37. DAVE RAMSEY: Build a Business That Lasts

Episode Transcript

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Dave: [00:00:00] And I thought, okay, I teach stewardship. I keep saying, and I truly believe God owns this. I don’t own it. So if I’m a good manager, a good manager would plan. For their replacement and to not do that is to be a bad steward. Hi, I am

Michael: Michael Hyatt.

Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller,

Michael: and you’re listening to the Double Win Show and we’re super excited today to be talking to our friend Dave Ramsey.

I’ve known Dave now for 30 years this year.

Megan: That’s impressive.

Michael: Yeah, that’s impressive. That’s a long time friend, and I’ve known him in a variety of seasons of life. I was his publisher at one point. As you may know, David is the founder and the CEO of Ramsey Solutions. He’s a host of the Ramsey Show with millions and millions of followers every week.

And I don’t know many people that have changed more lives than David, his organization has by helping people get outta debt. And he helped me get outta debt. That’s another story for another time. But, um, author of multiple bestsellers, including the Total Money Makeover and [00:01:00] Entree Leadership. His company is built on biblical principles, common sense strategies, and he’s a real champion of financial literacy and personal empowerment.

And his newest book, build a Business You Love, guides, entrepreneurs and people who are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, how to build a business, and the stages that they should expect to go through, the challenges, the solutions, all of that, and it’s full of great stories. So without further ado, here’s our conversation with Dave.

Dave, welcome to the show. Well, thank you. It’s an honor to be with y’all again. It is always great to be with you. We have such a long history. And your audience knows about that some because you’ve told ’em when we’ve been on your show. But I’m so excited to talk about this topic because it’s near and dear to my heart, particularly the issue of succession.

And I brought with me my successor as proof that you know how

Megan: I’ll be the judge of that

Michael: as [00:02:00] proof that I’m learning. Well, you’ve got this great new book, build a Business You Love Mastering the Five Stages of Business.

Dave: I did a little book that was caused by you called Total Money Makeover, and it basically was the baby steps that we teach, the seven baby steps on steroids.

And so we learned a lot of things from the success of that book. But one of the things we’ve learned over the years now with tens of millions of people doing the baby steps is that a clear path is directly congruent to hope that when you don’t know how you’re gonna get there. The frustration goes way up and the hope goes way down.

Mm-hmm. And that’s true in anything.

Megan: Yeah. But if

Dave: I know, if I do these steps, I’m gonna get there. If I wanna go to Florida, here’s the map. So a clear path is a big deal. So we’ve been working with small businesses with entree leadership for, gosh, um, almost two decades now. About 10,000 small businesses we’ve coached.

And of course we’ve grown this business from a card table in our living room to what it is today. And [00:03:00] so in studying that, we started observing a couple of different things that build out the clear path. One is there’s five clear stages. That businesses go through now, it’s way different than the baby steps.

’cause the baby steps you’re gonna go through and maybe a decade in business, you might go through it in three decades. Mm-hmm. Or four, you know, depending on where you are, what you’re doing. And so these steps, these stages can go slow. That’s fine. They can go fast. That’s fine. They’re not a timeframe with them.

And then we discovered that there are six pieces of business, six components of business that drive the business and they change shape and flavor in each stage.

Megan: Hmm.

Dave: But this basically is the baby steps for a small business is what we were looking for. We’re trying to build a clear path. Because one of the things about small businesses, it’s hard.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: Really hard. I

Megan: love that you say that by the way. You know, when we’re coaching clients, I think people come in to us oftentimes thinking it must just be me. That it’s hard. No, I must be doing something wrong.

Dave: It’s not only [00:04:00] hard, it’s lonely.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: And when you decide to work for yourself, you discover you have a jerk for a boss.

Yeah. Drive you in the dirt, man. Yeah. I mean, you work like an animal mm-hmm. When you work for this guy, like you would’ve never worked for nobody else. Yeah. You know what I mean? So true. It’s just, it’s hard. It’s tough. And a guy asked me the other day, uh, we were doing some q and a in a thing and, and he said, does it get easier?

And I said, the stuff that used to be hard is now easy. Yeah. But there’s a new heart.

Megan: You get to graduate to even bigger and better heart. Yeah. Graduate

Dave: to another set of problems, graduate to another set of challenges, graduate, do another things. So you don’t really get through. Uh, where again, with the baby steps, there’s actually a completion.

Do you do actually hit baby step seven, you’re completely out of debt. Mm-hmm. And it’s like build wealth and give, that’s the only thing left to do. Yeah. But you’re functioning in that build wealth and give. Mm-hmm. But it’s not like this. This one you’re gonna run all the way through. And it’s tough.

Megan: I think it’s good news because it takes the pressure off that it’s supposed to be easy.

Like if I just had this magical formula would all just be easy. It could certainly be easier. It doesn’t have to be maybe hard in the same way. [00:05:00] But I love that because sometimes we think the fact that we’re facing challenges and problems Yeah. Is in and of itself a problem. And it’s not. That’s just being a human.

Dave: I often thought as I was going through this journey, ’cause I didn’t have a clear path. Yeah. And that I was inept.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: And that was partially true at that stage. Yeah. I didn’t know what the flip I was doing. Yeah. And I had to get my competence up to move on up Sure. And level up. But it wasn’t just me that didn’t know it was, everybody doesn’t know.

Yeah. And it’s like the sec dirty little secret is. Everyone’s money’s messed up. Mm-hmm. Or at least almost everyone. Yeah. And I remember the time I coached a little family at church and they were like the pretty family, the Ken and Barbie family, Uhhuh, and they came in and sat down and I looked at their mess that they’re of their money, and I thought Ken and Barbie are broke.

I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea. And it’s like every, oh, this is everyone. Yeah. And it’s normative to be lonely. It’s normative for it to be hard, it’s normative for it to be chaotic. But even in the midst of that, there’s a plan and there’s a path.

Michael: One of my [00:06:00] favorite things, I knew I was gonna love this book when I read this opening story about you golfing in Scotland.

Could you just retell that story and how you use that to introduce the topic?

Dave: We were playing golf in Scotland and, and we’re just sharing, I just learning to play golf, so we kind of suck. But, um, we were there for 13 days and Scottish weather is world renowned for being cold, rainy, cloudy. Mm-hmm. Foggy, everything.

And so one day we get out there and we’re on this, we’re this fabulous course that everybody wants to play and I’m not gonna name it, but we couldn’t see beans, we couldn’t see 40 feet in front of us. Mm-hmm. And we’ve got caddies at every one of these things carrying the bags. And they’re like, well just tee it up and hit it there.

And I’m like, just hit it a wee bit that way. And I’m like, A wee bit. What way? You’re just hitting into oblivion, you know? You have no idea. And sometimes that’s how it feels like we were just talking about. Yeah. And then the next day we were at another famous course, King’s Barn, I will name it. And it’s a fabulous golf course.

It’s on, on the water and it’s just, uh, but [00:07:00] again, completely socked in with fall. Couldn’t see. We could see probably. 50 yards or a hundred yards. That is crazy. I mean, it was just like, you couldn’t have driven a car over 20 miles an hour in this. But I look out through there and the cat goes, okay, you see the blinking light?

And I’m like, what? Oh yeah, we barely, there’s a little blinking red light and he goes, hit it to the light. And I’m like, okay, I can do that. It changed everything. Wow. And we get out there and it’s a little tiny driving the ground fence post with a bike light on it. Strobing. Yeah. Like you put on the backseat of your bicycle if you’re a biker.

Right. And then as soon as we get there, there’s another one in sight. Ah, I can do this. I can hit from light to light until I get there. It’s a genius. And so I don’t have to see the end.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: As long as I can clearly see the next step. It gives me tremendous energy and focus and I, and hope,

Megan: like you said, and my frustration

Dave: dropped down.

Mm-hmm. Because when you’re just hitting into oblivion, that’s a hopeless feeling. Yeah. It’s like we’re never gonna see that ball again. Mm-hmm. We’ll never find

Megan: it. Yeah.

Michael: As I read that, I thought, man, this is such a fitting analogy for [00:08:00] business.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: And how most people feel when they start a business. I certainly felt that way.

Kind of for life in general. Yeah. I don’t care if it’s parenting or whatever. You just feel like you’re up against this bank of clouds and you’re just kind of hitting into the fog. Would somebody please show me at least

Dave: the next step? Yes. Yeah.

Megan: And the great thing is if you have the next step, you can get the whole distance.

Dave: Yeah.

Megan: You don’t need more than that in some ways.

Dave: And Isaiah, it says, you know, God says, I’m gonna be a light at your feet. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And see a beacon on the horizon. He said, what the next step? Yeah. I’m gonna show you the next step. Yeah. So carrying a lantern along and antiquity. Mm-hmm. You know, you had a 10 or a 20 foot radius of light.

Yeah. As you’re going along a path at night, given

Michael: that you didn’t have the lights when you were first starting, you didn’t know the path, you didn’t know everything that you know now. What were some of the challenges you faced right outta the gate as you started this business? You know, what were some of the dead ends you went down and some of the things you tried that didn’t work?

That’s the part I want

Dave: to hear. Well, it just fits and starts, you know, everything [00:09:00] you go, you go running off in some direction and you shouldn’t have been. Or somebody comes in with an obvious answer, they’ve got a blinking light and you’re going, I don’t think that’s what that is. And you run off the guy with a light, you know?

You know, and it’s, and I did that. I mean, I did that multiple times with technology pieces. I did that dealing with publishers. I did that trying to reconfigure, uh, broadcast in a brave new world. A guy walks into my office several years ago and says, we need a podcast. And I’m like, what’s a podcast?

Megan: Hmm.

Dave: And we were one of the first podcasts and talk radio, talk radio people notoriously, uh, shunned the podcast world initially. Mm-hmm. ’cause they were afraid of the competition, afraid they were gonna tear down the people that they worked for. Turns out they didn’t have a choice. Yeah. But we jumped right on it.

But we didn’t stop doing the other. Mm-hmm. We kept trying these things, trying these things, trying these things. And so that was a light that I actually saw and I went. Oh well, we’ll try it. We’re not gonna sell the talk radio show and go do a podcasting ’cause four people are doing it. Yeah. And now podcast is eclipsed [00:10:00] to talk radio and then YouTube eclipsed podcast and something else will the hologram or whatever’s next.

Right? That’s right. We’ll get there. And so what I’m, we’re always now looking for, we’ve learned with all the bruises to look for the next thing but not sell out to it. So we’re platform agnostic in that sense. Yeah. You know, we, that’s smart. And uh, you know, we’re not Dave’s an author. No. One of the things that we do here is do books.

Mm-hmm. But it’s not the only thing we do. We’re not sold out to that platform.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: How did you think about failure in those early days? ’cause I think that a lot of entrepreneurs in particular, but people in general are so afraid of failure. And it seems to me that if you’re gonna succeed, you gotta get really comfortable failure.

’cause it’s a lot of experimentation, a lot of stuff that doesn’t work.

Dave: Yeah. It really is. You gotta change the word. The word is. I experimented. I didn’t fail. Yeah. The famous Edison quote, I found 9,500 ways the white light bulb didn’t work. Yeah. So before I finally did, but that, yeah, it’s a constant experimentation.

I think two things, uh, just to be candid, one of ’em is I didn’t do it well ’cause [00:11:00] it just pissed me off. I would just get angry.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: That this didn’t work. And I would just go that much harder.

Megan: Yeah. It’s just

Dave: like, did you internalize that? Yeah. Did you feel like, yeah. I mean, I’m an idiot or No, I would just go, you know, don’t get in my way.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: This is what God has called us to do and you’re bothering me. Yeah. But this isn’t working. You know, and it’s like, ah. You know, and, and so I didn’t always handle it well internally or externally for that reason because you know, if some guy canceled us on a radio station and he’s 26 years old, and you know, I’m like, okay, now all the single moms and the little families can’t get help in that city because you’re an idiot.

Yeah. You know, I would just go, I would just go off, you know? But all that was, was just what end up happening. And God would give us a better station later. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know? But I’m not Right then not.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: But that really was incremental failure. That’s the parts where I didn’t handle it well. The part where I did handle it well are, one of the things that kept the perseverance going was the growing up in, as a salesman, mom and dad were in the real estate business.

I got my real estate license when I turned 18. You know, I’m [00:12:00] 14 or 15 years old listening to sales trainers. Like CT Robert or Zig Ziglar.

Megan: Yep.

Dave: Charlie Tremendous Jones. And embrace rejection. Embrace rejection. Thank you. May I have another? And uh, you know, if you’re gonna close one out of 10 nos, then somebody gives you a No, you go.

Thank you. I’m that much closer the next. Yes. I mean, and so thank you. Thank you. Gimme another. And so, and so I kind of had some of that, but on the other hand, sometimes I just would get angry and just push on. But the anger fueled me. Yeah. I was not yelling at people. Mm-hmm. But it was just like, you just committed your mission.

Like

Megan: just, yeah.

Dave: Come on. What in the world, I love, love that you can’t seem to stuff the ball into the end zone. We’re on the dad gum six yard line five times now. Yeah. Come on, come on. You know, it’s just like, but it was just this, it was a, that’s a frustration. I think most entrepreneurs have that.

Megan: Yeah.

Definitely. Did all this

Dave: work and didn’t, didn’t work. Yeah. And so things just blew up in our face. And man, I’ve done that. Just God, if I ever write that book, it’ll be thick.

Megan: I love that. That’s, that you’re willing to say that because again, it just makes it seem. Normal [00:13:00] that that’s what we go through. And I also think, at least in our experience, those are the experiences that prepare you ultimately for success.

If you didn’t have those, you’d be in trouble

Dave: humbles, or even humiliate you so that when you do get there, you’re kind of surprised. Yeah,

Megan: yeah, that’s right.

Dave: It’s like, whoa,

Megan: wait, that worked. I dunno what.

Michael: Yeah. Well, you definitely beat the odds. Yeah. I remember seeing, several years ago, the Commerce Department put out a thing that said a million new businesses will be started this year, whenever that was.

And they said if the million that that start, 80% of them will go bankrupt within the first five years or be out business. Right. 20% survive. And the 20% that survive, only 20% will survive for 10 years. So if you do the math on that, you have a 4% chance of succeeding. Mm-hmm. So it’s no wonder when we have some success, we just go like.

I’m kinda surprised.

Dave: Yeah. And I survived all these things that the other people didn’t.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: And by that much and you know, just by the hair of my chiney chin, you know? Yeah. And so, you know, your faith comes into play and you go, [00:14:00] okay, God didn’t bring us as far to drop us on our head.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.

Dave: He does allow things to die.

He does allow things to fail. And so this this’s still a possibility, but you know, you go, okay, this really is him carrying us along. Because at some point you start to realize I can’t really take credit for it. Yeah. It would be not only lacking in humility, but it would be lacking in intelligence. Right.

To look around and go, I read I didn’t do this by myself. Really? Yeah. That’s

Megan: great. One of the things that you talk about in the first part of the book, in that first driver about the personal aspect of building your business is how you’re the solution, but you’re also the problem. And you know, I think we gotta get clear on that right outta the gate.

’cause it is so true. It’s an inconvenient truth really. I wish it, it weren’t true in some ways, but I would love to know for you. Where were you? Your own problem?

Dave: Constantly. All the way through, but I became less of my own problem once I had that self-awareness.

Megan: Hmm,

Dave: hmm. If there’s a, a problem internally at Ramsey, it’s my fault.

Megan: Yeah. Mm-hmm. [00:15:00]

Dave: If there’s a problem with the marketing, even if I didn’t write the campaign mm-hmm.

Megan: I

Dave: allowed the campaign and I hired the people that did the campaign, it’s my fault.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Dave: We had a, a controversy early in our thing way back 25 or 30 years ago. We had a newspaper. We still have a newspaper column.

It’s in hundreds and hundreds of newspapers, but in those days we had it in a couple hundred newspapers and the guy internally reran some columns. Wow. We, they were paying us $2 or nothing for a, a new column every week, and he just was lazy and just sent out the new thing. And I’m like, well, that guy did that.

And I went, no, I hired him. And I left him in a position without being closely, there was no checks and balances to make sure that our integrity was proper. And so they came back, well, Dave Ramsey’s plagiarizing, Dave Ramsey’s, whatever, you know, cheating. And, uh, Gnet Newspaper fired us from all the newspapers.

So they’re like, oh. And, and then they wrote an article about what a jerk I am. And I went, that’s not fair. And I then I kind of had a little [00:16:00] moment. I went, yeah. It is actually fair. ’cause we did do that. I didn’t do it intentionally. The organization didn’t do it intentionally, but we allowed it to happen and it’s got my name on it, so it’s my, my responsibility.

And so what do you do? Well, you go, okay, we’re not doing that again without checks and balances. Mm-hmm. We’re going to, um. All work in a more collaborative manner, not someone off in their own little world and they can pull crap like that. Yeah. And and mess you up. Yeah. And so I learned as a leader that that was a leadership breakdown that allowed that.

And so it ultimately was my fault. So there’s things like that, that have happened over and over and over through the years. And I look back, you know, we have something blows up internally with an, with a team member. And I always ask the question, how did they get in the building?

Megan: Why did we hire

Dave: someone that would do something like that worse than that?

Why would we keep someone that would do something like that? Mm-hmm. And, uh, when we have to talk about, okay, is recruiting breakdown, are we not covering core values in the interviewing process? Are we not doing check-ins to where we know what’s going on in their [00:17:00] lives? Uh, we’re not doing good accountability internally, so it is on us.

You can blame the person that misbehave, but it really wasn’t their fault. They were just doing what they naturally do. And it was our fault for setting up a thing that allowed it to happen. Mm-hmm. Or continue to happen or whatever it is. And so there’s a billion things like that over 35 years Yeah. That fall in that category.

But yeah, I think I got it. It, I’ll tell you who gave words to it. The I’m the problem was Maxwell. Yeah. John, our friend John Maxwell, you know, and the law of the lid. Yep. And I mention that in the book, and I’m, I mention that every time I’m with John John’s a personal friend of all of ours and just, he’s the grandpa of, but I’m listening to those cassette tapes of his and the, you know, I’m 30 years old and listen to those cassette tapes, maximum Impact.

And John Maxwell’s on there and he’s like, even before he did 21 Irrefutable Laws, but he would talk about that. And you know, Ziglar would say stuff like, if it’s to be, it’s up to me.

Megan: Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dave: And that’s kind of a, a Norman Vincent Peel feeling thing, you know, which is not all up to me, but it. [00:18:00] Is up to me.

Yeah. It is my fault. The The buck stops with you. The buck stops with me. And so you give other people the credit when things are right and take the hit when things are wrong. Yeah. Because it is your job as the leader. Yeah. To step into that. And when I started kind of getting those things in my head and I went, if I’m the problem, I’m the lead.

My lack of competency. My incomplete spiritual walk, my psychological, uh, instability, my relational problems at home. If those things are there, if that’s you and you’re hearing that in any of those sentences, I, I didn’t have all of those things, but I had some of them. If that’s you, you’re the problem.

Your organization’s not going to exceed your incompetence.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: And when I looked at that, I went, that’s really bad news. And it’s great news. ’cause it’s a, it’s a controllable I can deal with. Right? Yeah. ’cause he’s in, he’s right here. Yeah. I can deal with his out there. That means I need to read a book.

Megan: Yeah. That

Dave: means I need to learn something I didn’t know. It means I’ve gotta walk on my work, on my spiritual walk. I gotta take care of my body. I’ve gotta work on my relationships continuously at home. Because if the home front isn’t working, there isn’t anything [00:19:00] working at work. So, you know, you get all that stuff and if you don’t get those things going, the thing can’t grow.

Mm-hmm. You’re standing around thinking, well, it’s a marketplace problem, or it’s a product market fit problem. No, it’s a competency of the leader problem. And that’s the first driver of the six drivers. And as you go around those six drivers, through the five stages, you may go around all six of them, six or eight, 10 times as you go through the five stages.

Mm-hmm. Every time you come around, you’re gonna get a new set of problems.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: And a new set of competencies I have to have that I didn’t have to have in an earlier stage or in an earlier thing. And as I make more money, I’ve got a whole nother thing I gotta deal with. As I’ve got more scale, I’ve got a whole nother thing I gotta deal with.

And so, again, I’ve gotta come back to that every single time. I almost think it’s like

Michael: training in the gym. You know, you work out with the weight, maybe it’s 30 pounds, and then the trainer says to you the next week, congratulations, we’re gonna graduate you to 40 pounds.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: It’s like it never ends. No.[00:20:00]

Was there ever. In the history of your business, kind of a Red Sea moment where you felt like your back was against the wall, everything was at stake. You realized how fragile everything was, but then you were delivered at the last minute.

Dave: Uh, there’s probably been several. The first one was in 1994. I had been on a radio, local radio station for two years working for free.

That’s about when I met you. Yeah, that was, yeah. And I had this little blue book called Financial Piece. I was selling outta the trunk of my car. There’s no bookstores would take a little self-published, poorly written book. Certainly no publishers would until one did finally, anyway, that radio station was in, uh, bankruptcy.

So the guy running it at the time it went into bankruptcy, David Hollywood Manning, still a good friend of this day, big, great iconic guy in the radio world. He was running the [00:21:00] station and he ran it when he’s the guy that put us on the air. When I first went on the air, he hired me for free, let me work for free.

And I told him, if we’re bad, uh, you can cut our pay in half. And so, and we were bad. It was really country fried Wwt n like Darl and his other brother Darl doing talk radio. And so it was nasty and the advice was good, but the delivery was horrid. The thing was booming along and we’re doing a little events, the book’s starting to sell.

I moved the stuff out of my living room into a little 800 square foot office. With my first team member, Russ Carroll was doing a coaching and counseling. Wow. And I hired a, hired a receptionist and bought a used copier, three little phones from Best Buy or something and plugged them in. And we were in business and we’re going along and Manning gets tired of fighting against the bankruptcy trustee, trying to keep this thing open and walks off the scene and the bankruptcy trustee brings in this guy who detested everything that I am.

Really? Oh gosh. [00:22:00] You know, he, he couldn’t stand Christians, he didn’t like southern people. He didn’t like, he didn’t like the advice I was giving. He didn’t like anything. Probably

Michael: pro credit card too.

Dave: Uh, yeah. He would pro everything. I mean, he just. Basically, and he came in and said like, you need to quit.

And I’m like, I’m not gonna quit. And he goes, this is not gonna go well for you. Then I’m like, well, we’ve got a little thing here and I feel like we’re supposed to be doing it, and you just showed up. So no, we’re not going anywhere. And the bankruptcy trustee, uh, I’d known him from my days previous in the real estate world.

I bought deals through bankruptcy. I knew the guy. And so he’s like, wouldn’t let him fire me. And this guy, this guy is, he’s just, every day we would walk in the door, he would cuss us and yell at us. And we sit down, close the door, do the thing. He put a show on after us called The Good Life. I remember this show, kind of the show was everything, right?

Just after we finished an hour doing the show, they did an hour telling everybody everything we had said for an hour was exactly wrong. Oh, you know, and they were, they were like, it was like two guys at a [00:23:00] finance company or something. And so it was hilarious in a way, looking back on it. But at the moment it was the thing.

And I’ve got, you know, written in my Bible that date where God talks about you going to the cleft of the rock and he will cover you with his wing because I was so. Just, we were gonna die. This whole thing was this dream that had been gradually building for about a year and a half was gonna just blow up and I was gonna have to go do something else.

I just thought it was over. If God doesn’t protect us, ’cause this guy is just adversarial man, and that’s being kind, the swear words and stuff. They fired him finally because he had done some inappropriate things. No kidding. Uh, inside the building. And, uh, they finally fired him. And I thought, okay, that’s the Red Sea moment I got.

I really, the hand of God protected us.

Megan: Wow.

Dave: Because it would’ve that one guy, if he had, had his way. Would’ve flipped the switch. He said, somebody’s gonna sue us with you on the air. And I’m like, why do you get, think we’re gonna get sued? He goes, ’cause y’all are so boring that somebody’s gonna go to sleep at the wheel and wreck their car.

Megan: Oh my gosh. Wow. [00:24:00]

Dave: Oh my gosh. But yeah, I mean, it was abusive, toxic, to say the least. We didn’t even use those kinds of words in those days, but honestly we, it was like when he left, it was like, oh. And then Gaylord bought the thing and it went and it took off and Wow. Amazing. The, uh, the ratings went through the roof and we really did get to the other side of the sea and, and get the tambourines out and celebrate, you know, I mean, it was real.

Megan: That’s fantastic.

Michael: I was thinking like in the, the life of an entrepreneur over the course of years and decades, you’re probably gonna have several moments like that. And I was reflecting back on, we’ve been watching the Chosen Gail and I, and absolutely love it. But there’s this scene where, you know, Jesus feeds the 5,000 and then a couple episodes later, the disciples were all panicked ’cause they don’t have enough food.

He’s like, did you forget

Megan: about the feeding of the 5,000 Exactly. About five minutes ago, you know? Exactly.

Michael: And I, I thought I was journaling the other day and I thought back through my own history and I thought, I forget too. Yeah. You know, it’s like every new thing, it’s like I forget the whole [00:25:00] history and like this is a unique situation, but it’s not.

Has that been your case too, where you’ve had those throughout your career?

Dave: Yeah. I mean, we’ve had times and, and again, sometimes it’s not, I didn’t forget, but I’m also well aware that I’m not the Messiah. Mm-hmm. And so God can allow Yeah. A farmer to go broke by the crop’s not coming in. Mm-hmm. It does happen.

And the farmer could be a faithful person, so I don’t get to tell God what to do. So he could choose to use a, a pandemic to end Ramsay solutions. Hmm. He could choose to do that. And so when you’re in the middle of that battle, trying to keep cash flow coming in, ’cause entire. Segments of the company evaporated, right?

Like everybody, and I wasn’t in the plexiglass business, so we had a problem, you know? And so it’s like, but in that situation, you’re looking and going, okay, God, we wanna know what you want us to do with your thing. If you wanna close it, it’s yours. We hope that’s not your plan. Okay? How can we be diligent?

How can we be good managers, good stewards, [00:26:00] while this is going on in the middle of whatever the crisis is that’s coming at you. But, um, the disciples, how did they forget? But they also know that, I don’t know one town over, there’s hungry people. Yeah. Yep. They’re really there. And so even though Jesus was in the vicinity, and so it’s real, there’s a reality to the world.

We live in the fallen nature of the world we live in. And so kind of gotta balance that with our faith. And it’s this weird moment where you’re just looking for the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

Megan: You know, you talk about, well, in the title itself, build a business that you love. And I wanna know, what about Ramsey’s solutions do you love the most?

What it, what it’s become like when you walk in every day, what just makes your heart swell?

Dave: It has to be two things, again, probably be one thing. The obvious one, and it would be obvious to anyone, is that I’m very, very proud of the number of people that this team and I have been able to help.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And give hope.

Whether it’s in the mental health field with Dr. John Delony or the money [00:27:00] field with the rest of us, um, careers with Ken Coleman, whatever, wherever we’re able to give someone biblically based common sense education and empowerment, which gives hope. That’s our mission and we get to hear that now. And it, and it’s fun these days because it’s weird because I, I’m the YouTube thing and all that is like, now I’m talking to like 21 year olds.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: And we got off the, a ship a a cruise this summer in Iceland and the kid working, he was like 21 years old. Young guy is working the, uh, passport control and he’s like. You are the guy on YouTube and it’s like, thank you, thank you. And it’s like, you know that that was the most bizarre one. You know? It was like, wow.

Yes, I am. And, but, but only YouTube, right? I mean, we didn’t have that with talk radio. Yeah. But you still get to see the, the scale. There’s a lot of healthy pride that comes from that. And I’m, I’m not under the impression I did by myself. I’m not under the impression our team even did it by ourselves. Um, I think God gave us favor in the marketplace to do that.

[00:28:00] The second thing that, that I didn’t see coming, that one you can kind of see coming. It’s like what we’re here for and it worked. So the thing I didn’t see coming that tremendous pride with our team.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Dave: We have an incredible culture and an incredible team. The quality of human beings that work in this place and the depth that they care and their level of competence and their compassion for the customer and how serious minded they are.

Fun that they are as well. Simultaneously. I had no idea I was gonna be doing that when I started.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: I thought I just, there was a whole bunch of broke people and we go help ’em. I had no idea I was gonna need a thousand folks, 1100 people in this building to and more to come to cause that to happen.

You know, the entrepreneurs find, and they’ll find in this book too, that, that people are our greatest blessing and they also give us their most trouble.

Megan: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dave: Simultaneously talk about

Megan: that a little bit. ’cause I certainly have experienced that, that our resonated Me too when I read that.

Dave: Yeah.

Simultaneously. I mean, we, [00:29:00] it’s like our greatest joy and our greatest sorrows

Megan: Yeah. Come

Dave: from our folks. And, and every time it’s the biggest pain point in entree leadership. And when I’m talking a small business person, they got 40, 50 people. They’re like, what’s your biggest problem? People, it’s like getting good ones and getting rid of the bad ones.

Yeah. It is like, are bad ones. Drive us crazy. And so it’s been a constant 35 year slog to add enough steps to the hiring process, to um, try to build the right kind of people and then, uh, add enough processes that aren’t corporate. Yeah. Gubby stuff. Mm-hmm. Not bad, but, but just where we actually are engaged and we didn’t just hire ’em and set ’em free and then wonder why they messed up.

That would be dumb. Yeah. And I did do that at one point, but nowadays we’re really all very collaborative. No one in this building, including me, does anything hardly by themselves. Yeah. That creates an accountability. It creates a matching of the activities to the values, the core values of the organization.

Are we gonna be aligned to those things? [00:30:00] And it exposes when someone’s not. So the thing that ends up being said around here is someone will come in, they’ve been here five months, five years or 10 years. I’ll come in and go, you know, I think my season at Ramsey has done, I don’t know who first said that and someone heard it, but I hear that.

And all that means is, is that their enthusiasm for the crusade has waned and they’re, you’re being set free to go do something else that God’s got for ’em. And that’s not horrible. It’s not a bad thing. It’s Dave Ramsey’s a cult leader. No, I regularly ask people to leave. So I know I’m not a cult leaver, so they don’t do that in cults, but, but the, uh, uh, you know, so we, again, a new set of problems, that’s one of the drivers.

Mm-hmm. That’s the third driver and the six drivers going through the five stages is you get a little bit more sophisticated, a little bit more scale. The quality of people changes. Mm-hmm. I have gotten comfortable talking about, have you forgotten? I haven’t forgotten this one. I can tell you that with confidence, somewhere around 90% of the time that someone leaves here, I.

We get an upgrade. [00:31:00]

Megan: Isn’t that so true? We would say the same thing. Absolutely. I feel like people don’t know that, you know, small business owners who are maybe in the early stages of their business. Yeah. They feel so fearful about letting somebody go, there’s so much scarcity. Or

Dave: when they quit or

Megan: when they quit,

Dave: oh, how are we gonna make it?

He left. It’s like, yeah. He didn’t even notice. Like

Michael: we just reload should to all of us, you know? Okay. I have a funny story. Back when my early days of publishing, I was at Word Books in Waco, Texas. Oh

Dave: yeah.

Michael: I left to come to work at Thomas Nelson. This is the first time I was at Thomas Nelson. And so I went in and told my boss and he said, you know, we’re really sorry to see you go.

And I said, yeah, I’m just afraid that everything, I was in my late twenties, I’m afraid everything’s gonna fall apart at the company. And he said, have you ever thrown a rock into a pond? He said, how long did it take for the hole to fill?

Megan: That was the pin and a

Dave: balloon. I think he just called you a rock. I was gonna,

Michael: you might have a point

Dave: check,

Michael: please.

Dave: And the scary thing is, it’s true of [00:32:00] everyone, so, right. One of the things we’ve learned from that is to constantly be working on our bench depth. Everyone in the organization is constantly working on their replacement.

Megan: Hmm.

Dave: Including me. And so yeah, we’ve gotta do that. Uh, one of my best friends was, uh, our CFO for 13 years, and he said, I’m gonna, when I hired him 13 years before, I’m gonna retire at 60. It’s been my goal since I got outta college.

Megan: Hmm.

Dave: My wife and I talked about it. We’re gonna retire at 60. And we’re like, eh, we’ll see about that.

See, and as he starts approaching 60, he says, again, I’m like, okay, so where’s your replacement? ’cause you ain’t leaving until you’ve got your guy in here and training CFO at Ramsey. Yeah. I mean, come on. Yeah. So you gotta get this right. And sure enough, he hired a guy two years before. Mm-hmm. And, uh, that guy’s a brilliant CFO and, but he benched depth and covered his replacement and did that.

But I think the thing is normative because we, the larger the team gets, the more we realize it’s a rocking a pond. It just mm-hmm. The whole fills in quick when it’s five people and one of ’em leaves. That’s 20% of your workforce. Yeah. Yep.

Megan: And it

Dave: has more of an impact, but [00:33:00] also you’re still early in your competence and confidence in yourself to hire, attract, and keep.

Right people. Mm-hmm. If a good person leaves and goes and gets a, in air quotes, a better job, you go, okay, what do we do wrong? How could you have a better job? This is the best job. I mean, we’re the best place. So how could you get a better job? You could now, well there is a lot of better jobs and so not only are they double his pay, but you know, they actually know what they’re doing over there.

And so, you know, that kind of stuff. So we’re having to learn that stuff and every time crazy got in the building, we find out what door they use and we put a lock on that door. Like I’m gonna ask an interview question differently now. To search for that one thing because that, that can’t do that again.

The drama.

Megan: Yeah. That

Dave: occurs when you accidentally let crazy in the building, it shuts down all productivity, all trust.

Megan: Yep.

Dave: Everything just come, it just gets clogged up. The sink’s clogged up and the water’s running over into the bathroom floor. Everything’s a dad gonna mess. You have to stop what you’re doing.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: And deal with crazy. Yeah. And all of that’s because [00:34:00] again, back to me, it’s my fault we let them in the building.

Megan: Yeah. Ah.

Dave: So we do a lot, way too much between my ears rumination about how that occurred. Why did that happen? How did that happen? How did I miss that? How was that dump? And it’s like, well you weren’t, you got duped, but next time you won’t be because you’re wiser for the scars.

Yeah, absolutely.

Megan: It’s really good.

Michael: I wanna talk some more about succession. We just started on that. Yeah. And you and I had a conversation in a plane. 14 months ago about this topic. ’cause we’ve been, you know, going through that same exercise. And by the way, that’s one of the stages. You talk about the legacy stage.

It’s the

Dave: last stage. Yeah. It’s the last

Michael: stage. We’re not gonna be able to get to all five stages in building a business you love. So you’re gonna need to buy the book. But I do wanna talk about when did you first start thinking about succession for yourself?

Dave: 16 years ago. Hmm. Was I was 48. Wow. Very

Megan: specific.

Dave: I was 48.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: Wow. Yeah. I ran two full marathons in one day. My first and my last.

Megan: Oh my goodness.

Dave: And, uh, not, not doing that again. And, [00:35:00] uh, I, I thought I was gonna die and, uh, don’t forget that

Megan: day.

Dave: Yeah. And I, I’m, I’m kidding. But around that same time, I was starting to see some, uh, family businesses, uh, and ministries fall apart because they did had zero plan.

And people, a lot of ’em were close friends. And I’m watching a, a life’s work. Just meltdown because at the back end of the ministry or at the back end of the business, the founder refused to let go. And I thought, okay, I teach stewardship. I keep saying, and I truly believe God owns this. I don’t own it. So if I’m a good manager, a good manager would plan.

For their replacement. And to not do that is to be a bad steward, to be a bad manager. And so I’ve gotta start working on this. And I had no idea what to do. So I just started doing what we always do. We started looking for best practices. Right. And so I started interviewing family businesses and a few ministries that [00:36:00] had successfully done gen one to two, two to three, three to four.

I’ve actually found two that were six to seven. Seventh generation. Wow. Uh, very interesting. That’s impressive. Very interesting dynamic when you got 76 cousins that are stockholders, you know, I mean, that kind of thing. And they’re second, third, and fourth cousins. They’re not first cousins. So that, that’s gen seven.

That’s a weird place to be, but most of the time where people fall apart is one to two or two to three.

Megan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dave: Couple things we discovered was, was that if you’re, it’s a family business and you’re gonna do a succession plan, the business is not gonna be any more functional than the family.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: Well said. If the family’s dysfunctional, don’t expect them to all of a sudden be functional human beings at the office. Yep. Whatever’s screwed up, you know, in their upbringing and all that stuff. It’s all gonna come out in this process. And gen one to gen two, me, you, Mike, the guy that, a gal that, that gutted it out, that bootstrapped it, that held on, that has dirt and blood under their fingernails and all this stuff.

Scratching and clawing and we’re hard headss [00:37:00] and we’re stubborn and that’s how we got here. But we also then start to get the self-importance thing a messiah complex in that we’re the, we also have all the answers. Mm-hmm. And no one else can do it. Like we can do it. And that’s the ultimate micromanage.

Actually some, sometimes I run into gen one, to gen two, that Gen one is good at delegating, oddly enough, inside leadership, but they can’t see themselves as delegating ownership. Uhhuh.

Megan: Yeah. And

Dave: a little different thing. And so it’s a great decision. Crying their fingers off of it. Emo, it’s the most emotional.

Transfer is one to two, two to three. They’re not nearly as emotional about it, but one is like ah, too oftentimes their identity is tied up in it too. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yes. And so, uh, like what will I be if I’m not that? You know? And so we get into all that and we start teaching people that, and we start looking at it.

And at Ramsey we figured, we found some of the Venn diagrams and stuff, some of the people that had done academic, you know, level writing on family business transfers. And one of them just shows, okay, you’re a family member, you’re an owner. [00:38:00] You’re a, um, a team member and some people are all three. Some people are only one, some people are two of those.

Mm-hmm. And they Venn diagram intersection in the middle. And you gotta start looking at that and talking about roles and who’s playing what role and what tail is wagging this dog is the spouse at home calling shots by throwing grenades over into the business.

Megan: Hmm.

Dave: Well they’re trying to take your church away from you, you know?

Yeah, yeah. It’s not your church and Yes they are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And your spouse’s insecurity starts to come outta your mouth when you do that. You know that. I’ve actually heard that phrase. Can you tell one time? Yeah. And so I was sitting with a pastor trying to coach ’em through it, and they were just looking at me and that we didn’t get anywhere.

Megan: Yeah. Wow. And we

Dave: figured out later it’s ’cause the wrong people. It was an unqualified appointment. The spouse at home was the one, the grenades.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: We found at Ramsey that we had three things. We had to transfer leadership, which we were good at. We had leadership that would survive me. No trouble.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Ownership, which meant the next generation of Ramseys had to be trained to be wise, [00:39:00] competent owners, whether or not they were in the day-to-day of the business, if they’re gonna be the owners. In my case, I have three grown Ramseys had to train them, and so we went through a decade, well, 16 years of that.

We’re still in the process of that and uh, leadership was in place. Our hardest one was brand transfer. Yes. ’cause it was all Dave Ramsey and we couldn’t transfer a brand and we started toying with what became the Ramsey personalities model. And uh, it was a great idea. What I like a lot of things. I had no idea how hard it was gonna be.

Mm-hmm. And how many mistakes I would make along the way. The current stable of Ramsey personalities is absolutely incredible. Mm-hmm. And definitely can carry this. I was off for a month, Sharon and I spent a month away on a vacation recently, and I do the show with one of the Ramsey personalities, our Ramsey show, our big dog.

When I came back they told me that the ratings were up. Kinda hurt your feelings a little bit, but yeah. So the, you plan to be less important and Dad [00:40:00] Gunther didn’t work. So, you know, it’s like, ouch. I have had that emotional experience several times. The first time we changed the name. From the Dave Ramsey show to the Ramsey show.

Mm. That’s a succession planning marketing piece. We changed the website from dave ramsey.com to ramsey solutions.com, which cost us, we lost a lot of money because we had to reset all the, all the SEO stuff and it took a while for the bots to crawl and all that stuff, and probably cost us several million dollars to do that.

Wow. But the other one wasn’t gonna live. Yeah. Yeah. It died with me. So you had to do it even if it took a step back. That’s right. To take four steps forward. Yeah. So we’re having to do these things, but every time I planned, you know, I came on the air and I went the Ramsey show, and we decided not to announce that we were doing it.

We’re just gonna do it and see if anybody noticed. Nobody noticed. It hurt my feelings. I went home, I told, I think I’m gonna cry. Nobody cared. One affiliate outta 640 calls, zero comments on the [00:41:00] podcast. Amazing. Unbelievable. Six weeks later, some guy posted in the YouTube comments, I think Dave might be retired.

Did y’all notice they changed the name? It’s like, wow. It’s like nobody cared for me. I was it. Wow. And so the emotional part of that is what I’m pointing out, and it’s humorous to look at it, but it’s very, very real when you plan and you say, we’re gonna do this, and then the earth starts moving under your feet.

Yeah. You’re like, oh, this is, we’re really doing this and this is the right thing to do. Your higher self says to do it, but the the little kid that wants affirmation and is like, oh. So how

Megan: did you deal with that? Because I think people get stuck. Cry. I cry every day. No, I’m kidding. We need to ask Sharon.

Dave: No, I, I’ve done, I do. Okay. The thing I, I have to just say, okay. As an act of my will. What do I want? Do I want, when I’m gone, my children and everything, I’ve spent my life building from a business perspective anyway, to all be in trouble because I wouldn’t deal with my little boy [00:42:00] feelings. Wow. And they would all be let, they’d be really, really bad.

And so, uh, you know, it’d be a mess if we didn’t do it because, and we’ve all seen someone who’s in the pulpit, who the whole thing rests on their speaking. Mm-hmm. And their personal delivery, their personal charisma. And we could name names. Yeah. We won’t, we can name like long, like most

Megan: of them.

Dave: And they don’t plan.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: Right. And then suddenly they’re gone and the whole thing comes caving down. And we’ve seen, I mean, rush Limbaugh is a friend of mine. Hmm. That brand just evaporated. And they knew he was dying.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: They knew for two years. He knew he was dying. At first he knew he was very sick and then he knew he was dying.

They did have a handoff after his death, but it took him six weeks to announce it and it was a almost a 700 station network and it’s under a hundred now. And he was an iconic figure in the marketplace. You agree with him or not agree with him? That’s not the point. The the point is, is [00:43:00] that, and I’m not picking on him, his job was to do radio.

He wasn’t running the business. Mm-hmm. His personal stuff is in really good shape. ’cause I, I know the family and I’ve talked, I’ve met with his wife since then and they did a really good job at home, taking care of her and making sure her next. Mm-hmm. And all that stuff. Wonderful job. But the actual perpetuation of the brand was gone because they didn’t do any kind of handoff.

He could have brought in some people on the air with him and tried to do what we’ve done here. It’s painful though.

Michael: You have a big company. Like you said, 1100 people and all the radio stations are on and everything else. But do you think this is important even at the small business?

Dave: Oh, always. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The number of times I meet with a guy who’s got 20 team members and five trucks doing heating and air, his son is 26 and his son just got handed the keys ’cause he died of a heart attack at 52 and the kid, kid has no [00:44:00] idea.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah. He was on a truck fixing a heat and air and now he’s running the business. ’cause mama was at home. She didn’t know what was going on. He was the only, he was the closest family member that had a clue and he didn’t have much of a clue. And the number of times we’ve sat with them and tried to help, you know, give him a, uh, crash course and how to run a business with entree leadership materials and bring our coaches around them and just try to help ’em.

Mm-hmm. Because they got mama sitting there crying. And the son is like overwhelmed at 26 years old and has had zero training. Doesn’t know how to, what, doesn’t know how much the payroll is, doesn’t know what anybody’s paid. He was a tech on a truck, right? And all of a sudden, and that story, man, I’ve told, I’ve seen that story, that one may make it or may not make it, but the data that we have studying these companies and ministries is if the founder, as they fall back into the grave and grab their chest, tosses the keys out.

And it says Good luck. The probability of making it’s very low. So the more gradual, the better is one of the principles we found. That’s really good because you can, you can phase out. So like 16 years ago, you know, [00:45:00] working on the personalities, our kids are being trained. My son Daniel comes up through the ranks.

We weren’t even talking to him about leading the things someday at that point. And then about six or eight years ago, we started talking about it, put some of our top leaders around to mentor him, to teach him. He still wasn’t reporting directly to me. And, uh, three and a half years ago, he stepped into the president’s role.

I’m the CEO and we share offices beside each other. And it was 50 50. I was running C-suite. He’s running business units. And then with the idea that over the next five to 10 years we’re gonna gradually. Put more and more and more over on his office, less and less and less on mine, because again, the more gradual, the better.

And I can still mentor him, and I get the joy of working with my son. Mm-hmm. Directly on a daily basis solving business problems, fighting the dragon. Right. That’s a blast, man. I, I would do that the rest of my life, but I also would be a curse. But at some point, he needs the dignity of walking in what he has earned, the competency that he has shown until he shows the competency.

That’s not [00:46:00] true. But, and, and he has. And so the goal is for someday for me to not be CEO at all. And the only thing I’ll do my retirement package is I’m gonna keep yaking on the microphone. But that’s just ’cause that’s, I want to do that and I can do that and stay out of the way of succession. Right.

Because we’ve got, that’s kinda what I, I’ve done. Yeah. We’ve got the Ramsey personalities going. They’re fine on brand transfer and Daniel and the leadership team and, and the Ramsey next generation’s fine as the ownership and the leaders running it. And I can step to the side. I’m then at some point I’ll even turn loose to that last piece of ownership.

Michael: What would you say to the business owner that is thinking about succession with a family member but not sure that family member’s? Right. In other words, what should they look for? When should they go ahead and pursue that and when should they say, no, I really need to get somebody from outside?

Dave: Um, well you’re looking for a couple things.

One is train up a child in the way he should go and when he is older, will not depart from it. And the old King James says the way he is bent. Hmm. And so, um, you got great daughters. Some of them are not bent [00:47:00] like this one. That’s right. Not designed like this one. And that’s not a slam. That’s not anything.

I was touring a, a plant with a guy who was getting in the last stages of a succession. A couple of his kids were very high in their leadership team. He had a couple that weren’t even in the business, and then he had, were walking through and he goes, that’s the art department up there. And I went, oh, okay.

He goes, my daughter works up there. And I said, oh, she runs your creatives. And he goes, oh, no, no, no, no, no. She is a creative. And I said she doesn’t lead them. And he said, no, no. He said, if your job’s climb a tree, hire a squirrel, don’t hire a dog. And so some, you know, some people are dogs, some are squirrels.

And so it’s okay, what are you made to do? And so, you know, Rachel, my daughter is made to be on the microphone. The chances of her reading accounting. Spreadsheets and following KPIs and watching what the business is doing. Pretty close to zero. Uh, she will do that as a competent owner, only because she’ll have to as an owner.

And she’s been trained and she’s been trained to, but day in and day out, that would be as a guy who used to work here, say if you asked [00:48:00] me to do that spreadsheet stuff, that would be leukemia to my spirit. You know? That’s pretty, pretty graphic. Graphic. Yeah. Pretty. But yeah. But it would be, I mean, ’cause she’s made for the spotlight and made for the microphone.

And if you put my son Daniel into doing that, he’d be pitiful at it. He needs to be doing what he’s doing. She needs to be doing what he’s, she’s doing. So you’re looking for how they’re designed. Mm-hmm. And, uh, the old disc model, or our friend Smalley did that old book we used to read our kids. Yeah. The treasure tree.

Yep. With the golden, with the golden Retriever and, and The Beaver. And the Otter. Otter. Yeah. You’re looking for that and saying, okay, what fits there? And then don’t ask them, don’t ask a golden Retriever to be a beaver. Then if you’ve got someone that has that the natural bent, then you start pouring into them and teaching them the, the tactical competencies to be able to carry the weight mm-hmm.

Of the thing. Because it’s too heavy to carry if you don’t have those two things, the natural bent and the tactical competencies. So you gotta build into that. And then we told our kids do not come to work at Ramsey unless God calls you. [00:49:00] Hmm. It’s too hard. It’s too hard to be in my shadow. Yep. It’s too hard to be judged through the lens of something Dave said 25 years ago.

’cause some dub dig up something stupid. I said, and that’s possible just too hard. Mm-hmm. Don’t come. And so Daniel almost didn’t come. Hmm. We tried to talk him out. ’em Rachel, she was coming from the time she was 15 years old. We put her on stage and she went, I’m doing this. You know. Um, and Denise, uh, even her, she was working for, uh, our, our friend Nancy Alcorn at Mercy Ministries.

Mm-hmm. And when she came out of college and we asked, gave her the opportunity to take our family foundation and run it. She’s the ministry minded. That’s how she’s wired, how she’s been. And she said, no, I, I don’t think God’s released me from mercy. Wow. Wow. That means I taught you well. Is she still there?

Uh, no. She was there for many, many years and probably five years after that conversation, she called me one day and she said, do you think we could still do that? Because I think I am released now. It’s been five years. And I’m went, okay, let’s sit down and talk about it. And she’s been running the family foundation now for quite a while.

Oh, cool. But that’s not [00:50:00] technically part of Ramsey. Mm-hmm. But, um, but has a lot of interface with us here. But that’s, that, that’s how we did it with our three kids. And, but if, if there’s no one that wants it, that’s willing to fight for it, yeah. Let it go. Close it or sell it or something. Sell it to a team member that’s coming up that does want it, and that’s hungrier than one of your offspring.

You know, that kind of thing. Sell it to the employees in an esop, I don’t care. Whatever you wanna do, but have an exit strategy for God’s sakes. ’cause the problem is if you don’t do this as the founder or the current owner, gen one, two, whatever it is, as they age. Everyone is asking in their minds what’s gonna happen.

The vendors wanna know, that’s right. I, I do $2 million worth of printing with Ramsey every year. Am I gonna lose that when Dave dies? The vendors wanna know what the plan is. Mm-hmm. The customer wants to know what’s gonna happen. Are you gonna disappear? Like so and so did they just disappeared one day and, and we lost all that.

The customer wants to know what’s gonna happen, [00:51:00] especially if they’re investing in something that’s a longer term product line. They’re buying a book’s one thing, but a longer term investment and the team, you cannot keep talent. If they think this thing’s gonna fold up like a Walmart tent, the first time Papa dies or mama dies.

Yep. The, I got no future here. This thing’s going in, it’s going into the wall like a NASCAR wreck. And so, uh, you gotta go, look, here’s what’s happening, here’s what’s happening. Don’t know exact timeline, but here’s our plan. Here’s our plan. And that’s what I started talking about it. At 48 years old, I’m gonna start putting people in the spotlight other than me.

Leadership’s in place, you know, the next generation is really, really young. And we’re gonna start letting them sit in the operating board meetings, but not say anything ’cause they don’t have anything to say yet. Mm-hmm. And so they sat there for a few years silently and watched how we made decisions and being trained by the current leadership team to be good owners and how the owner, current owner makes decisions.

So all that is transferred, mentored, discipled gradually over time. But as, and [00:52:00] we’ve been talking about it publicly for eight years or 10 years. I mean, we transferred 99% of the ownership from an estate planning standpoint. 12 years ago. Wow. Wow. While the basis was still low and got it all out. So it doesn’t get taxed into oblivion and get shut down by the stupid estate tax.

I own 1%. I own the only voting stock though, so I’m still in control. Okay. But not me. It’s, we did that, it was a, it was a tactical thing, but we tell people that. We tell ’em and so they got a real comfort then in going, Hey, they got a plan. Yeah. They just wanna know you’re gonna do something. Yeah.

Megan: What do you say to the business owner who’s kind of in your season of life, who says, but I just love the business.

I don’t think I’m ever gonna retire. Like I wanna just, I wanna die working. ’cause this is so much fun.

Dave: Yeah. Well, you’re gonna kill the thing you love. You’re gonna kill your kids or whoever the next gen is. And, um, and you’re gonna kill the business you love mm-hmm. By your selfish desire to eat candy all day long.

Megan: Hmm.

Dave: And so, um, I love running the business too.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And I can sit in and add [00:53:00] value for the rest of my life as long as I can do that. So, um, and the interesting thing is, is I’m often invited,

Megan: yeah.

Dave: We’re down to about 80 20 now, as I said, but even in that 80% that I’m not involved in, it’s not unusual for one of the guys or gals in that area go, Hey, come sit in with us.

We’re brainstorming this and we’d like to know your legacy back, your analog view on this digital issue. Yeah. Which is really about all I’ve got. And so, but yeah, we’ll sit down and look at that and, and so you get invited to participate without having to. Be the only dog, big dog on the porch. You can just sit over the side and for you, gen twos that are listening, that gen one’s having trouble turning loose.

One of the secrets we’ve found, it’s not been a hard thing internally, but we’ve seen it with other businesses where they do this well. If the second generation will constantly pay ridiculous cornball levels of honor. To the first gen.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Constantly go. That is a level of humility that the team loves.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Because they don’t think they were [00:54:00] born on third and act like they hit a triple.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And it makes it easier for the old dog to let go and go. Yeah. Yeah. At least I’m in a seat of honor.

Megan: Yeah. I’m

Dave: not in a seat of dishonor. We’re gonna stick him in a nursing home so that he just gets out of the way.

We’re not doing that. Okay. This is a, we want him to sit in, we want her to sit in because they can still add value and they can still hang out and work I’ll. So again, as a Ramsey personality, I’ll be in a bunch of the creative meetings, obviously, ’cause I’m writing content.

Megan: Yeah.

Dave: And I’ll be involved if we’re publishing a book in Rachel or one of the other personalities, I’ll be sitting and looking at that.

I’m getting a manuscript on another one that’s being sent to me today. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I’m not technically in the loop on that because it’s not an operational thing, but you know, as the Senior Ramsey personality now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I get to participate so I can still get my juices. From that without being, uh, such a central figure that my leaving jams the machine.

And that’s the trick. That’s right. You know, you just gotta redefine who you are and go, okay, what is it I’m really doing? [00:55:00] And you know, what is it I’m really getting joy from?

Michael: I feel like we could do a whole show on succession.

Dave: Oh,

Michael: I

Dave: think

Michael: it’s, yeah, easy. It’s such an important topic, but we’re out of time and I cannot believe how fast this hour’s gone.

I know. I feel like it’s flown by. Yes. We got three quick, just really short answers on your part, questions that we typically ask, and it’s all about the double win, winning at work and succeeding at life. So in this stage of your life, in this season of your life, what’s your biggest obstacle to getting the double win?

Dave: I have to constantly stop and say. Let them do it. Yeah, you did hand it off. Don’t take it back. You handed it off. Don’t take it back. And they’re doing okay. They’re doing okay and they are doing better than Okay. Freaking revenue’s up. The ratings are up. She, I mean, it’s sickening, but, um, but the, uh, um, but yeah, the, the don’t don’t undo what you worked 16 years on the legacy piece.

Yeah. With your mouth. That’s really good.

Megan: How do you know when you’re personally getting the double win?

Dave: I think the fruit is there. Our marketers [00:56:00] would call it social proof, but there’s actual a reality there. And so is, is, uh, home life happy? Is, is it, uh, content? Is there spiritual and uh, personal growth there?

And then the same thing over at work is all of that happening. And so, I mean, there’s been times that. You know, we were strained at both ends.

Megan: Sure.

Dave: And so we know what the other looks like. We know what the double lose looks like. It wasn’t complete loss, but with a double, you know, scary time is. And so we’re enjoying the rhythm of being grandpa and grandma, uh, Papa David, Mimi.

We’re enjoying the rhythm of some travel and some stuff. Just some fun stuff. I’m enjoying the rhythm and just going and speaking for some of my friends that have events doing that. I, ’cause I’ve spent my whole life doing events for ourselves. Yeah. Very few outside ones. And I’m jumping into preaching at a church and that kind of stuff.

I’m enjoying that.

Michael: Last question, what is one habit or ritual that helps you do what you do? Cornerstone Kind of habit. A [00:57:00] ritual.

Dave: I have a, a rigid morning routine and I have for, gosh, 30 years. Hmm. The routine changes. I say rigid. It’s rigid in the moment in each season, but it, it has changed over time. When I was training for a marathon and included, you know, a long run in the morning, not doing that, nowadays that looks more like walking the golf course for, uh, two miles with the dog.

And so, uh, which I did this morning, I’m doing something moving, moving, moving. I’m doing something in a book, I’m doing something in scripture, Sharon. And I have the old man, old lady recliners right next to each other. And we just come in there, get the call. I mean, we wake up, we got up at five this morning for no apparent reasons ’cause we just always have, we do the same thing.

And, uh, we sit there, we talk, we’ll pray, we’ll talk about what we, what our calendar looks like, where are we going, what do you got tonight? What do we got this week, what we got next week. We do the calendar, like we do the budget where we compare and align and don’t step on each other on that. And, you know, I’ll go through a handful of emails in the mornings too.

And I, [00:58:00] I’ll pop in. I’m not, I don’t, so I got off social media mm-hmm. In terms of being a follower or a user of it, uh, because it’s just too much trash in my brain. I check our Instagram stuff and I follow probably 15 people. Mm. Um, mainly our people. Mm-hmm. And me and I don’t read comments. If you read comments on any article or anything you’ve ever done, uh, you understand why some species kill, they’re young.

And so, um, it’s like, oh gosh, these are the dumbest humans. So I just quit doing it. I’m just not gonna put that junk in my brain. Mm-hmm. Because I can’t come in here and function then if I’ve got some,

Megan: yeah.

Dave: Guy who’s griping and he lives in his mother’s basement, I mean, has to say something, you know, it’s just like silly.

So I had quit doing that a long time ago. Last time I did that, I really got involved in Twitter and I had a blast really, back when Twitter was new and you could fight, you could fight on Twitter. I had a blast with that. But anyway, that, that’s what could go wrong. Yeah. So, so four or five things, they’re spiritual.

Intellectual feeding, relational feeding. Prayer is being, and prescription will be in the spiritual and physical Get out, move, move your body, [00:59:00] doing something every morning. And that takes me an hour and a half, two

Michael: hours. Yeah.

Dave: But that’s seven 30, so I still got all day. And that’s

Michael: our season in life.

Dave: Yeah.

You know, if you’re a young,

Michael: young mom with three little kids, you don’t, you can’t do that. You can’t do that.

Dave: Yeah. But you can have some, some, absolutely. And you better have because otherwise the kids are in charge. Yeah. And so you, your tank gets empty and so Yeah. When I had little babies, um, well, or if the little babies are over, if I’ve got, you know, I’ve got a seven month old granddaughter that stay, spend the night with us other, the night.

And so if they’re over, they’re crying. I can’t just sit there and, well, I’m, I’m busy right now. I’m doing email. You know, we gotta go get the baby. But, so Yeah. I can you, you do flex with that. And again, your morning schedule will look different depending on your season of life. Yeah. But I think that has.

It served me really well because of that personal driver we were talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Love

Michael: that.

Dave: Really

Michael: good guys. The book is Build a Business You Love. The subtitle says it all, mastering the five stages of business. And I would say even if you’re thinking about starting a business and don’t have a business, this will give you the [01:00:00] roadmap, those red blinking lights that’ll help you know what the way points are on building a successful business.

So Dave, thank you so much for this time. This was fabulous as I knew. Well, thank

Dave: you guys. You guys are great. Appreciate you having me.

Michael: So Megan, what surprised you about that interview?

Megan: I don’t know if anything surprised me exactly, but I think the thing that I loved the most and really appreciated was Dave’s vulnerability. I think it’s so easy when you, you look at somebody that you respect and you, you know, kind of see the public part of their story.

You can kind of assume that the end of the story was always true. Yeah. You know, that maybe, maybe they just have some magic that it was easier for them or they’re wired differently than other people and, and maybe they never had to experience what you did or what you have. And I think what we learned today was that’s not true that [01:01:00] Dave has faced all the normal challenges.

In fact, the reason that he was qualified to write this book and create a roadmap is because he’s been there and done that and he has the battle scars to prove it. And I think that’s hopeful for all of us. It’s not really supposed to be easy per se, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong if it’s not easy.

Michael: You know, I, because I’ve known him for 30 years, I’ve known him in a lot of different seasons.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: You know, I knew him back when he was at WTN. That’s the first time I met him when I went down and Yeah. Heard him broadcast. And I had some of those same impressions that his. Station manager head, you know, I thought he’s got this thick southern accent and he’s talking about cutting up credit cards.

Nobody’s gonna ever buy that. And so I just kind of dismissed it and I was, I was talking to him about becoming his literary agent at that point. Mm. Interesting. And I literally went home and my wife, Gail, your mother, said to me, uh, well, what did you think? And I said, I don’t think we’re gonna pass. Which was hilarious.

And then, you know, several years later then we, we got together on the Total money makeover.

Megan: [01:02:00] Yeah.

Michael: And you know, that was a huge positive outcome and a great relationship. But the thing that I felt the most when I was listening to him was pride. Just other, yeah. I just felt proud over how he’s developed over the years.

Because as he’s matured, what I see as a guy that sort of originally sort of thought he knew everything, you know, he had the humility of the bankruptcy he went through.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: But he was full of answers and he still has phenomenal answers. Yeah. But I’ve seen the real wisdom. Yeah. And the pause. Yeah. Before he answers.

And such a good listener.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And so vulnerable

Megan: and willing to be humble enough to admit mistakes and to, to talk about what he’s learned from those. And you know, his secret to success is not that he’s done it all perfectly. It seems to me like if I were to say part of his secret to success is he’s been a really good student.

Michael: Yes.

Megan: He’s been a really good student of life. He’s been a really good student of his mistakes, of his successes as well. And he’s put those into practice and he is willing to do the hard [01:03:00] things. And I think that’s the difference maker

Michael: and serious self-awareness.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: I mean, for him to realize that he wasn’t always the kindest and

Megan: Yeah.

Most

Michael: gentle. And that needed to be moderated and Yeah. I think that takes real humility.

Megan: Yes.

Michael: And self-awareness.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: I will say as, as at the end of it, when we were talking about the succession plan. Yeah. I had no idea he thought about this 16 years ago.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And you know, I gotta be honest, I feel like we’ve done succession pretty well.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: But I thought, ooh, I wish I could go back. Right. And have started more. I mean, I think I was always kind of conscious of it. Yeah. But to be more conscious mm-hmm. Way back then. But of course 16 years ago you weren’t even in, in the business. It’s

Megan: true.

Michael: Took me more years to only

Megan: barely. I mean, it wasn’t long.

Yeah. You know, it wasn’t

Michael: long.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: Anything he said about succession that surprised you?

Megan: Well, I love that he talked about that tension between gen one and gen two. Yes. Of, it wasn’t exactly the way he said it, but you know, having to face your own mortality and realize like there’s a collision coming with the end.

Yeah. And there’s [01:04:00] no way to get around that. You know, nobody gets out alive and so. To reframe it as an exercise in stewardship and actually of love for the people that you’re serving through your business, but also the people in your own family and your team, et cetera. The people that you have stewardship over, I think is so important because it’s not really about what you want at the end of the day.

No. It’s really about what’s the best for others. And I think that’s powerful because it can feel like, you know, it’s all slipping through my hands or what does it mean? And you know, and I think all that’s normal. Like you, that’s not not happening. It’s just that also there’s something more important, and in some ways, your most important work is how you leave it.

Michael: This is where the double win comes back full circle.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: Because if you’re only invested in your business. Your identity’s tied up in your business, you’re not gonna make that transition successfully. Yeah. Because it’s gonna feel like you’re losing literally everything.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: But Dave has wisely invested and as we advocate with the double win in all these other domains of life.

Megan: [01:05:00] Yeah.

Michael: So that the thought of losing the business doesn’t mean he is losing his life.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And he is not actually losing his business. Yeah. He’s just changing roles as time goes on.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And I think that’s, there’s real wisdom for all of us.

Megan: Such a good conversation. I loved it. So fun.

Michael: I’m just proud to know him and proud that he’s my friend.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: Well guys, if you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Double Win Show, we would be grateful if you would leave a review on wherever you listen to podcasts. And I’m gonna give you a little hack. If you go into chat, GPT, and you just give it some things that you like about the show and ask it to write a 75 word review of the show, it’ll take you about two minutes and you’ll have a beautiful review that you’ll be proud of.

So I hope you’ll do that. It’ll help us get the message out because we’re trying to launch a movement. Where people can win at work and succeed at life. That’s right. Thanks for [01:06:00] listening.