Welcome to the Banner Women Leadership Podcast, where our team talks with top leaders about how to better serve and lead your teams. Our goal is for you to gain tangible tips on topics such as culture, leadership, succession, and navigating ethics problems. We hope you enjoyed today's show.
SPEAKER_02Hey everybody, welcome to a bonus episode of the Vanderblum Podcast. We're thrilled you're here. If you've been around for a while, you know we put a book out in November, Be the Unicorn. We actually studied the best candidates we've ever interviewed, and then their job performance as well. And we found like the best of the best. And there were 30,000 of them. We studied, we said, do they have anything in common? And the answer was yes. And we found 12 habits that they practice, which means anyone can become one of these unicorns. So today we're going to focus with uh a guy who's given me way more time than I deserve over the years, Dave Ramsey. Dave, welcome. Well, good to see you, my friend. Yeah, you too. You too. I'd say how are you doing? But I think it's uh better than you deserve, right? Always it's dependable, yeah. Well, Dave, I uh people don't know, but like way early in the history of our company, you were kind and came alongside me. I don't know how long you've been doing entree leadership, but Adrian and I went together and she insisted that we go, and uh I went because if she'd have gone alone, she might have run off with you because she's a pretty big fan. But uh it it really changed us. And and this is Dave didn't ask me to do this, but if you're not aware of what entree leadership is, I know there are a lot of business owners out there. I know there are a lot of pastors who are having to run a business. You say, wait, I thought it was church. No, there's a business side, and entree leadership can help you figure out uh the right way to run your business. It's not cut up your business credit cards, it's how do you run a business. Dave, Dave, tell people for just a few seconds about that program.
SPEAKER_01Well, that product was born uh for small businesses, and that includes churches, of course, because leadership is needed in all of those things. And uh it basically is the the playbook of how we grew Ramsey from a card table in my living room. All the mistakes we've made don't make those, um, and the leadership errors and the good things that we did, the smart things we've learned. And so we shared that playbook in a best-selling book back in 2012, and it continues to be a huge uh movement, a huge brand, a huge tribe. Uh, we do a huge conference every year. This year it'll be in Dallas, and um the entree leadership summit, which is what you guys came to, and you know, it's it's a fun product. We enjoy working on it. I enjoy helping small business people and people in that are struggling with leadership because I was that guy for so long.
SPEAKER_02It was amazing. Uh I remember sitting there, it was 2010, I think. Maybe you might correct me, it might be at 11, but it was the year the iPad came out because I'd just gotten one and long conference talks, not my thing. iPad, new flashy, I can play with that. And I remember Adrian, you or somebody was talking about vendors and HR departments. And I'm starting this thing on a card tail. I'm like, I haven't played on my iPad. She elbows me, what are you gonna do when there are a hundred people working for us and you didn't pay attention right now? I'm like, brutal. And I said, You think we're gonna have a hundred people working for you? She said, You don't? And right then I realized, okay, that's the best search I ever did. Pay attention because she was right. And uh, you may think I'm too small a business. You you you don't know. You don't know. And Dave, uh, one of the habits that I want to focus on, you've helped me be prepared for things. And when things come down the pike, you've been kind to help me understand what you've done and not done over the years. It feels like when it comes to money, particularly, being prepared might be one of the more critical habits. Have you found that with people who seem to make it and become a millionaire? I know you've done a big study on those folks. What have you learned about preparedness and the the world of managing our money?
SPEAKER_01One of the things we found about world-class leaders and uh world-class and people that build wealth also, and sometimes those overlap, um, is that they don't think in short blocks of time. Where there is no vision, the people perish. They think about when they're making a decision about money or making a decision in leadership, they're thinking about how that's going to affect them 10 years from now, not 10 minutes from now. And um, you know, if you want to think like rich people, think about 10 years from now, how is it gonna how's if I buy this car, how's it affect me 10 years from now? If I if I keep this person who's misbehaving, how's it gonna affect our organization 10 years from now? And so setting your vision out there further causes you to be prepared and it causes you to put in place systems and values. And when you have systems and values, that your decisions are often made for you. Um so you know, like for instance, if you say we have a value of we don't in our organization and at Ramsey, we don't, uh we don't have a tolerance for people who steal. And so when someone steals, the decision is already made. Now, around our place, thankfully, that's not something that ever happens. You know, uh another one would be a value is that we don't mistreat people inside the organization. So when someone inside the organization mistreats someone, uh, depending on the severity of it, we either go through a one uh, you know, you get one more strike and you're out, or the severity is is you're just can't be a part of Ramsey because you opted out with this behavior. It's real painful. The execution of the decision, letting someone go that you love and they made a mistake and all that. Uh, but but some of the mistakes are, you know, you can't leave them in the organization. And so uh, but the decision was already made. You were prepared by having a value in place. This is our value. Uh or having a process in place, you were prepared.
SPEAKER_02Let me push back on you, Dave. You're running a big company, you probably got a thousand employees. I'm just running a little old thing over here. That doesn't all apply to me. I mean, you're talking about big famous millionaires that have hundreds of people working for you. Isn't that what a normal millionaire looks like? I mean, you talk about prepared, that doesn't really apply to a normal guy like me, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, if you want to be rich people, do rich people stuff. If you want to be a world-class leader, even if you've got three people working for you, do world-class leader stuff. And world-class leader stuff is world-class building wealth, uh, you know, having this value system and having the process in place. In the money side, it would be like, okay, I'm the I'm the uh little pig that built the brick house instead of the other two pigs, right? Be the third pig, right? So what's that mean? It means we're out of debt, we have an emergency fund in place, we have a plan, we're aiming at the future. And so when something like a Fauci pandemic comes at you, then you've got to say, okay, how can I adjust and maneuver in the middle of these outside variables? But the but I'm in the storm, but I'm in a brick house. I built my house not upon the sand, Christ said, but upon the rock. And so spiritually, I built my house on Jesus, but more important, but but not more importantly, less importantly, I've got the money piece where I'm in a solid place. I'm on solid ground. Same thing in your organization. You're in a solid place, in a solid ground. If you don't have a budget inside your organization that you're managing the project to, then no one knows if their expenses are out of hand. You know, when we do a live event, we have a budget for that live event. And if a vendor comes in on that line item too high, then we know we've either got to get a different vendor, we've got to negotiate with that vendor, or we've got to change a line item. But we're bumping up against something because we were prepared. We had a budget in place, we had a timeline in place. And if you make it up as you go, thank God it's Friday, oh God, the thinking 10 years out, you're always gonna make horrible decisions.
SPEAKER_02Oh, well, you know, I was watching uh keeping up with you guys just did I love data and uh seeing what data proves out. And uh you guys just did a uh it was it the biggest study ever of millionaires, or is that an oversight?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh 10,167 millionaires we studied and we figured out exactly what a millionaire in America looks like. And so it's it's so that's like data, it's fact.
SPEAKER_02So that's what that's what really caught my eye because you know the thing about the the be the unicorn book is like, oh, I could never be a unicorn. I'm not a I wasn't the quarterback of the football team or the head cheerleader, or I'm not, I didn't do a good job of being born. You know, I don't have what is a typical millionaire, the the prepared who have budgets in place and make it to the level of millionaire, which I would say probably is unicorn level. What is a what does a millionaire look like?
SPEAKER_01Well, we know that 79% of America's millionaires did not inherit a dime. We know another 5% inherited a small amount, like grandmother left them $5,000, and mathematically could not cause them to be a millionaire. And we know another 5% received a substantial inheritance, like $250,000 after they were already millionaires. So $79 and 5 and 5 is 89. That means 9 out of 10 of America's millionaires did not become millionaires because of an inheritance. The average GPA is about 3.1 GPA in college if they went to college. Okay. The average time it takes is about 17 years. Uh the the we found these set things. The top five categories were all processed people in their careers. They're the number one category was engineer, number two was accountant, number three was teacher that becomes millionaires. Teachers, number three, most likely, of all career features. Teachers don't get paid anything. Uh, some of them don't, but some of them do, and but they're processed people. That's what they're doing. Yeah, and one third, yeah, 33% of the people that become millionaires never made six figures. So that also aligns with the fact that teachers can become millionaires. Uh and then the fourth is business, the fifth is attorney. Medical doctors didn't even make the top five because they're notoriously make a lot of money, but arrogant and mess up their money, like athletes do, and that kind of thing. So, but if you look at those five careers, we couldn't figure it out at first. What do they all have in common? Attorneys, engineers, accountants, teachers, business executives. They all are process people. They all follow a process. A teacher follows a lesson plan. An attorney has a certain decorum in things they have to do in the courtroom, or the judge will smack them sideways. The law dictates that. If you build a bridge a certain way, it doesn't fall. An engineer, if you build it another way, you know, there's only one way to do accounting. Accounting is not art. You get to you don't get to make yours up. There's generally accepted accounting principles, gap. That's only one way to do accounting. Every other way you do accounting is wrong. You know, and so these are processed people, so they find the process of building wealth, putting money in their 401k, getting their house paid off, and they become millionaires over 17 years on average. And so, but again, it's there's nothing sexy about any of this being prepared thing. It's a Boy Scout thing. It's very, it's kind of boring. Being the third pig isn't, it's not, it's not flashy. You know, it's you know, you're just you're just the guy with the brick house, and everybody else is out partying while you're building your freaking house. You know, and so this the same thing's true in leadership. You know, you're making leadership decisions. What are you doing to be prepared? What are you doing to be prepared? I'm am I actually reading books? Do I read nonfiction books? Or do I or am I really up on TikTok? That's a bad choice right there, okay? There's a good choice and a bad choice in that. And so what what what causes you to be prepared to take the next promotion that comes along? Causes you to be prepared to take advantage of an opportunity that walks through the door, but you weren't ready because you hadn't done the work to get ready. And all of these things fall in that same bucket.
SPEAKER_02I I I play a fair amount of golf growing up. I wasn't in anything you'd write home about, but I did play a lot and then quit when the kids were little and businesses growing. Started back, and it took me till I was 51 to realize the way you went at golf is avoid mistakes. It's not about hitting cool shots. Like you watch Tiger, he never really went that low with his scoring, he just stayed out of trouble. And I was playing golf with a guy who was he just kicked my rear end. He was and he didn't do anything exciting the entire round. We were sitting around having lunch after and asked him what he did for a living. Uh he said, Well, my father-in-law was one of the first in uh the Berkshire Hathaway circle. You know, we were going to right. So we were going to Warren's meetings, and I was a kid, so he took me along, so I kind of got in early on all that. And I said, So what'd you learn? He said, uh, invest in boring things. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of like golf. It's not about hitting a flop shot or a long drive, it's about just avoid mistakes, stay prepared. What when you think about preparedness, Dave, what's a lesson that you know now that you didn't know when you were younger? Thinking back to even before the company got going, what have you learned about preparedness that a younger you could have learned earlier?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm an excellent salesman, and I'm also have a gift as an entrepreneur to make money. And those two things in an immature version of Dave were really dangerous because it led me to the conclusion that I could always make money. Um, if you can sell, you can always make money, you know. And if you're an entrepreneur, you just come up with another idea, you can always make money. Uh and I I I my my I thought it gave me a pass on being prepared, meaning I thought I could out-earn my stupidity. And you can't out-earn your stupid. You got to fix your stupid and then go make some money, because it's just like the golf shot. It's uh, you know, you you know, you chunk it in the woods, you chunk it in the woods, you chunk it in the woods, and then you drop one right there for a four-foot birdie, you know. Uh, but that one is not gonna offset those three doubles, you know, or three triples, right? It it you can't make up that scorecard. That scorecard's screwed because you just chunked it in the woods, even though, but you know you got that one shot in your bag, but it's not gonna land there by the pin often enough to even be a good recreational golfer, much less semi-competitive. So, same thing's true here. I just thought I could out-earn it. So I I really didn't have good systems in place. I didn't have good preparedness in in place. That's why I went broke the first time. I was just out running around like like the hare rather than the tortoise, uh, you know, running from place to place at high speed, and there was a lot of activity. It was blinding how fast we were moving. But uh, but man, we the effort we were putting forth to accomplish that it was very poor-placed effort. And so we, you know, we were deeply in debt. We had no money, uh, no cash. And so when the bank started calling notes on us, it caused us to lose everything we own. Because I was stupid. And I built the built a house of cards, which is again trying to out-earn your stupidity. It's like people who uh are gonna exercise off all the bad eating. Yeah, you cannot outrun a big Mac.
SPEAKER_02No. You should go on radio. You're quick. I think that's a great place to end it. Uh guys, if you're tuning in, what we've been talking about is the art of being prepared. It's one of the 12 habits we found at the very best of the best. And Dave's been kind enough to share those, but he has so much more than preparedness. Uh, what's the best way for people to read the latest things you're working on, Dave?
SPEAKER_01Just check us out at ramseysolutions.com. Everything in the world you want to know about Ramsey's there. The YouTube shows, the podcasts, the uh events we do, the books and everything we put out. But uh honor to be with you again, my friend.
SPEAKER_02Same to you, Dave. Really appreciate your friendship over the years. And thank you for joining us today. Tune in again and we'll focus on another unicorn habit.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to the Vaderblumen Leadership Podcast. At Vader Blumen, we help organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, culture, compensation, and diversity solutions. Visit our website, VaderBloomen.com to learn more and subscribe to our Vader Blumen Leadership Podcast or at Vanderble Podcast.