Building the Business You Love with Dave Ramsey

Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. Our podcast is one that adds value to leaders who will multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and boy, I am so excited today because on today’s episode number one, I’m excited because John Maxwell’s friend, John Maxwell’s lifelong co leader, is with us today. And I’m also excited because I just look for opportunities sometime to rub things into John because he gets to do so much. And today he is scheduled to be with us on this episode, but he’s stuck on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean. But don’t fear, because we’re joined by none other than Dave Ramsey. He’s a personal finance expert, he’s a best selling author, and he’s CEO of Ramsey Solutions. Dave’s latest book is one of the big reasons that John Maxwell and I had him on the podcast today.

Mark Cole:
He’s written a book called build a business you love. And if you’ve been around Dave Ramsey, you know he loves what he does. And he loves what he does a lot. This book is packed with practical wisdom for leaders at every stage of their journey. So leaders, podcast listeners, viewers, if you want to take advantage of this and learn how to take your business from a card table in your living room, can’t wait to hear this story to a $250 million enterprise. This episode is for you. We’re going to dig deep and dive into the Entrez leadership system, the roadmap to building a business you love. So before we get started, just remember, you can watch this episode on YouTube or download the bonus resource for this episode at MaxwellPodcast.com/BusinessYouLove and so, Dave, I got to tell you again, your friend, our leader, John Maxwell, has a good old case of FOMO today.

Mark Cole:
And you understand that because you don’t like missing out on opportunities either.

Dave Ramsey:
That’s right. Any chance I get to hang out with you and John is a good day for me. So you and I will have a good time. We’ll rub his nose in it later.

Mark Cole:
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Well, there’s a lot of places I could go here. We were just with you. Speaking of your business that you love. We were just with you. We felt the culture, we tasted the culture. We got to introduce you to about 50, 75 of our top leaders in a program called Financial Wisdom.

Mark Cole:
And so, kind of before we get into the book, by chance, there’s somebody that doesn’t know the Dave Ramsey. Tell us a little bit about your life before this book. And then we’ll get into the book in just a minute.

Dave Ramsey:
Well, it started some 35 plus years ago. Sharon and I, I was doing real estate deals and I was a baby Christian and we went broke and got the opportunity to start again because I was stupid and I signed up for a bunch of debt. And so Larry Burkett was on the scene in those days teaching people what the Bible says about money. And I was one of them. Him and Ron Blue and Howard Dayton. Kind of the Mount Rushmore of Christian evangelical money stuff. Right. And I got to know all of them in my later years and before Larry passed.

Dave Ramsey:
And Ron and Howard are still friends to this day. But anyway, those guys taught me what the Bible says about money. And then John started teaching me what the Bible says about leadership. He didn’t know it. It was on a cassette tape called Maximum Impact in my car. And fast forward, after recovering from that, we started ministering at our church with the financial stuff. And it grew really quickly to the point that we knew that there was a business opportunity as well as ministry in the church. And so I started doing one on one coaching, a little bit of speaking.

Dave Ramsey:
I wrote a little book, started selling out of the trunk of my car. And that little book we wrote in and started radio show in 1992. So again, 35 years ago. And talk radio was a big deal in those days and so blew up. And over the years we’ve worked really, really, really hard. I made a lot of mistakes, none of them fatal, but boy, we’ve piled them all failing forward John’s book. Right. And so done that.

Dave Ramsey:
And you know, today we’re just under 11 members. The campus here is 650,000 square feet with those 1100 team members, a wonderful conference center. And God has blessed us to be in a bunch of spaces, the leadership and entree leadership space as well. Primarily we’re aimed at small businesses there and help those guys because that’s who I’ve been my whole life. And of course we’ve got the entire financial thing with The Ramsey Show. Dr. John DeLoney with PhD in counseling is huge right now in the mental health space that show and books are blowing up. And Ken Coleman on our team, a bunch of other Ramsey personalities.

Dave Ramsey:
So a lot of stuff going on, but just God’s ways of doing things. We’ve been trying to continue to push those out there for decades and little by little it’s worked well.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, you’re too humble right there with that statement because it’s a lot by a lot. We’ve all been impacted in all of our finances because of your work in some direct or indirect manner. I’m going to get into the book in just a moment. But what caused you to kind of start writing books? I mean, you’ve got radio program, got an organization that helps people get out of debt. What was it about the idea of writing a book that kind of grabbed you and captured your time to do that?

Dave Ramsey:
The first one that we did, Financial Peace, my associate pastor was walking past the room when I was coaching somebody at the church on their money, and he goes, I just hear you tell your story of failure, and it removes the shame and condemnation. You need to write a book on this stuff because you tell them the same thing over and over. And I’m like, pastor, you need to go look at the Christian bookstore. There’s more Christian financial books. I mean, we need another Christian financial book like Oprah needs another diet book. No, thank you. And he goes, well, you really knew. I said, you need to talk to my English professor in college.

Dave Ramsey:
First paper I wrote, she slit her wrists and bled all over it. It was all red when it came back. I don’t even know the English language, much less write a book. And then I went to this conference and watched this guy who wasn’t very good sell a whole bunch of books. And I went, if he can do it, I guess God’s telling me I got to do this. So sat down at my little computer and started banging away. And it took forever because I really didn’t know what I was doing. But the impact of the printed word and how it lasts.

Dave Ramsey:
Strange thing, those books from 1992, first time we printed one. I still have people bring those little books around to get them signed, and they’re still out there. They’re everetti Bunny. They’re just evergreen. They just keep going and going and going and going. So that’s the benefit of books. They’re wonderful branded material from a marketing standpoint, from a brand mix, product mix standpoint, but also it just. A lot of us learn best when we can sit with a good cup of coffee on our back porch and have John Maxwell go into our brain.

Mark Cole:
So what I love, podcast listeners, podcast viewers, is there’s a lot of similarities. There’s a lot of things that Dave and John share. But one of the things that I love is you’re constantly looking for ways to empower others to get ahead, learn from my mistakes. John wrote the book Failing Forward. You’ve talked about all your mistakes publicly for years, and I love that your mistake is my game. And you just got this passion, man. If I learn it, it’s for distribution. It’s to give it out.

Mark Cole:
And you do that in books, you do that in companies. You do that in finances. And, Dave, I gotta tell you something. And then I’m gonna tell all of you. That’s just your fast track. Let me, Dave, let me at Ramsey Solutions. I’ll tell you how to get there then. I want to this book, but my daughter came to me.

Mark Cole:
I bought your book. I still have it from 1996. And I have it. It impacted me. I’ve been through career transitions since then. I didn’t join John’s team until the year 2000. I came to John’s organization broke, financially, spiritually, relationally. And I kept the principles of the envelope system when I really had no money to put in them.

Mark Cole:
And my daughter, 31 years of age, been through a tough life. I talk a little bit about her and leadership sometimes on the podcast. She came to me this weekend and she said, hey, look, I now have cash left over in my envelopes. And I went, hey, it still works, man. Dave, it still works, brother.

Dave Ramsey:
Even in the digital world.

Mark Cole:
Even in the digital world. She’s bringing me her envelopes at 31, saying, I’ve got cash left over in my envelope. And if you know the story of my daughter, I’ll tell you about it sometime. Miracle, my friend. Hey, if you want more information about Dave and you don’t want to wait until the end of this podcast, you need to go to RamseySolutions.com. RamseySolutions.com, you will find more information about your money. Dave knows more about your money than you do. And so you want to go and get some information on that. Let’s talk about this book.

Mark Cole:
Build a business that you love. And if I know anything about you and John, both of you love what you do. So talk to me a little bit about the heart behind this book.

Dave Ramsey:
Well, a couple of things steal people’s joy when they’re running a business. Running a business is hard. I mean, it’s hard, you know, creating the product, doing the things that the customer sees out in the spotlight or on the shelf is the fun part of it. But it’s tough. And for a lot of small business people, it’s lonely. And you don’t know what to do next. And there’s nobody sitting around telling you. You don’t have a council or something that you can go to.

Dave Ramsey:
You don’t have a board of directors. You don’t have a, you know, in the multitude of counsel, there’s safety. The Bible says so we don’t have that a lot of times in small business. And so it’s really, really hard. And then when you get things moving and you start to realize pretty quickly that I don’t know about everybody else, but it’s probably pretty close. At our place, we have survived 90% of our ideas and we’ve made all of our brand penetration helped people and money off of about 10% of our ideas. But they all sound the same. When I’m on the walking trail with my dog in the morning.

Dave Ramsey:
They all are great ideas until I get to the office and go lose a bunch of money or go mess up something, right? So again, you just get beat up and you don’t know what’s next. And the mind of man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. So one of the things we realized over in the financial side was the power of a clear path. It gives hope. The seven baby steps have become synonymous almost with Ramsey. And anyone that knows our stuff knows the seven baby steps quickly because that’s. But it’s the power of a clear path. If I do this, then this, then this, then this and then this, I’ll get there.

Dave Ramsey:
And you know, we’ve got tens of millions of people that have done it. And so you’re no different. If you do those things in that order, you’re going to get there. And we kept working with small businesses. We’ve coached now about 10,000 small businesses. And plus our operation growing from a card table in my living room to where it is today. And we kept going, okay, something’s happening at these different levels. How many levels are there? How many stages are there that we’ve gone through that we’re observing? And what are the things keeping you stuck in one to level up.

Dave Ramsey:
And once we got those things in place and started seeing them, okay, we could give the small business guy and gal the same hope, the same energy that goes, yeah, I know I just got the snot knocked out of me, but I can get back up because I know what the next step is. But when you don’t know what the next step is, it kind of takes some of your energy. Or if you’re a high detail person, you can get paralysis of the analysis, sit around and try to figure, figure it all out and not do anything. You got to ship it, baby. And so you know, how are we going to do this in the real world out here? And how do we survive the betrayal of a key team member. Emotionally, well, we know what the next step is, we know what we’re going to do. And so that’s what we’ve been working on. And so this, in a sense this book is the baby steps for small business.

Dave Ramsey:
If you’re familiar with our financial stuff, that’ll equate you know what I love.

Mark Cole:
And we’re going to get into the five stages of business growth in just a moment. Dave. But here’s what I love. I read the book and as I read it I thought of John’s book, Five Levels of Leadership. And often we look at these levels or in this case the stages of business and go, okay, I’ve already passed that stage or I’ve already passed that level, I don’t need that anymore. But here’s what I discovered in a mature business. I’ve been CEO for 15 years now. What I discovered is I have mindsets in my established business that needs to understand that the entrepreneur spirit, small minded business mind can be lost.

Mark Cole:
The more structure, the more organizational maturity you got. And I would bet that you would look at anybody, even with an established business, not small business anymore, and tell them this book will help the small minded people in their organization that are not moving through these levels. Would you see that book? The book the same way we see five levels?

Dave Ramsey:
Yeah, I mean I was talking to somebody the other day in a Q and A thing and they asked me the exact same thing that owned a business. They said, you know, we’ve got an established business, we’re probably at stage four, four of your five steps or five stages. But we’ve got parts of our business that might be at stage one. Yeah, a profit center, a broken thing, a new idea. Every one of those things are little sub compartments within the master umbrella compartment that you gotta roll them up. The good news is that you can roll them up pretty quick cause you’re standing above them, lifting them up. And not in the sense of above them, lording over them. I don’t mean that, but you’re further down the path.

Dave Ramsey:
So if John Maxwell tells any of us to do something, we go do it because he’s further down the path. And you know that the, it’s a trustworthy person that’s had the experience, not just a theory versus some 24 year old with a TikTok account. Right? And so which is great, if you got an idea and you’re 24, keep at it, but you ain’t John Maxwell, okay? So you know that, that’s a difference. So I Can I can lead along. And so we oftentimes at Ramsey We’ve got 14 profit centers, we’ve got multiple product lines, and we’re looking at something that’s got the flu a little bit or maybe it’s just really s sick. And we’re like, okay, we got to break this thing before it breaks. We got to get in here and start treating it like it’s a fledgling thing again or we launch a brand new thing and it’s going to go through the same symptoms, if you will, that you’re there. And it’s much like if you are at stage five of John’s leadership stages, leadership’s different than the business itself.

Dave Ramsey:
But if you’re at the leadership stage of five, you got some people working for you that are at one, I hope, and some people too. I hope you got some bitch depth coming on, you know, three, four and five, that you’re leading them up through these things. So that would be normal. The whole organization is not going to sit at leadership level five. That’d be virtually impossible. But we better have a couple people in there that are knocking on that door.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So let’s do, let’s break down these five stages of business growth. I know understanding them is crucial for business leaders. So kind of take us through these five stages.

Dave Ramsey:
Well, the first stage is obvious when we get started. You’re the CEO, the chief everything officer. You’re setting up chairs, you’re putting up screens. In the old days, I was setting the overhead projector up right back in the day. Right. And you know, you do everything. You do the books, you’re chief cook and bottle washer, baby. And so it’s all on you.

Dave Ramsey:
If it’s to be, it’s up to me. And by God, that’s the truth, you know. And so, you know, that’s good news. The good news is you’re really important. You got a lot of energy, you’re fired up. The dream is new. You haven’t figured yet how hard this is going to be. So you’re still just going at it.

Dave Ramsey:
That’s wonderful. But you are on a treadmill. You run, run, run, run, run. And all the revenue production is based on you. In the old days when I was speaking and writing, it was up to me. If I didn’t go speak, nothing happened. If I didn’t do a coaching session, nothing happened. And so if I, if I wasn’t out there doing, if I took a two days off, I was unemployed.

Dave Ramsey:
And the same thing’s too with the actual Production of the good or service, you’re probably. If you’re in the heat and air business, you got one truck. It’s you. And you know you’re going out there. If you don’t, you’re doing the actual fixing or the installing of the heating and air. And so your production and your revenue and it all is leaning on you. And it’s a fun time, but it’s exhausting and it’s not sustainable. You can’t do that for 10 years because technically at this stage, you don’t really own a business.

Dave Ramsey:
You just own your job. And because you don’t have anything that keeps going when you’re not there that day, or if you’re sick that day or you go on vacation, it just. You just take that revenue hit right there. And so the first thing, this is the stage where we’re working so hard. I remember coming home and collapse on the couch, and my wife would go, what’d you do today? And I said, I don’t know, but I did a lot of it. And you’re just. You’re exhausted, you know. And so time management is one of the ways you level up from this stage.

Dave Ramsey:
You start looking at it and go, I got to work on my business. As my friend Gerber says in the book E Myth, instead of just in my business, I got to get above it, look down on it. How am I going to. I got to take some days, some hours of the week, and do something other than production of goods and production of revenue so that I’m not the only one. And one of those days or blocks that you do, you spend hiring your first person or two so that you’ve got a delegatable situation. You start to bring on some people that will do some stuff when you’re not there to do it. And they. And then you start to teach them to do it your way, to do it the way that we do it at our place.

Dave Ramsey:
Once you do that, then you’re leveled up to the pathfinder stage. And in this stage, things start to get a little bit better. Every stage, they get a little better, actually. But this stage, you know, you’re just running and gunning, you’re pushing, everything’s going, and there is no plan, there is no system, there is no nothing. We’re just all getting it. You know, we all just come to work, kill something, drag it home and split it up and put it by the fire. You know, we’re just. All of us are.

Dave Ramsey:
But at least there’s more than one doing it. And at least we’re starting to think about what a year later looks like and two years later looks like, and we start to level up, and we go from there. And in this, when you start to do, you start to put some layers of leadership in place, you start to do a little bit of planning, and you move into the trailblazer stage. Trailblazer stage is where you learn strategic thoughts and you get above the business. And this is where our friend Craig Groeschel at Life Church will tell you. This is where you put in the processes and the systems. And I mean, we were. We were killing so many trees, writing stuff down on scraps of paper.

Dave Ramsey:
Our accounting system was like 47 spreadsheets all tied together. It was balin wire and fish hooks, baby, and a little bit of duct tape in there, you know, and we were just getting it. Finally, we’ve actually did a full accounting system, and it automated, like, a whole bunch of stuff that people were exhausted of doing. And we started, okay, here’s a process for sales, here’s a process for delivery, a process for distribution, and process for inventory control. We don’t have to walk in there physically look and see how many books we have. Let’s actually know ahead of time. And as an entrepreneur, I resisted some of that stuff because I don’t want to be corporate America. I don’t want, you know, accounting telling me I can’t do something, or legal telling me I can’t do something.

Dave Ramsey:
They work for me. I want to tell them what they can, can do. But if you don’t build these systems and processes, you’ll drive everybody in a place crazy, and it’ll start to burn down around your ears. And I’ll take a breath there. Any questions so far?

Mark Cole:
Well, by the way, we’re talking about mastering the five stages of business. Dave Ramsey’s talking about his book, build a business you Love. And I’m so intrigued because I’m sitting here relating to all of these stages so far, and I’m just going, I want you to continue talking about them. But as the treadmill operator, isn’t it true, Dave, that that’s where so many people lose heart and don’t push past that to some of these more fulfilling. You said it gets better with each stage, which I love. Can’t wait to hear the next couple. But that treadmill stage often feels like where many small business leaders are.

Dave Ramsey:
Yeah, I mean, it is where almost everyone starts, unless you start with some kind of venture capital or some kind of other garbage, you know. But most of us. It’s a card table in our living room with a dream. And we. And we do have a good. The good news is we got a lot of energy and there’s a lot of excitement, a lot of dream power right then. But it’s, you know, five years later, I’m out of breath. Five years later, I’m gonna.

Dave Ramsey:
I feel like a rat and a wheel. Run, run, run, run, run get nowhere Be on the treadmill Run, run, run, run get nowhere. There’s no. The scenery never changes. You know, I got. I want to get out on the trail where I can see stuff and I gotta have some scenery shift. And it’s a. It’s a bad thing.

Dave Ramsey:
It’s wonderful time. But place you want to camp because your health will give, your relationships will give. This is where people start to be accused of workaholism that really aren’t workaholics. They just work all the time. There’s a difference. They’re not addicted to their work. They’re just trying to stay open and trying to make payroll Friday or trying to get the stuff delivered. And if you look up and you’ve been doing that for 20 years, man, the hope starts to erode.

Dave Ramsey:
And proverbs says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. But when desire comes, it’s the tree of life. So when I can see my way out, I can see where there is no vision, the people perish. And that’s not just a fundraising scripture at church. That’s an actual thing we have to see past this week. And really, when you’re at the treadmill stage, I remember it, I loved it for a while. But again, you just get exhausted and you can’t scale. The size of your impact is limited logistically.

Dave Ramsey:
Even in a digital world, it’s really difficult to scale when it’s just you and it can be exhausting. So it’s just. I was working 16 hour days in those days and my wife had little babies and we were recovering from going broke, but I had to work to eat. And she’s like, you need to go to work so we can eat. These kids need food. And I’ll deal with the crying baby. And good for her. She’s low maintenance, thank God.

Dave Ramsey:
I don’t know if I could have done it. But she’ll tell you, you know, Sharon Ramsey will tell you today that at this stage she felt like a single mom.

Mark Cole:
Yep. Yep. So let’s go on to the fourth and fifth stage. Peak performer, legacy builder. Talk a little bit about those two.

Dave Ramsey:
So when you’re in the trailblazer stage, you’re adding your processes and you’re adding your systems and you’re starting to do planning well for the first time, instead of just going, hey, let’s go to Florida and I don’t have a map, we go, oh, let’s figure out where Florida is and which roads to use. You know, I mean, some strategic thought. I couldn’t spell strategic thought when I got in the thing, Mark. I mean I was 100% tactical and I had, thank goodness we’d hired up a bunch of people by this stage and I had some guys and gals come on the team that had MBAs, masters in business. And I’m convinced that 100% of the master’s programs in business teach strategic thought. And because these MBAs are all just coming at me, Dave, we got to get above this. We got to get a 30,000 foot view. You don’t have to run through that wall.

Dave Ramsey:
You just walk around. The door’s open right there to the right. Go around it. You don’t have to run through it. Everything’s not a crazy hillbilly thing. You don’t walk around, do it this easy way, right? And so I learned from great team members the power and the proof is in the pudding of strategic thought. And I always laugh and say, the NBA has all taught me strategic thought and I taught them how to work. But, but at this stage, then you start deepening your layers of leadership.

Dave Ramsey:
At up to now you probably have one, maybe one and a half layers of leadership. But now you’re going to have 1, 2, 3, maybe layers of leadership. Reporting to reporting to reporting. So now you’re teaching concepts like Maxwell concepts, not just tactical hand to hand combat. And so we had overall battle plan. When you do all of that and you put those systems in process and processes in process, you’re going to go into this peak performer. Peak performer is, I think it’s the most fun stage because everything’s going right. It’s the Midas touch.

Dave Ramsey:
You are bailing money. I mean you just got like bales of dollar bills in the warehouse. The money is coming in like crazy. It’s awesome time. Everything you touch seems to turn to gold. And everybody comes along now after you’ve worked your butt off for 20 years or 15 years to get, they come along and go, you’re so lucky. Well, lucky didn’t have nothing to do with it, baby. You weren’t here when I had the dirt under my fingernails and when we were arguing and fighting and we were scratching and clawing to get this done.

Dave Ramsey:
But you start looking really good. You’re pretty. When you’re at the, at the peak performer stage, it’s, it’s a good time. Your leaders know what they’re supposed to do. Your leaders, leaders know what they’re supposed to do. Your leaders, leaders, leaders know what they’re supposed to do. Products are, we make fewer colossal, embarrassing mistakes. The mistakes we made are more test market, very strategic, very thoughtful systems and processes on product launches.

Dave Ramsey:
Not just throw it against the wall and hope it sticks. You know, all this stuff. The business really starts to become the, the quintessential well oiled machine at this stage. The only problem you’ve got at this stage is you can think it’s all going to always be that way. And it’s not. If you quit pushing the rock up the hill, it’s going to roll back over you. So you got to break it for, it’s broken. You got to keep pushing on it.

Dave Ramsey:
You got to be diligent. You got to, you got to take a cattle prod to the organization every so often, just flip things over, you know, get everything moving again and just have a meeting outside in the rain or something. Let’s do something. John’s and my friend Art Williams used to say, let’s have an emergency meeting. And so even if there’s not an emergency, let’s just create one just to keep everybody on their toes. Because otherwise you start believing like just because we won the super bowl, we’re going to win it every year. No, you’re not. The chances of repeating are very, very hard.

Dave Ramsey:
And you got to do the same level of work to even have a shot at it. So that’s your only thing there. And then the natural thing after that is to move to this legacy stage, which is where you start talking about succession planning. I started that 16 years ago. I was 48 and I looked up and I went, I’m gonna die someday. And the guy that teaches stewardship, the whole thing’s gonna go up in smoke. That’s not good stewardship because the brand was based on me. The, the leadership team was really strong and not based on me.

Dave Ramsey:
The owners, the rent, the next generation owners weren’t raised up yet, they weren’t taught yet. Now they’re all in place. And wise owners got an incredible leadership team today. And we figured out how to hand the brand off with the Ramsey personalities. And, and so the brand, now we have an index called the survivability index, accounting metric that we started 16 years ago. How much survives if Dave dies this year? And at first it was 3% survives if I die, because it was all dependent on me running my mouth somewhere. But we said, okay, that’s not sustainable. That’s dumb.

Dave Ramsey:
We’ve got to have strategy. We’ve got to have product lines. We got to have thoughts that are different than that. And so today, it’s flipped completely. It’s 97% survivability. So basically, our revenue would probably not even blink. The people in the building that don’t even, you know, interact with me today, they wouldn’t blink. I mean, hopefully a couple of people be sad, but other than that, you know, I think this place is going to run just fine from an ownership, a brand transfer, and a leadership transfer perspective.

Dave Ramsey:
But that’s an intentional act. And if you’re not going to hand it to family or to someone upon your death, it’s going to be an exit. At least have a plan, because too many entrepreneurs grab their chest having a heart attack, fall back into the grave, and as they fall back, toss the keys out. The probability of success on that sticking and working is close to zero.

Maxwell Leadership Certified Team:
Hey, podcast listeners, many of you listening right now would probably love the autonomy that comes with owning your own business or becoming a coach that helps other businesses businesses succeed. Well, we have a phenomenal strategy where you are 100% in control of your own business, earning income on your own terms, and have access to the people, tools, and resources you need to build a thriving leadership development business. When you become a Maxwell Leadership Certified Team member, you join a global community of entrepreneurs led by our expert team of mentors and faculty, including John C. Maxwell. You’ll also get one of the top leadership certifications in the world, next to your name, giving you the boost you need to get started. Visit us online at MaxwellLeadership.com/JoinTheTeam to find out more.

Mark Cole:
You know, so there’s. Boy, there’s so far, so many ways I want to go with this, because I watch you and John both have the same philosophy. You say, man, if you saw me when I first started, the problem was I wasn’t as bad as people thought I was when I first started. But the challenge today is you’re not as good as people think that you are. Y’all both have that same philosophy. But it’s because of your intentionality on building legacy, on succession. There is no success without a successor. We’ve heard that, but that’s true.

Mark Cole:
You’re living that out. You’re ensuring that that’s happening. And you’re still helping some of us that are just getting started to think like a legacy person before there’s anything worth giving. John says this. He says, when you can afford to quit, you can’t afford to quit, right? You’ve heard that. You’re showing that. At the same time, if you are going to quit, quit early because there’s not as much at stake, just get out. But you’re teaching us with your actions, your plans, that today doesn’t define you, but the people that you put your DNA in is what defines your success.

Mark Cole:
And I want you to know we’re all learning from you, Dave. I’ve learned a lot financially wisdom from you. I’ve learned a lot of leadership from you, but I’m learning a lot of succession from you as well. Take me back, if you don’t mind. What are some foundational financial principles that leaders should adopt to build a business that lasts?

Dave Ramsey:
Well, I’m a sold out, crazy evangelical Christian. I 1000% believe, if I can find it in the scriptures, that’s a principle I can go with. And I 1000% believe when I function in that principle, it’s like my loving heavenly father says, son, here’s how you stay married, son, here’s how you raise kids, son, here’s how you lead. If I can find something that gives me an indication of that, I think my probability of success is very, very high. The only possible thing is I, in my brokenness and sinful nature, didn’t apply the principle properly. That’s possible, or I somehow rationalized around the edges of it or something. And I’ve done that plenty of times, but that’s the starting point. And so the baby steps that we teach are not in the Bible in financial, okay, the process that we use, but they are the process to apply biblical principles of finance.

Dave Ramsey:
And as you know, there’s 2,500 scriptures dealing with money and possessions. There’s a lot of them. And so you can get a lot of insight there, some very nuanced and funny things almost. And then there’s the big, big basic things. Obviously Dave Ramsey is going to tell you the borrower is slave to the lender 100% of the time that you borrow money, you become a slave. That’s not optional. It doesn’t say, except an llc, it says you’re a slave, period, end of story. And any of us in business that ever had the bank come knocking, we know that feeling of slavery is very real.

Dave Ramsey:
And we know they have control over our lives. And suddenly I’m trying to serve two masters. And Jesus says, tough to do that. You’re gonna love one, hate the other. And so I didn’t. After going broke and learning that lesson the hard way, I’ve never borrowed money again for anything, ever. Period. No question.

Dave Ramsey:
I just said, I’ve had enough. And you know, because I can’t find anywhere in scripture, one single scripture, and there’s hundreds of them on debt that says anything positive about debt. You’re a fool, you’re a slave. It’s a curse. You know, all these words come up. It’s not a sin. You’re not going to hell for having a MasterCard. That’s not the point.

Dave Ramsey:
The point is that the freedom, the no weight on my shoulders. And so if we had something like, say, let’s pretend there was something like a pandemic, you know, and I got a thousand employees and I don’t have any payments. I’m sitting on a different world now. I’ve still got a whole lot of money in payroll and these people are wanting to eat. But my building, I own it. So the landlord’s pretty friendly. And so, you know, what are we going to do? It gave us all kinds of margin and room where companies that were living right on the edge are gone. They’re disappeared now.

Dave Ramsey:
And it’s what Warren Buffett says, you can tell when the tide goes out. You can tell who is skinny dipping. And so if you get something like that, hit the economy or hit your sector that you’re in, it’s going to expose your best laid plans of mice and men on your little debt thing. It doesn’t work. Second thing is to obviously create margin in the business, you got to have a profit, and that’s live on less than you make. A foolish man devours all he has. In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil. But a foolish man devours all he has if you spend everything you make at home or everything you make at business or everything you make at the church, and it’s a nonprofit, because nonprofits are technically not a nonprofit.

Dave Ramsey:
They bring in more than they send out. It’s an accounting entry for the irs. But a church that takes in less than it has going out is out of business they go into. And so it’s true of everyone, we got to live on less than we make. And the one that precedes that is safe. In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil. Choice food was only for the aristocrat, only for the very rich, the top 3%, when Solomon wrote that proverb. And so the food that you and I eat every day was not available in the time of Solomon to the general population, only for the kings.

Dave Ramsey:
And so choice food is a sign of wealth and savings. And oil. Oil was a sign of wealth as well because it kept the holy of holies burning in the temple. It was used for anointing. It was a sign of God’s spirit and presence. So people often used a carafe of oil in those days in the marketplace as a medium of exchange like we would green presidents faces. So you take that and go, okay, in the house of the wise, wise people have savings. So that in business we call that retained earnings.

Dave Ramsey:
So we need a pile of cash because we know how to got a credit line because we don’t borrow money. And we’re going to live on less than we make. And we just keep going through those basic processes. And if you do that, your sustainability in business is much improved. Number one cause of small business failures, cash flow problems. Cash flow problems can be defined as two things. Debt and not paying my taxes because we don’t have a good accounting system and we think we can take all that money home. And then the stinking all thing all comes due in April and it puts us out of business.

Dave Ramsey:
So cash flow problems are not taking care of taxes and render to Caesar and not take and letting the SBA loan come down around your head and it shuts people down. It’s the number one thing when we’re coaching small businesses that we run into is debt problems in the financial world. World.

Mark Cole:
So Dave, one of my greatest honors and privileges in being with John this long is getting to be friends with people like you. To where I know more of the Dave Ramsey not on stage than I do even from stage. And what I love about you, what I love about John, is you’ve not allowed success to change you. How did you ensure that you stayed grounded while building something so impactful?

Dave Ramsey:
God gave me the benefit of going broke. And when you go broke, I was not only broke, I was broken. And again, I was a baby Christian. So we always tell people, I met God on the way up, I got to know him on the way down. And so when we hit bottom, we had an I surrender all moment. It wasn’t a Baptist altar call. It was I surrender all. You’re now not only my savior, you’re my Lord.

Dave Ramsey:
I want you to lord over my career, my money, my marriage, my kids, my leadership. I want you to lord over those things. And therefore I don’t own anything. I’m just a manager of all of this, just a steward of all of it. And that was just, you know, steered into me. I don’t have any tattoos, but if I had one, I’d say that, you know, I mean, that’s it. It’s locked in, it’s burned in, and so it’s not hard. And the second beautiful thing that came from that is I lost my fear of man, my need for affirmation from other people.

Dave Ramsey:
I enjoy affirmation like any human being, but my need for it to survive. My number of clicks on Instagram is I couldn’t give a rip less. What I want is to is feed God’s lambs and watch them get fat. Fat. I want to see God’s lambs prosper, and I want to see them do have a better quality of life because of leadership tools in their business. And I want to add value because there’s more fun in adding value and giving. And the scripture is full of that indication, of course, than there is anything else. So it’s a little bit selfish in a way.

Dave Ramsey:
But, yeah, we’re not doing it for people’s affirmation. And I got one guy to keep happy, and that’s Jesus.

Mark Cole:
I want to let us close and go back to talking about the book, but one of the things I can tell you, and again, podcast listeners are not familiar with Dave Ramsey. RamseySolutions.com will equip you to live that prosperous life that Dave’s been talking about. One of the things I love about you, I love about John and being a part of this podcast is you’re not going to get it mistaken. What happened with the great Old Testament leader, Moses. Moses got to see the fruit of the promised land, but he didn’t get to experience it. And I love Dave that you and John at this season, you’re experiencing the promised land. You’ve accomplished more than you ever thought you would. You would not have been able to strategically put the plan of what Ramsey Solutions is today if a gun had been to your head.

Mark Cole:
Yet you’re getting to it. Experience that and not just see it. And I’m proud of you. I’m proud of Ramsey Solutions. You are helping lambs like me get further ahead by applying your principles and podcast family. That includes the book that Dave has just come out with. You don’t have to wait. It’s out.

Mark Cole:
Let’s go get it. Build a business you love. Dave, before we sign off today, kind of just put Another little snapshot on the book. What we’re going to get from the book. Any last words that you’d like to give us?

Dave Ramsey:
Mark, you’re very kind. Thank you for having me today. It’s an honor. Anything I get to do with you and get to do with John is always a blast. We always have a good time together and it’s always fun to come along. Like minded stuff. A friend of mine called it that. He said PLU people like us, you know, it’s fun to hang out with plu.

Dave Ramsey:
So yeah, the other feature of the five stages is there are six drivers that we’re not going to get into now. But there are six things that drive a business through those five stages. The first one is the John Maxwell stage and that’s the personal growth stage. You are the problem with your business and you’re the solution. We know that from John’s principle of the law of the lid and 21 irrefutable laws. And that’s really where that comes from. I realized probably before that book came out, but certainly it gave language to it. When John put that into words and said, okay, I’m the lid.

Dave Ramsey:
Until I grow, my business can’t grow. And so continuing to absorb everything John Maxwell puts out or Mark puts out or Dave puts out, I mean just, I’m just a leadership junkie because I’m the problem. If I don’t get better, this place plateaus. And you know what? It, you know it does right after it plateaus, it goes down. Now things don’t stay on a plateau. It’s impossible from a physics standpoint. So we’re either going up or going down. You’re getting better, you’re getting worse and sometimes you’re doing both at the same time.

Dave Ramsey:
But at least you’re moving. So yeah, get that personal growth thing and continuing to. I will read everything that my brother John says anytime I get a chance to hear him talk. I’ll go sit at his feet for the rest of my life. And his life, I mean, because I don’t ever want to stop at that personal driver. That’s the first thing that gets a business moving. But thank you so much for having me today.

Mark Cole:
Build a business you love. You want to go. Love what you do. You need to go pick this book up. We’ve been incredibly impacted today by you, Dave. Not just today, but with your life’s work. Thank you. Thanks for building a legacy worth following and sustaining.

Mark Cole:
Hey everyone, go do something great. Bring powerful positive change through world around you. Because everyone deserves to be led well.