Is Partnering With My Uncle Going to Be a Problem?

From the headquarters of Ramsay Solutions, this is Andre Leadership,

where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. If you have a question you want to ask on the show, fill out the forum on EntryLeadership.com/ask, or call and leave a voice mail at 844-944-1070-844-944-1070-1070-844-944-1070. Lane is in Austin, Texas, High Lane, how are you?

>> Doing great, how are you, Dave? >> Better than I deserve, what's up? >> Hey Dave, I just got a quick question about our family business. I'm the general manager of our family owned equipment rental company. It's owned by my father and my uncle and they've been a phenomenal job.

Job, they're completely debt-free. Our annual income is about 2.5 for 2024 with about 600,000 profit,

and about 2 million in 2025 with about 400,000 profit.

My father started his later phase of his session plan, and as I'm his only son, the plan is the path to business down to myself. My question is, how do I know it's the right time to ask my uncle if he's ready to sell his half of the business? >> Your dad is your buying your dad's portion,

or are you being given it? >> No, sir, I'm being given it. >> Awesome, very cool. How old are you? >> I am 34. >> How old is your dad?

>> My dad is 64. >> How old is your uncle?

“>> That's a great question. I believe he is about 57.”

>> How is your relationship with your uncle? He's still active in the business? >> Partly, the he works about part time. I mean, really, I mean, he's working about a half a year in reality, probably. >> Okay.

You're going to be partners with your uncle soon? >> Yes, sir, that is correct. >> Okay, all right, good. All right. And he knows this is going on.

>> Yes, sir. Yeah, that's been pretty well the plan from the beginning. Whenever I came to work for him. >> I don't know why it would be awkward to talk to him about it tomorrow. And just approaching this is like open-handed, not demanding or anything, but say, you know, I'm walking into this half ownership with you and I are getting ready to be partners.

And you're only 57, where that's, you know, 64, he's on his way out. You're working about half time, aren't you?

“And so, I mean, I want to learn about what your plan is for your half and can I buy it?”

And when you're ready and what are you thinking? What's your timeline? Are you thinking 10 years or you think in 10 months? Or you think in 10 days? I don't know what you're thinking. And I just want to let you know. I'd like to be in the conversation with you and being, being included in the thought pattern.

What's your thoughts and just ask him? No pressure, but just, you know, trying to figure out, you know, I'm sure he's thought about it. >> More than likely, yes, sir. >> If he hadn't, something's wrong. I mean, he's probably not planning, I honestly, if he's not brought it up, he's probably not planning anything soon.

Yeah, and I don't think he is any time soon or anything like that. >> He's probably thinking he's going to work to 65, isn't he? >> Probably, he might go, I want to work for forever. I don't know, he's a, he's a go-getter. >> Except for that part where he works half a year.

>> Yes, sir.

“>> Okay, he was a go-getter, but now he's just slowed down and go-getter, okay?”

>> Yeah, I mean, in always honor that generation and just say, what you told me when you opened up the call would be a great way to open up the conversation,

what you and dad have built here is incredible, and I've always admired you as a go-getter.

These are all factual statements, and so I don't know how your mind is working about this, but I would appreciate it as you seem to be a partner if we could talk about what your plan is and how I can help, and how I can be part of that plan whenever it is. I'm not trying to push you out, I'm just trying to communicate and find out what's rumbling around between your two ears up there. You know what I mean, what are you thinking?

And he may have a lot of thoughts on it, but I was just, you know, no pressure. I'm not trying to throw my way around doing this from a position of honor, you and dad are great, you're a go-getter, all that stuff, and I'm not in a hurry, nothing like that, there's nothing on fire, I don't see any big problems, there's no ultimatum,

but just, hey, how can I help you live your dreams, and what is your dream for this half of the business, because I'm very interested in it, when you're ready?

What would he do if you said that? I don't really know, honestly, so we've kind of had a, I mean, we've had a few conversations about it, and I mean, it's all right, where I got, I'm going to work till I die, you know? He did say that. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to work till I die, okay. And I know what to pray for, and I'm kidding.

Oh man, yeah, that was, that's mainly my big thing is is going about it, I mean, and if he didn't want to sell, I mean, just, I guess, assessing that with pay structure, you know, going through that and saying, hey, you're working half a year, I'm working a whole year. Yeah, and are you guys going to be 50/50 at that point? Yes, sir, yeah, we will be 50/50.

Yeah, and it, it is fair that we both work the same number of hours for the same number of profit points, right?

That's not unfair discussion for two partners to have.

“And, you know, if you want to work till you die, that's fine, okay, what do you plan to, when you die?”

Yep. And, and how you feel enough? I'm kidding, I can't resist, that's just, that's such an underhand pitch. I'm just, I would want to mess with him for sure, but my family's kind of sick that way, so we would have these bad jokes, but, yeah, it's not funny for some families. That wouldn't be, it wouldn't go over well, but anyway, the, yeah, I, I, I, yeah, I got to say around here, I'm going to work until I don't make sense anymore.

And, one of mine will look at me and say, what do you mean by that? Like, I'm already not making sense, they're messing with you. Anyway, so, yeah, I, I would try, over time, little bits at a time, just try to start having a breakfast with him once or two weeks and just build a relationship to where he'll start to want to share with you.

And he'll start to want to good things for you.

And he'll start to think, how can I, you know, hand this over to say, I'm more than willing to purchase this. When you want me to, do you want me to purchase it from your family after you're gone?

“Or, can we arrange that in the documentation?”

If you want to work till you die? Or, what, what is it, but you know, I have to cram all that up in one conversation, but I, I just, I keep an ongoing dialogue. Build a relationship. It's going to be your partner. And then you can solve for, you can solve for who's working and who's on what, hey, scale and all that kind of stuff.

And, um, and then just start talking about how this transitions. Because no transition plan is a bad one, especially 50, 50, that's dangerous. The other thing you could do is you could involve your dad. He's the older brother. And ask your dad to get his little brother to come up with a freaking schedule. Okay, I mean, or at least give us some kind of indication, like, I'm just going to work till it drops.

That's, that's just bullred. That's redneck bull crap. Okay, you're not either. So what is, what are you really going to do?

“Or if you do drop, what am I going to do with your widow or your, my cousin, Eddie, who's crazy and I got to deal with him?”

I mean, your dad can help with some of that as the older brother. And ask him to help you facilitate that conversation. Matter of fact, he might even help you facilitate the conversation on the work and half the time and getting paid for a full time thing. That, that might be okay for him to do as he's, as he's heading out the door. Because he's in the position of older brother.

And I would imagine that pecking order still probably carries at least some weight in a conversation. More than you try to, you know, come up from 34 year old to get the 57 year old to listen to you. Yeah, that, that actually might work better than anything else I've said as I've been rambling. So give that a shot. Good question and I'm glad you're addressing it and I'm glad you're being proactive.

Make sure you play through on that. I've seen these things fall apart and they, they're not pretty when they fall apart. So let's, you know, let's have a plan and execute the plan. Don't really care what it is, but let's have a plan and execute the plan. I don't think a business can be a heavy load. You want to serve your customers well.

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May 17th through 20 Visit Entry Leadership dot com slash summit or click the link in the show notes. John isn't Toledo. Hey John, how are you? Hey Dave, this is John from Toledo. I'm the CEO and owner of a company that sells services and rents industrial equipment.

We have 23 employees and we'll do about 9.3 million in revenue this year.

My question is, how do I wisely manage business debt and a company that's both growth oriented and very cash intensive? Especially while I'm also getting interest from high value buyers who could eliminate that debt and create financial freedom? High value buyers. Like somebody buy the business? But that's why.

Well, how value buyer is going to look at a balance sheet and so your value your business minus your debt? So debt doesn't help a high value buyer debt hurts it. And debt hurts your stability and your growth as well. I mean, you can have some artificial growth and hockey stick up, but you've added instability and risk out the blazeau when you do that. And so I wouldn't wisely manage debt. I would do away with debt completely and operate cash from the ground up.

“That's what we have done for 35 years and we've got some very expensive pieces of equipment that, you know, we started out with cheaper ones and we added as we had profit to add from.”

But that way we didn't have any problems as soon as if there's a customer problem and they didn't pay or there's a cash flow problem or there's something else. You don't have cash problems as much when you don't have debt. Yeah, so I agree. So I'm going to buy equipment slow enough that I can pay cash for it. That's also going to make you more wise in the purchase of the equipment because if I can only buy one piece of equipment to three,

I'm going to really look at which one's going to ROI, which one's going to stay rented the most and give me the least problems with maintenance. And, you know, which one has a high appeal to the customer based on working with? Instead of like, well, I'll just try this other one since that's not real money. It's borrowed money because it doesn't even feel like you're using real money then. And, you know, you take a lot of risks. You magnify the weaknesses of the business when you borrow into it. And so I would be paying cash for this and that's not going to hurt you in the event that someone comes along and wants to buy it.

Plus they're buying it based on gross revenue, multipliers regardless of debt, which means they're stupid.

“If they're ignoring, let me, let's pretend you took on $4 million for the debt and you ran your gross up, okay?”

And they buy based on the gross and ignore the debt. Well, that makes, that means I would be dumb. It's a very naive approach to a purchase. So you only use a gross multiplier on brews is if you have a standardised amount of debt in the industry, which would be little to none in your world. Because your world equipment wears out, equipment is new, competitors come online with a different brand that you're not carrying. All kinds of stuff happens that makes the equipment you bought five years ago, trash.

Yeah. Business? Yeah.

“And these are five year rentals and the equipment stays for, anywhere from 10 to 14 years.”

And so we have been borrowing as we scale to, because we have some very large customers that use us to provide this equipment to their customers.

And so, yeah. So the debt is tied up in the rental business and then, you know, making the assumption that they all stay, that they all stay solvent. Just because they're large doesn't mean they stay solvent. Right. And that's, well, that's, and that's the talent. Yeah, if they go broke, if they go broke, your bankrupt.

Exactly. And that's, so that's where getting into the personal, right.

So we're, we are going through this gross cycle, providing equipment really nationally.

And we have this growing debt, but we, we have had some approached. We've been approached by some, some large buyers that would pay us multiple, multiple of EBITDA, and I could clear up that debt completely. Plus, some. But it's the family business we take care of.

Yeah, then your own business, so I mean, they bought it and you're going, right? Well, it's potentially, but I would probably stick around, it'd be a buy, you know. But I mean, you'd be, you'd be a, you'd be an employee at that point, you'd have a liquidity moment, right? Yeah, that is correct. Yeah, and so, I mean, that's a different scenario.

If you're building it to sell in the next 18 months and you want to run debt up through the top and take a risk of bankruptcy if you don't sell it, then that's a high risk play. But personally, I just be operating in my business and make it look prettier and prettier and prettier and more stable. And, you know, I just think she's a prettier girl with the dance for a buyer then.

“That's what I think, but, you know, I don't know who your buyer is and I don't know how sophisticated they are.”

And because again, I've watched people pay multiples of what way more than they should for stuff based on the balance sheet and based on the, you know, the net operating income that they're looking at. And so, because you, I mean, he but I was one measure and, but I, I don't mind measuring actual cash. Well, what am I getting in my pocket? And that's not a bad thing to measure if you're buying a property or buying a business either. So, it depends on what game you're playing. You can't play both.

Okay. If, if you play a game where you're running up the debt to run up the revenues to make it look attractive to somebody who's not using a formula I would use. You are putting yourself at risk if they don't buy because you're in a very high risk tenuous situation then. You're asking for trouble. If instead you're playing what Simon Sennon, Sennon, it calls an infinite game where we're really not for sale. Somebody wants to come buy it though. We'll talk about it, but we're really not for sale. We're just over here trying to make a business sustainable.

Then you grow slower and you grow with organic cash and you avoid debt because your sustainability is there. And if one of the large customers decides they're going to piss on you and not pay you just to squash the little guy or they become in solvent, then you're not bankrupt. But if one of these guys just bows up and says he's not going to pay you and he's going to redirect the cash flow because he got a new CEO and they're going to open a new division and what they're going to build the new division on their payables.

And that's happened before and they just said I'm not going to pay you for 90 days. You do your in receivership. You're screwed.

“And that's what you're not anticipating is one of these big companies not misbehaving or not becoming in solvent.”

And they misbehaving become in solvent as much as little companies do. So now I'm not not going to play that role. So thank you. Thank you for the question. We had an opportunity a few years ago. It's a little it's dissimilar, but not one of the largest retailers out there came to us and wanted us to create a financial package. Especially a trademark branded, co-branded package of materials to teach people about money. And they were going to put it on their shelf with their name and our name on it.

And we would create it all and it was a $10 million order, which for us was a lot of money, especially in those days.

And this is great. We get to do business for so-and-so and it's a $10 million order. And then we kept working the numbers and really there wasn't a lot of margin in it.

So I thought, okay, even if it's not a lot of money, we'll try it.

And then the contracts come in and they wanted us to produce $10 million order of the stuff with their name on it and our name on it, which means there's only one place in the world to sell it there.

But they had full returns, meaning that if the sales weren't what they thought they should be, they could just ship them back and get a refund. Which means I would have all this stuff in the warehouse that I've already paid for, that I can't do anything with except throwing the dumpster.

“Because it's got other people's name on it and crap, right?”

And I'm like, so in other words, I have to eat all the risk of sales and you got an $8 an hour stock clerk putting this out maybe on the right shelf maybe not. And then maybe it doesn't sell because it wasn't on the end cap where it's supposed to be. No, thank you. Not with full returns. I said, I can't do this with full returns. They said, well, everyone accepts these contract language because they want to do business with us. And I said, well, you can't say that anymore. Because now everyone has done it because I'm not doing it.

And we turned around and walked away from a ten million dollar order and we cried a little bit through a little bit in my mouth. Yeah, it was bad. I mean, ten million dollars, right? It wasn't ten million dollars profit, but still is a lot of money. And it was a big deal. And we had a lot of effort in building up the idea with them and working the contract and everything. But I could not accept the risk of high returns of them being you know, becoming not solvent, but worse than that. One of their local regional distribution places becomes incompetent loses the crap.

And then they want to send it back for a full invoice, which would be a freckle for them. But for me, it'd be a deal breaker. And I was not accepting that risk. You know, you want me to take on all the risk of the whole thing. I can't. It's not logical. I'm not doing it. And so to me, this thing we're discussing, John is in the same boat with that.

It's just not worth it. And but this idea that somehow you can depend on major huge companies to always have your best interest at heart when you're the little guy.

They don't even know you're there. And they don't care. And they squash you like last week's roach and not thinking about it. It's just, you just, and it's not that I'm cynical. It's just that I'm cynical. So you just got, you just got to be real, um, wise when you're looking at these things and not set yourself up for a fall.

“Because that's what these situations can come down to. Good question, man.”

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Dave, I run a 14-person home services business and lately we've been dropping the ball. Missed appointment windows, slow follow-ups, miscommunication between the office and the field. Everyone keeps blaming someone else and I can't tell if this is a person problem or a systems problem.

“What's the first practical step to figure out where the real breakdown is so I can fix it without guessing?”

Well, the good news is you run a small enough business that you can step on this pretty hard. I simply would put everyone in a room and say no more. We work too hard to get the customers, cost too much to acquire a customer, and to mistreat them with misappointment windows, slow follow-up, and miscommunication stops now. And you can't blame somebody else at your job.

to make sure that the follow-ups are instantaneous,

“and to make sure that miscommunication between the office and the field goes away.”

It's your job to step on it and fix this. And we are not going to do this anymore. And if you do this anymore by doing it, you are stating you don't want to be here. Because I just said, we don't have slow follow-up. We don't have misappointment windows.

As of right now, Harriet. And so it's a condition of further employment. In other words, you get to keep your job if we stop doing this. Because I'm not going to tolerate it. We're not going to live like this, life's too short.

And I'm not mad at a certain person, but these processes that are breaking down are absolutely ridiculous. Now, you guys tell me what we need to do to fix this. So it doesn't happen anymore. And tell me without pointing at a person. Because I don't think a single person is the problem.

“I think everybody's contributed something and everybody's contributed nothing to this problem.”

So as of right now, without throwing somebody into the bus, what do you think we need to do to make sure that there's not any misappointments? Why are we missing an appointment? What happened? Well, it didn't get on the books. Well, why do we not get on the books?

We need some better software. Okay, good. Let's get some better software. We need to follow up. But you're not running something big enough that you can't watch all three of these things. Very intensely with your hands up to your elbows down in the business, getting muddy all the way to your armpits, finding out what the flip is broken here.

You got to get down in this. And when they see that you're down in it, they're going to go, "Uh-oh, he's not getting." Because, "Uh-oh, I'm not kidding. We're not going to do this anymore."

So first you lay that baseline and you say, "Okay, guys, now you help me. What can I do to help you?"

Because I'm going to be helping you. I'm either going to be helping you out. I'm going to be helping you out.

“So I'm going to be helping you. What are we going to be doing?”

Help me help you. What have we got to do? What have we got to do to get here? Because we're not getting here. If you need some software, if I need a better system, if we were short on, we've got one person's got too much stuff piled up on them and they can't get to it. All of that's fine. We have an allocated for traffic. Because now in Hartford, Connecticut, there's traffic and during COVID, there wasn't.

And now we have to drive in traffic to get there, and so we have a missed appointment or we're late. And slow follow-ups and all that stuff. So we're just not going to do this anymore. We're going to follow up. And by the way, we have a new rule. All customer emails and phone calls are answered within 24 hours. So if one comes to your purse on inbox, you answer it.

That day, period. I don't care if it's your job. You answer it anyway. And you make sure someone is getting the job done. You look over at your coworker and you say, "Hey, we got to get this done. You heard what Ben said. We've got to fix this."

Because we have a new standard around here. It's a standard of excellence instead of this poor work. And we're not going to operate this way. And so again, we're not picking on a certain person, but I can get very passionate and very angry at a broken system

and at a broken lack of attention. So we don't do it this way. Now, I'll give you an example of that. We had one of our core values is high levels of communication. I ramps you.

We value high levels of communication. We have lots of one-on-one accountability meetings with each of our leaders. We have group leadership meetings. We have group team meetings. Everybody's looking at each other going, "What do we got to do to get this?"

We got squads working on projects. They're holding each other accountable. We've got staff meeting with the entire company every Monday morning. We have a devotional every Wednesday morning. 100% you will gather at these times.

We value communication. Many years ago, we had a project that we're working on that just absolutely wasn't epic circus. It was an absolute freaking disaster. Everything we touched turned to poop.

It was just awful.

And finally, when we got the thing done and got the other side of it,

We don't do this anymore."

And we're going to fix this and whatever. And we're walking across the parking lot after the meeting. And one of my young leaders, who was kind of a... I don't know, full of himself, I guess. Came over to me and he said, "You know why this didn't work."

I said, "No, why?"

“I said, "I think I know why we just talked about it in there for the last hour."”

And I don't really want to talk about it anymore. And I said, "This is bad communication." That's what it was. And he said, "Yeah." And it was your fault.

I went, "My fault." Okay. You got some back bone. What are you talking about? And he started telling me where I had broken down.

And he was exactly right. You know what? And so you had to hold yourself to that standard too, but, Ben, that you're going to not be part of anything. You can't stand back in the ivory tower and just throw a grenade out and say, "Yo, fix this."

Now, you get up to your elbows and you help them fix it. But you also set a new standard, a cultural icon that says, "Back." Where they can look back 20 years from now and they'll go, "Yeah." Remember, back in Alt 25, when we used to do that stuff,

and Ben came in and said, "No more." It's been no more since then. And they can look back 20 years later and say, "We don't do that." So some of our communication processes, weekly reports and other things, came about at Ramsey from the time where we sucked.

And we had to fix it and not suck anymore.

“And so that's what we're talking about here, Ben,”

is you got sucked right now at these things. You got to get in there and you got to help them, leadership is service. You step in and serve the team by helping them and making sure that they have the tools they need to where we don't have any more. Mr. Pointman Wendos.

Any more, slow follow-ups. Any more air quotes, miscommunication. Miscommunication, usually in this situation, falls into the heading of, "I don't give a crap." And if you don't give a crap, you don't get to work here.

Because we all care. We all act like we own it. And you don't get to stay here. So miscommunication is, "I didn't care enough. I'm mailed it in."

And I'm like, "Well, you didn't get it done again. I'll roll my eyes." I said, "I'm making sure it freaking gets done. Take the bull by the horns. Make sure this happens.

Take the ball in your hands. Put the bodies in the lane and drop the stinking ball through the hoop. Knock everything down until the freaking goal is accomplished." And that's everybody on the team is going to have that mentality. And that's a fired-up and wired-up thing that this matters.

And we're going to fix it. We're not going to mail it in again. Any more on these particular subjects. So the good news is you got a small enough team. One meeting.

And you will begin the process of fixing it. By the end of the first week, it'll be largely gone. Because you're going to be stepping on these ants. Every time one of them runs out, you're going to stomp it. And it'll kill everyone's dad gun bugs until they're gone.

And as soon as you start paying extreme intense attention to it, the needle will move on this. And you'll get it straight now before you know it. And if a person arises to be the problem, then they're not a weed. We don't do this anymore.

So we can't keep you. Because you're not a weed.

Every breakthrough in your business starts with a breakthrough in you.

“That's why you need to come to untray leadership summit.”

You'll get insights from top thought leaders in the leadership and business space like Will Gadera, Vanessa Van Edwards, Brian Buffini, and more. And the best part is it all happens at Disney's Coronada Springs Resort in Orlando. To join us May 17 through 20, visit untrayleadership.com/summit or click the link in the show notes. Thanks for joining us.

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Tell people about the show. They come listen to us. It makes a big difference and it has made a big difference over the last couple of years. Thank you for the hockey stick growth we've had up into the right. We appreciate you guys sharing and telling people about us.

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Better than a deserve, sir. How can I help? I love it.

Well listen, the first and foremost, thank you for what you do for young entrepreneurs.

Everybody that I know listens to this podcast really appreciate it.

Thank you.

“I own an operate and equipment dealership here in Nebraska.”

I started this company right out of college about nine years ago.

And lifetime sales of the company are just over 53 million.

This year we're going to end probably somewhere just north to $8 million. And grow strips with an EBITDA of around $540,000. So this is going to be our best year yet. Finally, after nine years getting tuned in here to how we can do the best job. My question today revolves around small teams.

So I have a team of five people full-time here. And my challenge is how can we better prepare ourselves for when multiple staff members are gone with little or no notice. And the context for the question comes from two Mondays ago when all of the team members were gone and it was just me.

And it was a stressful day instead of working 10 hours. I worked 16 hours. I went home. I was a complete your own pet in my wife and my kids. And I just have to find a better way to prepare not only the company,

but to prepare myself for when things happen. It was a mixture between pre-approved time off and kids getting sick and personnel getting sick. Doctors appointments, so on and so forth. It wasn't from the position of, you know, abusing the privilege of time off. It was more about it was the perfect storm.

And as I look back over the past nine years, this happens about once a quarter. On one day, you know, it's the perfect storm. So how, as an entrepreneur who's involved with the company every day, who already has a full workload,

“how can I better position myself in the company to absorb those responsibilities without sacrificing customer service?”

Wow. I've had individuals for short periods of time, stuff like that happen.

I've never had 100% of my work force out for a day.

That's even when we were your size. Even when we were your size. So, and once a quarter is untenable, that tells me that that tells me that coming to work is not a high priority. Well, I think as I look at the other 14 members, that could be true for one of them.

You know, once my all-star definitely, unless, you know, he's on his deathbed, he's at work. Well, what was your family there? I mean, where was he? He had a family emergency. There was a car wreck. And so it was, like I said, it was the perfect storm.

There was an injury. There's not once a quarter. Yeah, and mostly for that particular individual, it's pre-approved time off, like three weeks in advance, one day off.

Office manager, you know, has a grandchild who is always ill.

So, she's gone occasionally. The other guy has a special needs son, who has doctors appointments and things. Right now, we have to say, come on, get in the other role. It's a family problem. That's for sure.

The mother and the father and in former in laws. That's definitely carrying over into this person's attendance. Okay. So, well, we've got individual cases going on here. Yeah.

But basically, I'm going to turn up the heat. This is, you know, you can't leave me in here by myself. Your lack of planning at home does not constitute a crisis on my part, constitutes crisis on your part.

“You have to be at work if you want the job.”

And so, if something pops up with the child, your spouse is going to have to handle it, because you have to be at work. And occasionally, I can grant grace, but I don't have the margin for all you people to just not show up, because it's not convenient that day. Yeah.

And I think that's exactly right. I'm Midwest polite. Yeah. And I try to assume everybody's telling the truth and doing the best. Yeah.

But it's really, I think they're pushing the edge of grace here. Yeah. And mercy. And I think they're taking advantage of you to a point. I mean, it's probably not that big of deal.

Listen, I mean, I've got people here that have had things come up. And for a season, we can let them think, have a thing. But if you can't come to work one day a week on average because of your child care issue, I can't have you. I don't have to have people working.

So I've got to get somebody else. If you're just on that side. Not totally one.

I mean, a season I can give you a grace.

“I can work around you with the backfill for you.”

You know, that kind of stuff. But you know, when you came to work here, we work here Monday through Friday. We work in the building. Yeah. And we're working in the building.

And we don't work for work. That's who we are. And that's the job you took. And if you can't do that, I understand. But I mean, and again, a one off or a car wreck or something.

Sure. We're not mean nasty people. But my grandson is sick. And every time my grandson, you're the great. You're not even the mother.

You're the grandmother. You're not at work. No, that's not going. Once a year for that one. You know, and so we're got to reset our expectations with these folk and go.

That's the thing. And if something does blow up, we have to have a self-employed mentality around here. Where if you had a personal day off and your personal day was planned for three weeks. And your personal day plan is to be fishing. And everybody else can't show up because of legitimate car wreck stuff.

You got to not fish that day. I'll give you another day to fish. You're going to come and help me fish. Right? Because I got fish to catch.

“So, I mean, you know, I don't know what you're doing to your personal day.”

If your personal day is planning to be in Paris. France or something, you can't do anything about it. But that's probably not the case. It's probably not that reasonable of me to communicate that. Yes.

The person who had his personal day off. Yes. He had sent a text and say, hey, if it's possible, I sure need to help. No one else. I mean, you know, unless you're unless you're up to your eyeballs and something over there that I don't know about.

I need you to get over here and help me. I'll give you another. I'll give you two days later to offset this wrong day. But I need to help. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, I'll be, but guys, I mean, someone saw a car wreck. No, the kid, you know, whatever it was. I don't know. But I, whatever.

And I'm stuck over here. I need some help. And really, I would just call a staff meeting and say, we're not doing this anymore. Okay?

We're not going to have a thing where three personal emergencies in one. I don't give a crap. And one personal day combines with me being done here by myself. That's the purpose of having a team is to have a team. And when everybody doesn't show up for various reasons and leaves it on me,

I'm not doing this anymore. So we're going to have to have a reset on expectations. And that is, is that you're at work unless something's really, really, really bad. Right. Right. Given all of that information, would you also potentially suggest hiring one

or two more people to the team to cover? To plug those holes overlap or is this purely, the hospitality issue. My wife seems to think that the margins are good enough. I need to hire another full-time person.

That person would be busy. Maybe two thirds of the time. But then I've heard of the time. I want to be a little bit older. I would hire somebody else if they're busy all the time.

And the more of busy all the times you got, the better chances you got to not have anybody there again. That's kind of wild. But I think the thing is this, it's a small team. And they have to realize when you work for a small business,

you can't say the words, it's not my job. Because everything's your job when you work for a small business. Yeah. We all lift boxes. We all answer the phone.

We all show up and take orders. Sometimes. Because we all do whatever it takes. Because there's just freaking five of us boys and girls. Yeah.

And so we all got to care deeply. Or this place isn't going to be here to write you a check. So we have to produce here. And so there has, we have to increase our intensity. You don't work for corporate America.

Who's going to piss on you the first time you mess up.

But you also don't work for corporate America.

“And you have to put up with your incompetence and just not showing up and bailing it in.”

Because I don't have the margin to do that. You guys got to give a rip at a real high level. Or we're not going to be able to grow. We're not going to be able to get better. And if you don't want to work here on that basis,

I understand. But here we work while we're at work. Hey, man. I mean, I've had that. This is the very words I've used out of my mouth.

It's staff meeting. I say stuff like this. Not as much anymore, but I did for certain in the first 10 years here. And go, this is what we do. I had to set the culture of a self-employmentality.

We're not mailing it in. Because, you know, if my kid is sick, I can't not show up and do the radio show. Somebody's got to cover the kid, right? Yeah.

I got it because the thinking microphone doesn't turn on. That radio station is kind of quiet. That doesn't work.

And I think that's, I think that's part of the problem is that

it, in my position, my wife and my mother-in-law, to be able to handle those crises on my personal side. And the other couple of their team members don't have that infrastructure, and they've not set themselves up with that infrastructure

I don't think that my job is going to work here if you don't show up

before days out of five. Yeah. I don't have the margin.

“And it's tough because those people are good when they're here.”

The one person in particular is really good. And it's a plus when they're here. Yeah. But that's, they're still not fulfilling the job. The job description isn't going to be here.

Eight to five Monday through Friday. That's what we do, man.

And it's like, you know, and you have some personal time off,

and we can't all take it at once. If everybody turns in vacation on the same two weeks in the summer, you can't, you're not going to accept those applications for, no, everybody can't go on vacation at one time. Right. Right. That's true.

You know, we used to have to manage that because we have a whole department gone, nobody to answer the phone. You know, you can't do that. You know, you can't all be gone at the same time. I don't care if everybody likes June or not.

No thank you. I mean, we just, we just, this is not, we don't have any way to keep doing business. And when you get back your job won't be here because we'll be broke. You know what I mean?

It's just, so that somehow they don't get that urgency that's in my voice right now, that visceral feeling. And if they don't, then every little thing that comes up in their personal life becomes a reason to not go to work because they're mailing it in. But if you got people that really want to be there and they're helping you

drive the thing forward, they're not just there to collect a check, then you can, you can do away with some of this.

“So I think you've got one of the five you're going to have to replace.”

And I think you know who it is. And I think that'll change the culture of the whole thing too. And you don't have to do it suddenly. I don't think anybody's mad at anybody. But you've been putting it off and you've been putting up with it and you've been putting up with it. And you're, you're getting tired even in your Midwestern way, as you said.

You're getting sick of it. And so you already know you probably got one you may have to. And then maybe if you can get enough business coming in, you can do what your wife said. Let's get a full-time person, work a full-time job.

The more of those we've got, I mean, ten people you've got less chance of this happening than five. And so you're getting off the treadmill stage. You've got a more of a more of a delegatable situation, the broader it gets.

So, and we can get you, you know, from 8 million to 16 million or something.

Right? That's what we want to get to. And but we're not going to get there from, you know, every time somebody poops their diaper, we can't have to go home. That just won't work. And so, man, it's, it's hard.

It sounds like I don't care. It's not that I don't care. It's just that I don't care. That's all what it is. So, all right, folks, that about does it.

“Let's remember a better, a weary warrior that a quivering critic.”

This world needs more high-quality leaders, so take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for joining us. I'm Andre Leadership. If you're a business owner who's been grinding it out and rarely gets time to step back and think clearly,

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And in 2027, we're bringing Andre Leadership at sea back. That includes special Andre Leadership breakout sessions. You can sign up for designs specifically for business owners and leaders. You'll get practical teaching, real Q&A, and focused time to think through your business with people who understand what you're carrying. Space is limited. Learn more at RamseySolutions.com/events or click the link in the show notes.