detail because I've got a team of leaders that I've trained that have trained in a team of leaders and um you know we got a bit of a chain of command so to speak going and I I need to know what's going on and I get reports on different things. I've got accounting reports coming in, but I don't have to be in every meeting. I don't have to make every decision because they can already finish my sentences. They know what Dave would do. They know what that owner of that business would do. The only downside of peak performer is you start to believe your own clippings. And if you're not careful, you keep doing only the same thing and you don't iterate. Because if you don't iterate in this market, you die. If you're not constantly getting better, constantly changing, constantly polishing, constantly changing, constantly looking for a new thing to add while you're being successful. But if you keep running the same play, all the other teams figure out the play. And so you it doesn't you can't you can't rest. And the problem is you you're so dadgum good right now and there's so much money stacking that you start to think I'm I'm really good and that's dangerous. So you got you got to constantly give the old shock to the system. Get the cattle prod out and just go okay reset. We're going for excellence. We're going to break it before it's broken baby. We're we're going to we're going to reset reset. Reset. And you got to constantly it re-energize the whole place to raise this level of excellence. And then the last one is just legacy stage. Um and so uh succession planning. How you going to hand this off? Are you going to sell it? Are you going to quit and shut it down? What's the endg game? And you start planning for that. I started doing that 16 years ago. Uh start our succession planning and and our uh you know, how are we going to hand this off? How's it going to survive after Dave? Um because it's not mine. I'm just the manager. So, it really shouldn't quit. God's whole thing that he built here shouldn't just dry up just cuz I die. Um, that's a bad idea. And so, we got to start working on legacy. And, um, you know, so that's really the five stages you go through. But there's leveling up and a lot of detail, you know, a lot of little nuance things that you do in there to go to work through the and that's in 34 years. That's the five stages we've been through and we've watched as companies are going while we coach them, they go from treadmill, you know, to Pathfinder to Trailblazer and and when they're sitting in Trailblazer, it's really obvious to us then that, you know, here's your problem. You don't have a system. You know, you're doing this thing. You're pulling this out of your ear all the time instead of this is a replicatable process. You don't have to make it up brand new every morning. And so, we just know how to coach them and know how to sit them down. So, we said we better put that in a book because that clear path gives people hope and it'll uh it'll increase the speed of success and the quality of life for the guy and gal running a a small business right now. Well, you had mentioned the six drivers. Mhm. Let's go through those real quick. Okay. First one's personal. When you start a business, most people think that the thing you start with is product. And you can and that's normal. You got to, okay, I got an idea. I want to start a podcast. I got an idea. I want to build a widget. Uh, I want to go into this certain kind of a business. I want to be in the heat and air business. I want to be a veterinarian. Um, you know, you got a certain idea that's product, the service or the actual physical gummy bears that you create, right? Um, but you don't you you don't really start there. If you do, you're going to have a problem. But you it's okay to have that in mind because that's usually the thing that gets you out of bed and causes you to go do the business idea. But it really does before you get the product it really does backtrack all the way to the top. What the first driver is personal and the personal issue is this. John Maxwell talks about um in his book 21 laws of leadership which is his bestselling book and my favorite of his. Uh the number three law is the law of the lid. I'm the lid on my business. And so that's personal personal growth. It my the growth of my business is dependent upon my personal growth. It will never get bigger if I don't. And so I was 33 when we started this. I'm 64. Okay? And so obviously the guy that started this couldn't run this today. that he's not the same guy. I've read a bazillion books over those 30 years. I've had a bazillion experiences. I've had a lot of smart people yell at me and tell me how stupid I am and I need to do this different. And they were right. And there were good good enough friends to tell me the truth. And I fixed things and stuff would break and we'd do a CSI on it and go, "Okay, why did the patient die?" And you know, what's the autopsy results? And well, that's what happened. Or how did crazy get in the building? Put a lock on that door. And so, you know, we go through that stuff and we get better, get better, get better, get better, get better. So, you know, when you, uh, listen to a Sean Ryan podcast, uh, interviewing some of the neatest stories in the world, m if you're lo a business leader and you're watching this, mine that podcast for the leadership principles that you're hearing in that or the life principles that you're hearing in that. If you go to um a leadership conference, for God's sakes, take 7,000 notes and be going to a leadership conference. Read a book this year on what you want to get better at like leadership or business structure or who's writing in the business space that's smart. Learn from that. A and so con the problem with my business is always the guy in my mirror. That's the bad news. The good news is the solution of my business is always that guy in my mirror. That's very personal. And you know, that's kind of what you and I were talking about uh when it was just you and me in the room at the house one night or one afternoon is that that never stops. You can hire a CEO or a president or a COO, but still if you're the guy, you still got to get better. And one of the ways you can get better is hire people smarter than you. I mean, I got we've got somewhere around uh 400 people that do software engineering. I've never written a line of code in my life. I don't even know what they do, but I know that they are creating things that create revenue and help to other people. Mhm. And I that's my job. It's not to learn to be a coder. Does it scare you when you don't know an aspect of your business? Yes. Scares the crap out of me. Me, too. But but it doesn't keep me from being responsible for it. And so, like, I dropped into one of those meetings cuz those are all Gen Z's just about, right? in that stuff and they're smart. And I dropped into those meetings and they're freaking like the military. They've got acronyms for everything. Threeletter words, fiveletter words for everything. And they're and it's a whole different language. And I'm sitting in this meeting for about 10 minutes. And I think I they might as well have been speaking German. And finally, I raised my hand. I said, "Hey guys, I'm just going to be really transparent right now. it. I'm a little bit scared because I pay all y'all and I have no idea what you have said for the last 10 minutes. Would y'all take a minute and humor me and tell me what you've been talking about? I might be able to add value, but I might also just be a little calmer if I actually know what you're doing. And I don't have to know every detail and I'm not asking you to I'm not getting down your business. I just want to learn from you. What have you all been discussing? And they said, "Oh." And then they told me and I understood and I went, "Okay." And it was something about um uh the friction and the conversion rates were dropping on this particular web page. We weren't we weren't converting. We were losing the customers and uh because the way the thing was built, it was poorly designed and they're like, "Okay, this is this and you know and they were dropping all these acronyms around basically making the sale. Now I know how to make the sale. I can help with that, but I can't help you if I don't know what you're talking about." So yeah, it's scary and but it's also I don't have to know. But I in that case I was just curious and I wanted to learn but I wasn't really holding them up. I wasn't the bottleneck. And if you're the bottleneck that's where you get the problem in personal and so I've got to know enough about accounting to make sure the accounting team's doing their job. I got to know enough about the results of the software engineers to know that I'm actually getting an ROI on that freaking $50 million in payroll. Right? I've got to know enough about marketing to be able to look. I got to know, you know, enough to look at the social media and go, "This is low quality." You know, I don't have to be a social media expert, but I got to go, I'm not cool with this video. It's jumping around all over the place. It's bothering me. It's halfb butt quality. I know you you quick edit it or what driving me nuts. That's a discussion I had yesterday. And so, um, that's the way everybody's doing it. And I said, "Well, that's exactly the reason we shouldn't do it." And so, you know, I can bring that to the table still, but I don't. So, so yeah, that that's um but it's normal for something to feel uh but if you only do stuff that you know how to do, it'll never get big. You got to bring team people know how to do stuff you don't know how to do. So, I need a good kicker. I need a good um right guard, left guard, I need a good defensive lineman, even if I'm the quarterback. Mhm. And I don't have to do all that. And so I I'm I need a my CFO is and I'm the this freaking Dave Ramsey. I mean, I know the money stuff, but my CFO is dadum genius. He's smart. I mean, he I comes in, we get to do math riddles and stuff together. I just love it. But um but thank God that I got somebody like that on the team. So I can hand off hand off and that gives me the ability to scale, the ability to grow. But I've got to grow enough. I've got to be willing to learn strategic thought to take me up. I've got to be willing to get better at those things. That's the personal. The next one's purpose. And purpose is why are you here? And I tell leaders all the time in business, if the only reason you're in business is to make money, you will not make it. You will quit. You've got to have something beyond that. Um, you and I have both talked off camera that we thoroughly enjoy what we do. And one of the reasons we enjoy it is we're making a difference. Mhm. I mean, you brought some stories to light in this room that needed to be done. And that was not You didn't do that for money. You did that cuz it's really fun. And by God, it was the right thing to do. These are stories people needed to know because it was ridiculous that they weren't told. And Sean freaking Ryan is who told the story. And that's that's your purpose, right? I mean, and you got to have purpose and you got to identify it. And then you got to hire people that plug into that purpose. And that some of the stuff on the walls around this room are they're they're keepsakes from people whose story got told who would not have been told were you not here. And if the guys on the camera don't understand that, if they think they just run a camera, then you're screwed. Yeah. And so you got to have purpose. And the same thing at Ramsey, man. I mean, if if we hear somebody met God because they went through one of our things and they got out of debt and then they heard we were Christians, so they investigated it, that everybody at Ramsey cries. It makes us cry cuz somebody met Jesus. Cuz that's our purpose. One of them. Our purpose is, you know, we teach somebody teach number one cause of divorce in North America today is money fights and money problems. We can get you on the same budget and get you out of debt and get the stress out of your house. And then you walk in our office and you go, "You guys saved our marriage." Yeah. And game on. We didn't save your marriage. You saved your marriage. But we by God showed you how. That's awesome. That's that's our purpose. And you got to have that and you got to say it and you got to look at it. And everybody's got to be plugged into it. And that's a driver of the business. If you think you're in the heat and air business and all you do is make money by going in somebody's house and turning on their thermostat, you're not going to stay in business. And you think, "Oh, this is a great way to make some money." You're not going to stay in business cuz you're in it for the wrong reason. You're in it to to extract rather than to add value to the world that you live in. And so, yeah, we're going to get to product, but and you can start there, but you better go back and take care of you. You better go to purpose. And that'll bring you to people. and you start adding the right ones, the right hiring and firing. Get the right, as my friend Jim Collins says in book, good to great, get the right people on the bus, wrong people off the bus, and the right people on the right seats on the bus. And that is like a full-time job. It's like I spend 80% of my calories on that. Really? Yeah. It's people, man. They're our greatest blessing and our greatest curse. It's a constant thing. And um some of my greatest most wonderful things are the people that I've gotten to do this journey with that are on my team. And some of the biggest pains and scars I have in my life are from the people that have been on my team. It's but it's part of it, man. Your other choices don't dance. Man, I want to dance. I'm going to get out there. I don't care if I look foolish. Let's have at it. So yeah, you know, let's do it. So, um, yeah, that's, uh, people are, uh, a constant thing and they really are a great joy by and large, but you always got that, you know, that one or two sto like we talked about earlier, there's one or two or three that, man, I must have been an idiot. I heard them, but worse than that, I kept them. And so, yeah, you you know, I had one guy tell us and we were standing in the hallway, he goes, "Yeah, man. My team," I said, "They're" He said, "They're awful." And I said, "Well, you suck, don't you?" And he said, "What do you mean? You hired them and then you kept them and then you're sitting here whining about them. Whose fault is this? It's yours." So yeah, leader has to deal with the people. You don't have a choice. People's the deal. What is your strategy with hiring and firing? [Applause] Um, our hiring is ridiculous. might not be funny in here, but the line we always use is it's harder to get on with us than it is the CIA or the FBI. I mean, it's hard. We put you through the ringer. It used to be a whole bunch of It got to be too many interviews. We got it up to about the average 15 interviews before you got hired. That was That was silly. 15? Yeah, we got it down to about seven now. That that we got out of control. We just got so paranoid about making a bad hire that we wanted to spend the ridiculous amount of energy and time to get a good hire. And um but we do about seven interviews minimum. Now the first one is a 30 minute quick not 32 minutes, not 31 minutes, 28 to 30 minutes cultural review. And we spend uh about 10 minutes telling them who we are. Here's our 14 things. Here's who we are. And if you don't want to do this, you're not going to want to be here. Uh one is we work at work. We don't we don't have remote work. We work at the office. We're we're believe being in the proximity of each other is valuable. And productivity, creativity, communication, everything is enhanced when you're physically in the same space. And so even now it's kind of being popular because like Elon's telling everybody to work at work but um we work at work and if you don't want to do that you can opt out right now. We only got 28 minutes invested in this discussion. So and then we spend about 20 minutes listening to them. So two ears one mouth is the ratio. There's 30 minutes. 20 minutes listening one 10 minutes talking. And they don't let me do those cuz I talk too much but uh um and I'm not that good at it. But you listen and you try to determine is this person going to fit? Are they engaged in behaviors that don't fit here? Are they, you know, for for instance, if all they can do is whine about how horrible the last place they worked is, then they're going to do that about you. So, you know, if that's how you spend your first 10 minutes in an interview talking negatively about the last place, you're probably going to do the same thing with us. probably we're probably done. Or if they, you know, they go, you know, I hate Christians. You probably won't want to work here cuz the guy that owns this place. And you know, I'm a gun guy, as you know, but not everybody knows that. And because I'm supposed to be the get out of debt guy, but I mean, I I'm a firearms enthusiast. I'm not um anywhere near some kind of in elite level or anything like that, but I like to shoot and I like to collect and all that kind of stuff. And so, and I carry every day, all the time. And so, they ask, you know, our guys will ask, you go, "Our CEO carries a gun. I've never seen it, but he carries a gun everywhere he goes. That's legal that he can do that." And how you feel about that? And you know, some people go, "I don't want to work here." And that's good. It's good we decide that right then. You're not a culture fit because I do. And I'm not changing that for you to come to work here. So, and a matter of fact, a whole bunch of people in the building carry. So, um, and we actually have this wonderful training program and we do tactical training and fun stuff and it's great team building and go to my farm and, you know, run a thousand rounds and learn how to actually handle a handgun and all that. It's kind of fun. But not everybody wants to do that and that freaks people out. And if you're one of those people that's gun freaked out, then I'm I'm a Tennessee redneck. I've had a gun in the back window of my truck since I was 12. I mean, come on. So, that's just the way I grew up. And I'm not worried about it. I'm not freaking not making a political statement. It's just a actual fact. So, do you want to work here? And so, we throw that out. We'll throw out different things like that and just ask a question. It's not like saying you have to do it, but this is who you're coming to work with. So, you need to know. And so, that little 30 minute interview that gets rid of um we either canned them or you know that get I don't think one in 10 make it through that. No kidding. Yeah. because they they thought that we were something that we're not and or we thought they were something they weren't. And uh we don't hire people based on skill. Uh skill is important, but it is trumped by cultural fit, value system, um enthusiasm, crusader. Um, yeah. I I you know, I give somebody that actually freaking cares deeply and they lean in and they've got medium level skill. We can take a C player like that, make them an A+ player. But I can't take an A+ player. They'll perform at a D level if they don't fit in. Yeah. And if they're not in if they're not if they think it's just a job. If you're here to collect a check, a J O, how little how how late can I come to work? How much can I steal while they're there? How many times can I be on my Facebook account instead of getting my freaking work done and then I want to leave early, too? Oh, and I need extra PTO cuz my dog needs his toenails done. Oh, geez, get out of my life. Life's too short. And how much can I take? How much of a parasite can I be? And the odd thing is people will reveal that pretty easily and you go, you ain't going to fit in. Because the people here, we work and we care and we love each other and we got each other's back and we're getting this crap done and you know pretty quickly you go there. So we get past that and then we start actually getting into it. But we've never hired anyone based on the number of degrees. I had one guy working for me a long time ago. He said he came into my office. He said, you know, I've got he had three graduate level degrees. He was a smart dude. And he goes, I've got this degree, this degree, this degree. And he goes, "You know, in corporate America, I could make double what I make here." And I said, "Good. You should." And he said, "Well, I need to talk about, you know, getting a raise." I said, "We don't give raises based on degrees, dude. This is a small business. Your raise is effective when you are. When you kill something, drag it home. I'll share it with you. But collecting degrees is not you're not a thermometer. I mean, this is not this is not what we do. You're not a thermometer." I mean, come on, man. I mean it's like this is not a thing. So we you know and sweet guy and he worked there probably I can see his face right now. I know his name but um he's a good guy. I still talk to him occasionally. He's been gone probably 10 years but he really had bought into that lie and a lot of people when you're hiring buy into the lie that the degree matters or the certification matters or what I made at the other place matters. It doesn't. It doesn't. What matters more is it it matters only to the extent you can add value to the place you're coming. So, you know, four year I've got a four-year business degree. It's a wonderful degree. I'm glad I got it. I use components of it almost every day. But the actual degree itself has never made me a dime. The tools it put in my belt, now those tools are valuable. Extra knowledge that I didn't have, that's valuable. So, that's the hiring. and and we're looking for people that fit in, that are a wee, and that are fired up. We love it if it's not necessary, but if if they've gone through something we do and it's changed their life and they want to do that for others by working on the team, that's a crusader. That's a really good indicator that you're going to get on up in the interview process. And um and then the last thing we do is very controversial. Weird. But um I figured out when I went broke I we've owned real estate that my wife never saw. I was out doing deals and she's like, "Whatever you want to do, honey. Southern bell, right?" And you got it, man. And I didn't. I did some stupid butt stuff. And there were other times we did stuff and she's like, "Well, I knew that wasn't going to work." I'm like, "Well, why didn't you say something, you know, and and she always had an opinion after I told you so?" You know, like where where were you when we were making the decision? So, I found that in scripture and I didn't when I went broke and I was studying this money principles and a money principle is this. Who can find a virtuous wife for her worth is far above rubies? The heart of her husband safely trusts her because she's virtuous. She's not a barking chihuahua, not a nag. She cares. She's wise. The heart of her husband safely trusts her and he will have no lack of gain. You want to build wealth? Listen to your virtuous wife. Okay, I wasn't doing that and I went broke. So maybe I need to add that to the get out of debt list or the be on a budget list or whatever. There's a thing I do. So we quit when we went broke and I found that when I was studying all this stuff. I said, "Okay, I don't make major decisions without Sharon. We'll fight about it. We might not agree about it, but we're going to talk about it and we're going to come into agreement or we don't move forward. When in doubt, don't. So we're going to I'm not going to go uh make a $10,000 investment." and she says, "That's a bad idea. Never doing that." Um, it sounds like I'm hp, but I'm not because we argue about it sometimes, but um, not much anymore, but back in the old days we did. And so, if we get ready to do a large gift, uh, with some generosity moves with our foundation, our family foundation, Sharon and I look at it. I don't do that. She doesn't do it by herself. We do it together. We're a unit. We're married. And now you are one. You know, the preacher said he didn't say, "And now you are a joint venture." And so I was running it like a joint venture. Like I'm smart. I can just go do this. I don't need my wife. And she would say, "I'm an independent woman. I can do whatever I want." Yeah, you are. But this is stupid. You know, maybe we ought to work together. Hello. And the people that build wealth work together. That's the data actually shows us nowadays. So we quit making big decisions without that. And then when I got ready to hire our first person, the I don't know about you, man, but when I hired the very first one, that was scary as crap. Yeah. I felt the weight of the responsibility for that family that was counting on me to give them the money in payroll that I had promised them. That it scared the pee out of me. And um the second one was easier. The third one was easier. The 30,000th was really easy, but the first one scared me and I went, "This is a big decision. Sharon doesn't work has never worked at Ramsey. She's never worked at the office ever." Um, but we don't make big decisions at the office without Sharon getting involved. So, if we got ready to do a huge purchase at the office, like I remember one time in the early days, we bought a phone system for $14,000 and that was like, woo, nobody has phone systems anymore. But um like Sharon has to come down to the office and sit and look at the phone system with my three leaders and me and we make this decision and she signs off on $14,000 back in the day cuz that that was a lot of money then. It was a big decision. I don't make big decisions without Sharon. So we don't hire people without Sharon in the early days. So when we got ready to get hired, that's interesting. The last step today still is what we call the spousal interview. And so the last step is after we're pretty dad gum sure this is God. We're pretty sure this is a good move for everybody. God's got us all together. But we're going to go out to dinner informally with the person we're hiring and their spouse and the leader and their spouse. In the old days it was Sharon and me would take you to dinner. We probably did the first hundred hires that way with just me and Sharon. Wow. and we go to dinner and my wife is not she's I'm the talker obviously so she's pretty chill kickback and the video I've seen on your wife would be similar you know you'd have a lot to say about this place and your wife would be watching and listening and learning and then I would I learned I was somehow somebody taught me I don't know where it came from not to ask my wife as we were driving away how what she thought I asked her how she feels and her holy spirit women's intuition. She could smell crazy a mile away. And I'm like a Labrador retriever. I'm like, I like everybody. So, I'm hiring. Let's get let's do it. You know, and and she's like, you know, I like the guy and his wife's sweet, but I just got a bad and she's from East Tennessee. It's southern, right? So, it's a seven syllable word. I got a bad feeling 100% of the time. But go ahead. But go ahead. Don't worry about it. I I just I just tell you I got a bad feeling. And a couple times I would say, "Okay, you think we ought to do it or not?" "Yeah, go ahead." 100% of those were gone in 4 months. Oh [ __ ] Something blew up her. And the other thing is she almost never said that. I mean, three times out of a hundred, something like that. Most of the time, she said, "Yeah, this is great. Let's just do it. How you feel?" "Oh, I feel really good. I like it. I actually like his spouse better, which is probably means he's probably a good person cuz he's smart enough to get her, you know." And so, she just, you know, that's a conversation. All right, let's pray about it tonight. So, we pray about it. Any change tomorrow morning? Let me know. And then we call him. We tell the couple. Y'all go home, pray about it, and talk about it. And I would look at their spouse and say, "I want you to tell him if you have a bad feeling. I want you to tell her if you have whoever it is we're interviewing, right? And for some reason that is very controversial with some of the people out there in the hate land. Um, but I don't know why it's controversial. It's just like I love my wife and I trust her and I like her better than I like anybody I've ever hired and so I'm going to want her on the team, you know, and but that's weird. But I've had some funny stuff happen. We had one old boy was a party guy and you know we're not we we are regular people but we're not like wild animal party people. And this guy was drinking and doing drugs and doing all this other stuff at a at a real high level apparently. But he was smart and he was really good and he was a fun guy. He was a great guy. But um we kind of went through all this stuff and his wife was country as cornbread and she didn't say a thing all night. And I'll never forget, we were at the steakhouse right down here. I could name it and I won't, but it's right over the hill here. You would know it. And I ordered key lime pie for dessert. I'll never for my fork went to the key lime pie. In other words, we've been there an hour and a half. Woman had said a word. And she she says, "Y'all are real religious, ain't you?" And I said, "Well, if you mean like the Pharisees or jerks about Bible or something, no. If you mean we love Jesus Christ. Yes. He ain't gonna fit in. Oh man. I start laughing. The guy that had another leader and his wife with me. They start laughing. My wife is looking at me like I've lost my mind. We're just laughing because me and my leader and even the guy starts laughing because she just spoke truth. you know, she kept us cuz he was a friend that the leader and I knew from the broadcast business and we really wanted him to come on cuz he's a fun guy. He's real creative and we were just overlooking the fact that, hey, I ain't going to fit in. And this woman spoke, she dropped a grenade in the middle of the table, dropped a bomb in the middle of the table. It was fabulous. We didn't hire him. We're still friends to this day. Friends with her to this day. And but that's what it's for because we all get all excited about the positives that can happen and we overlook the obvious things and the spouse will sometimes if they're if they're wise and strong and their voice is used to being heard will speak into it and it's fabulous. That's our best part of our hiring process. And I love to hear that. It ticks it ticks people off. They're like, "You don't have any right." I got all kinds of right. My name's on the side of the building. What are you talking about? I got right, but oh well. I'm going to implement that. I love that. That's a great idea. That is a great idea. What about firing? How fast do you fire? Uh for extreme misbehavior instantaneously, but that almost never happens. Um somebody steals, I don't really need to negotiate. that's just, you know, just sad day. We're done. Um, but most of the time it would be misbehavior or incompetence would be one of the buckets. And those things are things you can work on. And so, um, we have an accountability system where leaders always are meeting with their team and doing one-on- ones. Once a week, you do one-on-one or once every two weeks for an hour. And that's where you listen to what's the going on with the actual work. You hear things personal about the person. How can we help you? How can we support you? What's going on? You know, how can we love you? Well, um, and here's some things we got to work on. You got to you got to course correct. So, there's never anything that's just like once a year we do a review. No, we're once a week or once every two weeks we're talking about life and business and how's it going and you know, you're a salesman, you're not making any sales calls. It's not going to work. We have to get the sales calls up. How can I help you get that done? What can we Is there an issue with your technology? What's the problem? Let's get it going. Let's get it going. Let's get it going. And so, we begin some basic course correction and confrontation there. Or, you know, you can't seem to get here before 10:00 in the morning. That's not cool. We actually work here. You need to get your butt in the office, you know, and what's the problem? What? You got an issue, childcare problem? What? How can we help you? What's the Tell me what's going on. If there's a real reason, let's talk about it. just I didn't get out of bed ain't cool, you know? So, you basic stuff, right? You're talking about all the time. And then the next thing you would do is you would escalate it and begin what we call a difficult conversation. And a difficult conversation without going through the whole seminar bit on it that we teach, but is just um you sit down and say, "Hey, we're both currently sitting on the same side of the table. I'm on your team. I'm not across the table from you. This is not a a correction or a negotiation. But this is going to be a difficult conversation. No one's getting fired today. But if we don't correct some things we're going to talk about today, we're going to have to move towards that direction. And then you say, "Here's the things. Now, here's a program and we're going to meet and here's the things I expect from you and we need these things done by this date and I'm going to check with you a couple times and then by that date we're going to look and see did you do it and then if it's something fairly simple and they correct it um you know show to work on time or they get their sales calls up or whatever the issue is. I don't know what it is or you know you're m you're talking to someone in a way you shouldn't be talking to them and that kind of stuff then you know um and then they either do it or they don't. If they don't do it then you go okay now we're going to have another difficult conversation and now it's going to get a lot hotter and nothing is going to happen today but we're probably one meeting away from you not working here. So we're just real clear, real kind, real direct. These meetings are about this long. We're not going on for two hours with a bunch of emotion. It's uh these are 10 10-minute meeting. It's not it's just going to tell you here's what we're doing and and this is not thing. And so I I'll help you. I'm here to support you. I'm going to work on but and then we would come in if they uh and say all right now we're going to put you on a 90-day plan. And during this 90 days, you and I are going to meet every other day and we're going to work on every one of these things. And at the end of that 90 days, you're going to have solved this problem permanently. We're never going to revisit it again. Um or we will be done. Or if you don't want to enter into this very intense 90-day period, here's a severance package today. If you would rather do that, if you say, "My time at Ramsey's done. Here's a severance package today." Um, I would say when that's put on the table, probably 70% of the time they take the seance and walk out the door because you've already talked about whatever it is up to this point and they either think they can turn it and want to turn it and really want to engage to stay and part be part of the team or they're like, you know, screw this. I'll just take the money and go. And we would rather give them a little money and not have to deal with the because you're taking up a leader's productivity too through that whole time to try to make a save. And the number of people that we save at that point is fairly low. Almost all of them are saved prior to that that conversation that starts a 90-day plan. But when you get there, it's it's a fairly low save ratio. But we'll try it. I mean, we we want give everybody a chance cuz I got fired one time when I was 20. I was working for this company and this guy was a just a he was a character and um his he was a one of the leaders. cuz he wasn't the owner of the company. I was doing site locations uh for a company called Mr. Transmission. It's out of business now. I think there's a few of them still open, but the actual franchise operations gone. And the guy was that I reported to, I was doing real estate right out of college, doing site locations for him. I worked there for three whole months. He fired me. And he came in my office one day and just started, you little effer f your mother's an effer and all these effers and all this stuff. and he's yelling, screaming, and he goes, "Get a box and get your ass out of here." You know, all this. And I'm like, "What did I do?" And he goes, "Doesn't matter. You're fired. Get out of here." And honestly, it that was 40 something years ago. I still don't know what I did. I probably did it. I probably deserve to be fired. I don't know what I did. I mean, I wasn't like a the champion character wonderful person or something. So, it's very possible. I just don't know what I got fired for. And so that scarred me. And I promised when we opened Ramsay that if someone left, they would always know why. They would never be surprised. And they would always know why. Not surprised is you're not getting fired today, but we got to fix this. We got to fix this. We got to fix this. We got to fix this. They're not going to be surprised, and they're always going to know exactly why. And so it's not unusual at Ramsay for someone to I've heard this multiple times. Um they tell their spouse on Monday morning or Tuesday morning, "This is probably going to be my last day cuz they know when they come in that they're done because it's been so clear and gradual. It's on a gradient up to that." And then they don't feel their dignity is not stolen. And um I remember and they're not long meetings. When you do finally say today's your last day, that's a six-minute meeting. It's like, you know, we've worked on this up to this point. We know we love you, but this is not working and we've talked about it and talked about it and talked about it. So today's the decision's been made. Today's your last day at Ramsey. And um what what I want you to do is uh I'm going to I've got a person, my HR director sitting outside. They're going to walk with you to your car and collect your uh fobs and stuff and collect your computers and your access is already shut down. And then they'll also make a time for you to come back in uh late in the day or after hours to sign the paperwork and to get your stuff from your desk cuz there anything you need right this second before you go home. And that's how long it takes. and they're in their car uh 10 minutes after we open and they're on their way home and they don't have to do a walk of shame back to their team and clean out their stuff and have a box and go through like something from office space or something and so they come back later. We're not trying to hurt somebody. It just didn't work. And um but you know people are funny. I mean the stuff that people come up with but it Yeah. I'm not going to surprise them though. And I never have. And I've never fired anybody in angry while I was angry. I've been angry. But I didn't I've never fired someone while I was angry. I go home, talk to Sharon, think about it, come back in the next morning, then I kind of by then it's almost usually kind of humorous how stupid the whole thing is and they just can't work here anymore. You know, I just learned a lot from that segment. Thank you. Yeah, I did. I did. And um Dave, we're wrapping up the interview here, but um you are the money guy. So last question, where should be where should people be putting their money in today to invest? First thing is you should never put money in something you don't understand. Don't put it because Dave Ramsey said do it or anybody else said do it. Um the second thing is if you're investing that means you have a long view of money. You're putting it in something you're going to leave it alone a long time. We did at Ramsey Research research team an airtight study the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America. It's in the book last bestseller I had called uh baby steps millionaires white white papers in the back of it on the research. research is airtight. We had a another company outside from New York look over our shoulders on our methodology to make sure that the research process was not confirmation bias that it was detail airtight because we knew that the left-wing communist group would uh not like the results of where millionaires come from because they have a an anarchist communist uh wealth equality agenda. That's absolute bull crap. We knew that would come at us. So we had to make it airtight. So if you disagree with the conclusions of this study that is hard data that are known as facts, you would be what's known as wrong. In other words, and so one of the things we found was that um 89% of America's millionaires, that's nine out of 10, are not millionaires because of inherited money. The great lie is is that the rich have all the money and so the poor little people can't get any money. This is the greatest country in the history of the world, the greatest economic system in the history of the world for the little man to get ahead. Mhm. I'm so stupid I had to do it twice. So, it's possible. Promise you it's possible. 79% inherited precisely zero. 5% inherited a small amount like $5,000 from their grandmother, which mathematically makes it impossible for that to have caused them to be a millionaire. And another 5% inherited a substantial amount after they were already millionaires, like maybe they got 250 grand when dad died, but they were already worth 2.5 million. So, it didn't cause them to be a millionaire. So, 79,5 and 5 is 89. That's an example of that study. Now in that study, the sad thing was the um process that people had used and the demographic data, the breakdown of wealth of who had become millionaires. Again, not they'd done it themselves. They were not inherited money was unbelievably boring. There's just zero sex appeal. It's just devastatingly stupid. And it's just here's what they did. The average person in their head, now this is the first one to5 million of net worth. This is not somebody worth a hundred million. It's not a billion. A billion's a thousand million. That's people with jets and seven cars. Okay? But this a millionaire drives a Toyota. Okay? And here's what they did. They have a 600 $800,000 house. That's paid for. and they have 800 900,000 in their 401k cuz they've been putting money in mutual funds in their 401k for 15 years and the company matches and it's in a Roth and they did some Roth IRA and they they had retirement investing and a pay for house and the two together was a million and a half to $2 million 1.6 million 1.4 4 million, whatever. Like 80 something% of them look like that. It was ridiculous. So, pay off your house, put money in a 401k and mutual funds, and that that's your first million to $5 million. And it's like all of them. It wasn't like statistical. I mean, I when you're doing statistical analysis on stuff like that, if you can get something at 56% like a like a poll on politics, I mean, you know, you get 48 to 42 to 52, you know, you get a 56% of the vote, you had a landslide, right? We have 56% of anything. All this stuff came in in the 80 percentile. Wow. And it's like all of them. So, it was it was not only statistically significant, it was ridiculous. It was actually fact to fact. And so yeah, put money in a good growth stock mutual fund that has a long track record and fill up your 401k with that. Take the match, do a Roth IRA and do the same thing and pay you all pay off your real estate. And some of them then would start buying other real estate. There were some other cool stories in there. One guy had was worth $5 million and he had 100% of it in farmland. He was a dirt farmer in Kansas. He had a big farm in Kansas and he'd been just he'd buy a few acres and he'd buy a few acres and he'd pay cash for it and he had like $10 million worth of dirt and that was all he had. He didn't have any money. He just had a bunch of dirt. It was but he had a $10 million net worth. It was great. But that was the that was the weird ones. They were that was kind of fun. But most of them are a guy that you know he's a mid-level. 33% of them one-third never made six figures. Wow. Number one uh career was engineer. Number two is accountant. Get this. Number three, teacher. No kidding. Number four, exec business executive. Number five, lawyer. Medical doctors didn't even make the top five. No kidding. They're notoriously bad with money and arrogant with their money, but uh almost like a music artist or something. But um you know, I mean, they're they're either really good or they're really bad like the music people. And so or actors or athletes, the same thing, all that. But um yeah, it was very interesting. And what we figured out was okay, what what have they got in common? Teachers, I'm sorry, uh engineers, accountants, teachers, business executive, lawyer. They all are process people. You have to use a process to build it build a bridge or it falls. And it's a set of principles. You don't get to make up. There's no creativity involved. You got to do the right thing or false. There's one set of math. You don't get to, oh, that's a new way of doing it. No, that's the way you build the bridge. Accounting. There's not four methods of accounting. There's one. There's accounting done right and accounting done wrong. Teachers lesson plan. They often were married to policemen. That was very interesting. Law enforcement. Number four, account uh um lawyer. I mean, business person, they're running a business. They're, you know, have to have a system. Lawyers, there's a system of law. even though we all laugh about it, but um I mean there you do certain things in a courtroom a certain way or the judge puts you out. They don't you you don't have six different ways to uh try a case. There's a set of standards. It's a process. These are all process people. So what they did is they figured out the money process and they did it which was save and invest, live on less than you make, pay off your house and they just and they just worked the process. And so, um, if you're, you know, if you have a master's degree in art appreciation, you're, you know, you're at a disadvantage because that's all creative, subjective, not objective, and you're not process driven. So, you can do it, but you got to adhere. You have to submit yourself to a proven process, and you don't get to make up your own version. And that that's who wins. And so, my investments, I I've studied wealthy people for 30 years. They invest in things they understand. Like the guy with the dirt, he understood dirt, so he bought dirt. And um they avoid debt by and large. Not all of them, but most of them. And um their investments are usually fairly boring. It's not some super sophisticated family partnership double backflip trust that none of them have that. That's that's something on a movie or something. These guys just put money in their 401k, pay it off their house. I mean, so I that's what I do. I buy mutual funds and I buy real estate that I pay cash for and I own Ramsey. Those are my three assets. And you've been on my farm. You've been on my house, but I I mean everything. We just pay cash for it. And this campus, I pay cash for it. You know, everything. And I love real estate. I'm buying a piece right now. I'm working on LOI today. uh letter of intent today on on a nice piece of commercial. I love real estate, but I pay cash for it and um and I put money in mutual funds because I believe in the American economy. Mutual funds are 90 to 200 of America's best and brightest companies that are growing. I just don't think you can beat that. And so I do and that's why I don't do the fad stuff and and I'm not taking a poll. I went broke. I don't care what your opinion is. I'm this. I'm going to do this and I don't need to impress anybody with the with how cool I am cuz I'm not I've ceased to be cool a long time ago. So, that's how we do it. Pretty damn cool. That's how we do it, dude. Thank you. Well, Dave, there's I mean, there's just so much knowledge and wisdom in here. I mean, everything from, you know, how you run your business, how to be a father, how to be a good husband. I mean, just hiring, firing, all kinds of of of of wisdom in this. And I just I really appreciate you coming on and I'm honored. I've been wanting to do it a while. I'm sorry it took so long to get around to it. No, I treasure I treasure our friendship, too. Me, too. And I'm I'm uh enjoying watching your your spiritual journey. It's it's a lot of fun. Thank you. I'm real proud of you. Thank you. Well, God bless. You too, sir. Cheers. [Music] No matter where you're watching Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.