From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is Entree Leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. If you've got a question you want to ask on the show, click the link in the description. Decker is with us in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hi, Decker. What's up in your world? I'm doing better than I deserve, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve, sir. How can we help? So I run a car detailing business out in Las Vegas. We haven't been in business a full year yet, but in our eight months, we've done 1.8 million. Good. And I'm. That's a lot of detailing. Oh, yeah. I'm very grateful for our growth. But the predicament that I found myself in is I have over promoted. And so my question is, how do I have that conversation with a couple of my long-term employees that I'm just not getting enough value for their inflated salary without hurting the friendship? Well, the friendship is independent of the business discussion, as long as you are fair and kind and you treat someone like you'd want to be treated. Okay. So you mean you gave them too big a raise? I essentially promoted people too fast. So we've grown. Dang, now I'm thinking about my arms, Dave. But we've grown very fast, and so I've promoted a few people who didn't have the skills but had the tenure. We're here from the beginning. And so I'm at a point where my— So they're supposed to be leading people, and they're not good at it? Exactly. Oh, okay. Okay. Um, that's fairly normal in a growth curve like you've had. You've blown up. Okay. And how old are these guys? They're the same age as me. So 20, I think the oldest one is 22. Yeah. Okay. All right. And so a bunch of young guys are out there scrapping and put together a million and a million aid and detailing work. That's pretty impressive. Really. You got to, you know, step back and go, we've done a pretty cool thing here. And now we got some cleanup to do, uh, because we did it too fast. Right. Okay. And so how many team members do you have total? So on salary, because the reason we've grown so fast is because of door-to-door sales. That's my background. So if you include independent contractors, we're nearly 50. But if you're only looking W-2, we've trimmed the fat quite a bit. We're looking about 12 to 15-ish. Okay. The guys that are leading people, are they leading W-2 people or independent contractors? A little bit of both. So we have two guys leading W-2s and then the rest are leading contractors. Okay. So where's the breakdown? Is it the guy leading the W-2s or is it the guys leading the contractors or both? I feel like it's a ripple effect. So it started with one guy leading the W-2s and it's kind of, you know, cancer spread across my leadership team. I don't understand. What kind of cancer spread? Just lack of motivation. So I'll give you an example. The other day I walked in on what's supposed to be the general manager just sleeping on the couch. And so just little stuff like that. I feel like it's the, we've grown really fast. We've done a great thing, like you said, but now we're getting fat and happy when the job's just starting. Yeah. Okay. Well, and so you've got, it sounds like you've got five or six leaders in leadership roles. Does that sound right? Correct. Okay. It pretty simple I would just call them out and go get a private room at a steakhouse tell everybody we going to have steak tonight and then sit down and tell them what going on And say, here's the deal, guys. We're a bunch of young guns. We're young warriors. And if we don't grow up, this thing's going to fall in on us. So we're going to have to be mature. We're going to have to be diligent. We're going to have to be service-oriented leaders. We're all going to start studying leadership together. We're going to start with some of Ramsey's books, Entree Leadership. We're going to start with some of Maxwell's books, John Maxwell. We're going to start with some of Pat Lencioni's books, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is the first one you'll read of his. I'll send you a couple of these for you to get started, okay? Sure. And you're going to take these six guys through this. And, guys, here's the deal. No more screwing off. This is serious. We're going to do this together. If I walk in and see someone asleep on the couch again, it's your last day. You can roll over from your nap and clean out your desk. Right. Because you're not going to find me asleep on the couch at work, and I'm going to expect that you're not asleep on the couch at work. And metaphorically, we're also not going to allow you to be asleep on the job. Right. And so it's game on. We're playing for the Super Bowl. and if you can't do that at 20 you're not going to be able to do it at 30 and if you can't do that at 1.8 million you're not going to be able to do it at 4.8 million and i'm going to 4.8 million if you want to go with me you're going to have to play for the super bowl if you don't want to play for the super bowl today's your last day you decide this is how we're going to do it we're going to charge the gates of hell with a water pistol and put the fire out baby here we go and And, you know, guys line up. And if you don't want to play with this, it's okay with me. I'm your friend. I'll love you anyway. I'll still always like you, but I will fire your butt if I catch you sleeping on the couch again. I'm not doing this. Life is too short. I work too hard. You work too hard. We've got too much success going, and we're going to lose it all if we half-butt lead. So the six of us are about to learn how to be young gun leaders like nobody's ever seen before. We're going to be the team of leaders that everybody in the city points to and says, look at those young guns. They know how to do it. And if you don't want to be one of those, then this is your day to opt out because that's the thing we're on today. Here's everybody a copy of this book. I want you to read the first two chapters. We're going to be in the office on Tuesday morning at 7 o'clock going through the chapter. And everybody that's a leader is going to be in the office at 7 o'clock on Tuesday morning. If you're not here, you're not going to be a leader. If you are going to be here, you're going to be a leader. And that's your only shot at being a leader. Got it? And everybody just talk it through. Anybody got any problem with this? Any questions? And just reset the table because what you've done is you've just thrown so much against the wall, some of it stuck, and you got away with it. Definitely. And then is there anything I can do to kind of prevent the complacency as we continue to grow and as I'm promoting the next generation? Hold everybody accountable. That's not an option. We'll get right back to our episode. but first as your business grows everything gets more complex. There was a time when we had too many disconnected systems and not enough visibility across the business. We wasted time chasing information instead of making decisions. That's why we got NetSuite. NetSuite brings your financials, inventory, CRM and more together in one place. More than 43,000 businesses run on NetSuite including Ramsey Solutions. And now they're taking the next step with NetSuite Next, making it easier to put AI to work across your entire business NetSuite Next automates routine work like following up on overdue accounts and with NetSuite Next AI is built into everything you do so you can ask questions just like you're talking with a member of your team. You'll have the information you need to make decisions faster. That means less busy work and more time growing your business. And right now you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenue is at least seven figures, go to netsuite.ai slash Ramsey. That's netsuite.ai slash Ramsey. Now let's get back to the episode. Complacency in my leadership is not an option. It's not at Ramsey. As a matter of fact, one of our core values here is act like you're self-employed. Work like you own the place. and if you can't do that, you don't get to work here. It's a condition of employment. If you want to mail it in, do as little work as you can do and make as much money as you can make, come in, leave early, and steal while you're there, I'm going to fire you. Sure. And then fire them if they do it. Right. And, you know, you're my friend. I love you. I'm so sorry that you didn't work out. Not my fault, your fault. but i mean you don't have to be quite that brash but in your head that's where you've got to get to you've got to get toughened up in your head and go i'm not tolerating this anymore because you're going to get whatever you tolerate and so it's accountability it's guys look we're not mailing it in here and so you got to be you know if your job is to ride these four salesmen you better ride them like they're the dadgum kentucky derby man this is what we're doing and if you're going to mail it in you're going to have to be riding ponies somewhere else because we're riding the dadgum thoroughbreds here let's go and just talk about that all the time out loud and nope the funny thing is when you talk like that no one thinks you're talking about them they think you're talking about somebody else and then when it then when they do it you look at them and you go i told you we're not doing this and i'll tell you one more time but i'm not going to spend a bunch of time trying to figure this out with you you're either is or you isn't now you decide and and I've had these discussions in various levels of sophistication and various levels of brashness or sarcasm over the years. I'm very kind and calm and quiet when I'm doing this one-on-one in private and I'm having to reprimand someone and to get them in accountability and I'm giving them their last chance to do it. But dude, you cannot spend your whole life begging people to work. You have to hire people that want to work. I had a guy ask me one time, how do you hire motivated people? How do you motivate your people? And I said, I don't motivate my people. I hire motivated people and I fire the ones that aren't. And that's what you're going to do. And you're going to have some that are going to surprise you at how good they are. And you're going to have some of them that are going to break your heart. Because you really wanted it more for them than they wanted it. And that's part of leadership. It's a continuous process of loving someone so well that they can't stay because I love the organization. And they're mailing it in. And I'm not going to put up with it. I'm not mean about it. I'm not mad. I'm just not going to tolerate it because I'm going to get what I tolerate. And if you tolerate a bunch of complacency, you tolerate a bunch of laziness, you tolerate a bunch of I don't cares, you're going to have a whole organization full of it and the business is going to fold up like a Walmart tent. It's not going to stick, man. Not going to stick. I got a feeling you got some studs in there that are just young and they let their foot off the gas because they thought they were winning. And a good halftime speech is what I'm calling out here. And I think you, I think that you're probably going to bring most of these young studs around. They're probably okay guys. Uh I don hear anything other than the guy sleep on the couch but he might just been hung over from the night before So we just going to have the talk from that Like you you get one more of those and you know that it anywhere else you work They'd have fired your butt. I mean, think of any place you can go in and sleep on the couch unless they have an announced siesta. Hello. Okay. You just, there's no place you can do that. So daycares, you can do that if you're three, but after that, you're not allowed to sleep on the couch. So, I mean, come on, seriously. That's like something out of the frat party or something, right? Oh my gosh. So that you just call them out, go, dude, do you have any idea how ridiculous that looks that your boss walked in and caught you sleeping on the couch and you still have your job? That's ridiculous. So that just says I'm really a graceful, nice human being. Cause otherwise anywhere else, they would have put your butt on the street right then and gone. You've got to be kidding me. Wow. but all that that's all it is this is normal stuff with fast growth and young dudes so just have a good halftime speech i'm going to send you uh six copies of entree leadership my first book and get you started uh you hang on the line the gang will pick up we'll ship those out to you uh and then get pat lynchione's book the seven dysfunctions of the team and make that your next six after you go through entree leadership together but you got to start going through leadership books and learn how to lead together they're they're young dudes they don't know how to lead yet you got to teach them so let's start leadership class leadership development class starts at your operation today starts on tuesday morning 7 a.m no sleeping bring coffee bring donuts let's go and that's how you do it man so guys this is very normal normal organizations tolerate bullcrap off of people like you wouldn't believe because they're too scared to face it they don't know how to face it and still be considered nice. And, um, it's, it's, I had this conversation with one of my top leaders the other day, who's working with a situation inside Ramsey. And I said, it never gets easy to confront people you love. The only thing harder than confronting people you love is not confronting people you love because you start to infect the entire organization with this bull crap. Because once one person says take it easy, then the rest of them say start taking it easy. Once one person starts gossiping, then everybody starts gossiping, and you get what you tolerate. So you've got to sit down, eyeball to eyeball, and say we're not doing this. You don't speak to ladies that way and work here. We're not doing this. You don't come in late and work here. We're not doing this. You don't drink on the job and smoke pot on the job. We're not doing this. And you get what you tolerate. And it's not a matter of I have to put institute drug testing. It's I fire your butt if you do it. And everybody else notices that I fired your butt for smoking weed. Hello. You know, I mean, seriously. So that's how it works. So you got to go back. It's normal if you're running a business. And if it ever gets easy to be tough on people, you're in a dangerous spot because you become a bully. We're not trying to be tough for tough sake. We're trying to be tough for the good of the individual to become better at who they are and for the good of the organization so that we can depend on that individual. This is all the tough is. Tough is not for the sake of the person doing the tough. It's having the backbone to do conflict and do it well, do it gently and kindly and forcefully all at the same time. And that is a necessary ingredient of leading a number of people and you don't scale anything until you learn to lead a number of people. Hey folks, if you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like, share, and subscribe for more real world leadership content. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey, and this is Entree Leadership.
