This Is Why You’re Still Broke (And How to Fix It) | Dave Ramsey

One year I made $250,000. The next year I made $6,000. We got sued 78 times, going way.

Back when you were 26, making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. Flash forward a year. Bankrupt.

I got my degree in real estate and I sold my first house three weeks after I turned 18 years old. But I was good at it. I hustled. Started from nothing. We ended up with about a little over a million dollar net worth, making a couple hundred a year. But I'd borrowed too much money and I had a lot of short term notes. The bank got sold to another bank and a guy in another city looked down and said, there's a kid, 24 years old, owes us a million dollars. This said, let's limit this relationship, which is bankruptcalk for ruin his life. And that started a snowball that took two and a half years to unfold and we were bankrupt at the end of it with a brand new baby, a toddler, and marriage hanging on by a thread.

Hello, I'm Cody Sanchez. Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. Today you are in for a treat. If you are sitting alone in your business right now, wondering, how do I take it to the next step? If you're struggling financially or unsure how to break through the level that you're currently. There is literally one guy who for more than 30 years is helping people change their complete financial future. He's arguably the best in the world at it, and he does it in a way where he's going to slap you in the face a little bit and then also make you feel better about it. Maybe even give you a little Nashville cookie in the end. I think you guys know who I'm talking about. I'm talking to the legend Dave Ramsey today, and we've broken down stuff that I've actually never heard him talk about before, like how, how to grow a business in a way that is repeatable every single time. And like what to do if you are sitting in the dark, head in the hands, unsure of what to do next. So without further ado, let's get to the man himself, Dave Ramsey. Okay, first of all, the book's amazing. Thank you for writing it.

Well, thank you.

And I, I, I have all these notes and I started writing notes for the podcast. And then what quickly happened is it became notes for my employees and myself about all the things I need to do in my business, which was kind of funny.

Wow, that's good. That means it worked.

It did work. It worked too well. So now I have homework in Tandem with this podcast. But what I really liked about it is I don't think a lot of people realize how big your business is. I mean, we're sitting on your campus, which is, I believe, $400 million, and you didn't use debt to buy it. Is that right?

Right. We built it. Yeah, it was the first. Yeah, it's probably worth about 600 million right now, but somewhere in that range. But yeah, we built it all and we bought the first 42 acres of dirt and then we added 22 more acres to that.

That.

So it's been fun.

It's incredible. And I think the part that's the most interesting to me is, you know, going way back to your original story when you were what, you know, 26, had a couple million dollars in real estate net worth, you know, making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to flash forward a year, bankrupt, financial struggle to $600 million office. I know you've, you've mentioned this before, obviously, but I think there's a lot of people that are more like the former you than the current you. What was that like back then and what happened?

Well, we were. I got my degree in real estate and I sold my first house three weeks after I turned 18 years old. So I've been in real estate my whole life. Mom and dad were in the business. And so when I got out of college, I bounced through a couple jobs pretty quick and then started buying and selling houses. And I was doing flip this house before there was cable TV or Chip and Joanna were born, you know, and so it's a long time ago. This is 1984. Right. So. But I was good at it. I'm always good at making a deal and math is easy for me and that kind of stuff. So I would end up hustled. And so I bought, started from nothing. We ended up with about $4 million worth, a little over a million dollar net worth and making a couple hundred a year at 24 years old in 1984. But I'd borrowed too much money and I had a lot of short term notes. The bank got sold to another bank and a guy in another city looked down and said, there's a kid 24 years old, owes us a million dollars. This is crazy. And they said, let's limit this relationship, which is banker talk, for ruin his life they called them. And that started a snowball, a bad snowball that took two and a half years to unfold. And we were bankrupt at the end of it with a brand new baby, a toddler And a marriage hanging on by a thread. So, like my old pastor used to say, a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion. I've been there, done that, and I don't care what TikTok says, I've done it.

Well, it always makes me chuckle. I remember showing a video to one of my execs, and it was a man on a yacht talking about personal finance. The comments were like, how could this guy. This is a scam, whatever. And it's Ray Dalio. And I was sitting there thinking, if they think that he's not the real deal, then who cares what they say about the rest of us on the Internet? Because you've been there. It's a fascinating story because I was looking at the numbers of those that go into bankruptcy, those that ever become a millionaire. The number that I saw was less than 10%. So, like, once you hit bankruptcy, you have an incredibly low likelihood of ever hitting seven figures in net worth again. And so I think so much of what you talk about here is really cool because you're like, I've been there. But for somebody who's in that position right now, today and is struggling, you talk a lot about how it's not necessarily just tactics, although you give a lot of them. And I want to talk about it, but is being broke largely emotional, too?

It is. And in our case, it was because I ran out of gas. One year I made $250,000. The next year I made $6,000 because I spent the whole year trying to sell everything and do the right thing in air quotes and pay the banks what they were owed. And the weird thing that we don't talk about a lot was we took the debt from 3 million down to 328,000 in two and a half years. We almost made it, but I ran out. I was 28 years old. I had a. You know, again, little babies. And a wife is scared to death. She thought she married Sir Galahad. Turns out it was goober. And, you know, I just ran out of emotional gas fighting. And we got sued 78 times. And all of them were right because I owed them money and I didn't pay them. And, you know, so we're fighting the lawsuits, the interrogatories, the, you know, they're. They're capturing any asset they can capture, rightfully so because we owed them money and didn't pay them, but there weren't any assets left. We'd sold everything and. But they were coming to take the furniture out of Our house. And I was, I was out of gas. I didn't know. I didn't know how to fight it anymore. And I just. But I almost made it. You know, the bankers we talked to later, I went back and paid them all back. It took 10 years. But the bankers that we talked to later all said, we thought you'd file, you know, a year and a half before you did, two years before you did. Most people would have, but most people do. But, you know, it was. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the best thing that ever happened to me because it's not how I wanted anyone else to have to learn something. But the lesson is thorough.

Yeah. Do you think that other people can learn through that experience or do some people just have to go through it?

Yeah, you can. You don't have to go through drug addiction to know it's bad. You don't have to go say, you know, cocaine kills people. I know that, and I've never done cocaine, so I don't have to go there, but. And you don't have to go deeply in debt and lose everything to figure out that debt will choke you to death. You know, basic common sense observation ought to help most folks get there, but it doesn't. But we did a full CSI on it because we were not only broke, we were broken. So any illusions I had to my academic prowess or intelligence or whatever I thought I was, obviously I wasn't. And so I got the opportunity to start from emotional and spiritual ground zero as well as financial. And when you look at that, you go, okay, what really happened here? Who's really at fault? And you can choose victimhood. You can go, oh, you know, I just spilled hot coffee on myself. Turns out McDonald's serves hot coffee. I think I'll sue them, you know, or you can say I'm a klutz and I just spilled some hot coffee and I should have expected it to be hot since I just bought coffee. And so in my case, I signed up for this debt and it was short term notes. Well, and then they chose to call them in a short term. Who's the idiot? The one that signed it's the idiot. So you gotta learn from that and go, okay, what the Bible says the borrower's slave to the lender is real and I got to experience the shackles.

Yeah. You know, you talk a lot about the Bible and money. Is money biblical? Is your application of how you think about money biblical?

Well, there are. It is for me. I was a baby Christian. I Just met God when all this stuff happened. And so I had to make a conscious choice of, okay, the information I'm reading in Scripture, which is all. It's not spiritual necessarily in nature in the sense that it has to do with getting into heaven or it has to do with your relationship with God or something. But it's more instructional. Like Proverbs is known, for instance, as the book of wisdom. And whether you're a person of faith or not, you could get something from Proverbs, just like you could get something from any ancient piece. You could read Socrates or Aristotle, and you can get something from that even if we're not Greek. And so most of the biblical stuff is kind of. If you sat on your grandpa's knee in another generation, we would call it common sense. And it's borrower, slave to the lender, or don't build a tower without first counting the cost, lest you get halfway up and you're unable to finish it. And all who see you begin to mock you. In other words, have a plan. I mean, we run a $300 million company. Guess what? Every department, every profit center has a budget. We have a plan. We didn't build this building without first having a blueprint. And so that's kind of common sense. It's not really mystical at all. It's not really some kind of spiritual voodoo stuff, but it's just God's love letter to me going, hey, son, here's some wisdom, and if you live this way, you'll have a better life.

Yeah, common sense, not common practice. Definitely.

Amen. Yeah. Common sense is rare.

Yeah.

Nothing's more uncommon. Ben Franklin said.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. But, you know, it's interesting. I always wondered, you know, how, like, you go and you speak to a group of people, and if you say, like, blank is the root of all evil, everybody will fill in money. But you've mentioned in this book and others that it's actually in the Bible. They say, depending on the way you translate it, that love or desire for money is the root of all evil. So do you think that it is bad or evil to be rich?

No, absolutely not. No. And I did an entire book on it for the Christian community. As a matter of fact, I'm positive it's not bad or evil to be rich, but it's also not good or positive. You know, you're not better either. Money is amoral. It doesn't have morals. It reflects the morals of those it touches. And so if someone is greedy and they get money, then the rich are greedy. If someone is generous and they get money, we call them a philanthropist and they change an entire community and feed hungry kids. No one talks about them when they're mad and being envious or jealous. But the vast majority, and I've studied the wealthy and been among the wealthy just about my whole life. And the vast majority of wealthy people are unbelievably other centered and generous human beings. There are some jerks. I've met the jerks too. But among poor people, there are jerks. So it turns out it's not really the money. The money just reveals the character qualities or lack thereof of the person it touches. And so no money, wealth is not evil in and of itself. The pursuit of it to the degree it negatively affects everything else. Sure, that'd be idol worship if you were a Christian or if you aren't, it would just be dumb, you know, and so, you know, you give up your family in order to, you know, have an ipo. Well, that's, that's, that's short sighted and not fulfilling. No one's 78 years old on their deathbed, 88 years old on their deathbed and says, gosh, I wish I had done another ipo. Where's my grandbabies?

Yeah. So why do you think we are programmed to think that money is bad? So many of us, I think, are programmed that way. Where did that come from?

It's come from some toxic teaching in the spiritual world. Sometimes. Some churches have twisted some of these scriptures and usually they do it in a demographic area where they're ministering to poor people. So they run that rich down. I was having dinner with some folks in Australia a couple of years ago, Australians. And we were talking about this and they said the Australians have quoted Aristotle. They call it Tall Poppy syndrome. As soon as one poppy sticks its head up above the others, it must be cut. And so we want to tear down those that are ahead of us. That's just jealousy and envy, which the Catholics would call that one of the seven deadly sins. And so, you know, it comes from, you know, negative human nature and that we just, we don't want other people to win. But again, oddly enough, those are usually poor people, poor in spirit, not necessarily poor in wallet. But they're usually people who have not attained something. Most successful people, they want to help others, they reach out. And you go, you know, you're, you know, you're just starting in a business that I'm already in. I'll show you how. Or I'll spend time with you and you can't mentor everybody that has to be mentored. I don't mean that. But I have to, you know, say no, young man, I can't run the business here. I can't do that full time. But, but, but I'll help anybody I can across the podcast world or the publishing world speaking world. I have talk radio back in the day. All those guys are old guys are friends of mine and so we've been friendly competitors. But again, most successful people do lift people up. It's usually people that aren't successful that want to pull people down.

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Yeah, no, that, that's good. I mean there's an influence in some of the anarchy anarchist movements or the communist movements manifesto and that's really what that comes down to is this. If you read and understand and grasp Marx, that's really. You just described it. It's which is odd because the, you know, the the very propaganda piece of communism is there for the working man, which is absolute hogwash. Yeah, it doesn't work out, you know, and just all you gotta do is visit operating communist countries today. And I have. And you have two probably. And it's, you know, it's not, it's not working out. It's not, it's not working. And the weird thing, you know, in America today we're the opposite of that. We're very hard to control because of ease of access into almost any industry. And you know, we're talking about business and starting a business, running a business. It's the easiest it's ever been in America right now to start and run something because you could instantaneously turn on these things and be anywhere, anytime accessible, on video, on audio. You know, you can set your pro, you can set up a digital store in 20 minutes now and all of a sudden you're in business. And in the old days you used to have to, you know, haul stuff in a covered wagon, put some boards up and you know, build a country store. And it was a lot of process and a lot of risk. And we can launch stuff and iterate it so fast. Right now, those of us that are already here and those that want to be here, meaning in business, it's, it's a wonderful time for the little. The little man can't get ahead. Oh, more than at any time in history right now, the little man can get ahead.

I agree. And also, you know, one of the reasons I really liked the book is there are a couple things in there that I think are true overall, which is you had a line that was organizations are never limited by their opportunity, they're limited by their leader. Which I have found to be incredibly true in any business that I've ever run. What do you mean by that? And how does making yourself better make you more money in business?

Well, John Maxwell, my friend, has written a bazillion books on leadership and he and I speak often together. And he says in his best selling book, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, the Third Lid, or the Third Law of Leadership is the law of the lid, meaning I'm the lid on my organization. When I started this, I was 30 years old, two and a half years out of bankruptcy. Healing psychological. I had ptsd, I didn't even know what it was. Healing spiritually, healing in my marriage, my relationships, healing in my finances from that tsunami that took me out in my late 20s. That's the guy that started this place. He could not have run this place today. He didn't have the skills. He was just a beat up, wounded, passionate dude that wouldn't be denied. That's the only thing I had, was I just wouldn't quit. But over the years, I've read and learned and grew and healed and all those things. I'm a much better husband than I was when Sharon married me 43 years ago. Just ask her. I'm a much better dad. Today my kids see me with my grandkids and they're like, who are you? You know, and it's like. But it's, you know, it's. We, you know, we get better. And if you don't get better, don't expect your organization to grow because you're the problem with your organization. I'm the problem with my organization. That's the bad news. The good news is I'm the solution. And so I can read a book, listen to a podcast, go to an event, put some more inputs in, remove some of the lies that I believed about life and about business, put in the real stuff from the people that have really done it, not just ones who have a theory. And then I'm a better. All of a sudden, I'm a better leader. And now my organization can grow a little more. And so, you know, I dropped in the other day. I've got, you know, we've got 450 some odd folks just on our digital team and, you know, software engineers, platform engineers, and, you know, we're building constantly iterating, writing and launching, you know, the EveryDollar app and all the other things we do around here that are digital, which is almost everything in the building. And, and I'm not, I'm not a digital generation. I'm a boomer. So I drop in with all these brilliant kids that work for me, and I'm sitting in a room and they might as well have been speaking German. I have no idea what they're saying. And I had to raise my hand. After a minute, I went, hey, guys, I can't add value to this room right now because I don't even know what you guys are saying. Would y' all tell me what you just talked about for the last 10 minutes in English so I can understand without dropping all the acronyms. And once they explained to me, I understood the concepts, but they were just using a completely different vernacular. And unless I get better, and I'm not the only bottleneck in the place, but unless the leadership team here does that and understands the business that we're in is Working with and for people that have grown up with a magic wand in their hand, which I didn't. I had a rotary dial phone on the wall when I was a kid. And so I'm old, but that I got to be relevant or I can't run the business. Yeah.

It's so true. Well, and one of the other things I loved that you talk about is that, speaking of your employees, that you never want an employee again. That you've had them before, you never want an employee again. But you have 1100 team members here. What's the difference between the two? And how do you decide if somebody's an employee or a team member?

Well, I think we've all had. If you've ever hired someone or if you've ever worked anywhere for that matter, you've observed people that were what I call employees, come late, leave early, steal while they're there, and check Facebook all day. And so not much work. Right. And so no productivity, don't care. They're there for what they can take rather than what they can add. And so around our organization, we're a team. We add value. Everybody here adds value. And we're. If you don't add value, what are you doing here? Why am I paying you? I need to get an ROI on this. And it's not because I'm a jerk. It's just because if I don't get an ROI on you, I can't pay the other guy. So we're making a revenue. We can't pay payroll. Hello. So, you know, we want team members. We want people who treat the place like they own it. And when we have an argument, and we have a lot of arguments around here every day, they're wonderful arguments. We have an argument about which call to play, which play to call to win the super bowl, which play to call to get the ball in the end zone. We're not arguing about, you know, some irrelevant thing or some political internal thing like trying to, you know, we're not sitting around talking about somebody, you know, we're not. We're just getting stuff done. It's very utilitarian. And so if you don't want to get stuff done, you don't fit in at Ramsey. I mean, we get stuff done. And you working with people that are smart, the smartest people you've ever worked with in your life, but they care deeply. That's the difference. You can hire smart people, don't give a crap, and they're useless. They're there again, for who they can impress with Their brilliance rather than let's get something done. Because the people outside these walls is why this place exists, not for the people inside these walls. We got to love our customer by serving them and bringing them something that helps them change their life. And if you're not doing that here, you're really not a part of this team. And so we don't need employees. If somebody's mailing it in, you know, wants a job and you know, I've got these many degrees. I had one guy, more degrees than a thermometer. He's like, tell me all he. How he was worth. And I said, dude, you know, you know, here, this is a small business. Your raise is effective when you are. It's not when you get another degree. Don't. I couldn't care less about your certification, except the. Except it gives you the ability to get something done, and that's all it's good for. And so I don't care about your experience, I don't care what happened at the other place you used to work, except to the extent it helps you get something done here for the good of our customers. And that's who we serve. And if you can't get on board with that, get your butt out of here. Don't let the door hit you in the butt.

Yeah. I loved when you said that profit is the reward for serving the customers that you have.

Yeah.

And man, it's, it's so true. So many people, I think, don't charge their worth, don't get comfortable with profits, don't want to talk about how much revenue they make. But it's so true. If you're not making any money, it's because you're not really helping anybody. The bigger problems you solve, the more money you make.

Exactly. And the more scale you do it. So If I print one little book for $2.50 and I sell it for $10, I help one person. And nobody's mad about that. But If I sell 10 or 15 million of those and I get 10 or $15 million of that profit, then somebody gets upset. But I help 10 or 15 million people. So I mean, that's how this works. And my friend Rabbi Lapin says that if you help people, they will give you certificates of appreciation with presidents faces on them.

Such a good line.

Yeah, it is a great line. I wish it was mine, but it's a good line.

You got so many, you need to give a few others out. Like you're the one liners from here. I went through your, your X or Twitter or whatever they call it today. And I was like, there's so many. I want to just quote him this whole time. One thing that I do want to double tap on for you is you have some really specific ways you figure out if somebody is going to be a culture fit or not for you guys. And I think we've all been in a job or a career where like, we hang out with that person who's gossiping all the time. And it's kind of fun in the moment. It's like a little adrenaline hit and then afterwards you feel worse about yourself. Yeah, it's like, exactly. Gossip is like junk food. So you don't let gossip happen here. How do you, one, stop that in your company? And two, for somebody who doesn't run the company, but is in a company, what's the right way to kind of say, I don't want to engage in this behavior? I think people are scared of doing.

That in this place. You're one of the owners, and it's one of the things you value. You're not technically an owner, but you're an emotional owner. It's one of the things you value working here. And so just like you wouldn't allow something more horrible like sexual harassment to occur, you're not going to look the other way. You're going to say, we don't do that here. And, you know, gossip is much less horrendous than that. But we don't do that here. And we. And if you want to be a we, we're French we. We. If you want to be a friend, if you want to be we, you can't do that here because that's not who we are. And the team will protect the place because it's one of the things that they value when we survey them because they've never really worked in a place that doesn't do gossip. And it's not like we have to fire a bunch of people. We don't. Occasionally we do because sometimes people just won't get it. But that's okay. That means they need to be somewhere where they allow that. That, you know, it's just one of the things we don't do here. How do you start that, though? Hand your negatives up and your positives down and you're going to have negatives. There's 1100 opportunities in this building to be pissed off at somebody. So you know when something happens, not if something happens. When you're frustrated with so and so, when you're frustrated with the situation your project is not getting attention. You can't get the bandwidth on social media, on this thing you're trying to get launched. Whatever it is in Ramsey that's frustrating you. And it's like all day long, something frustrating you because we're trying to get stuff done and there's friction, and so just count on it. Not if you have something that frustrates you when you have one place to air that and it's not at the water cooler, it's in your leader's office or his leader's, her leader's office, or another leader somewhere in the. Or anywhere that's up is, okay, you can go talk to somebody in a whole different area and go, look, I just need a place to vent. Tell me about this. And. And then they can help you. They can help you move through the issue one way or the other. But when you're talking to people that can't do something about the issue, that by definition here is gossip. And usually it's talking about somebody is the problem. And so. And we all know. And yet, even at 64 years old, I have trouble remembering that if that person is sitting there gossiping in front of me, then the next time when I'm not there, they're talking about me. We all know that, but we act like we're the exception. Like, well, they would never do that. Yeah. So, yes, they do. 100% they do. And organizations move at the speed of trust. And when you have a building full of that toxic garbage, you cannot move. It grinds the smartest people to a halt because now they spend all their time covering their butts sending out CYA emails instead of productive questions. And so we'll sit down with you and go, look, you had a negative. You talked about it here. Two or three people talked to us, told us what was happening. And if they brought it to leadership, that you were doing this, and you can't do that here, and if you do it again, then, you know, we're gonna help you find another place to work because we love you and we love this place and we don't do that here. And just like if they were doing some other behavior that you don't want, we're just not going. If you tolerate it, you. You get what you tolerate. And so in the early days, I had to really, you know, we had to kind of. But once it became like a thing internally, one of our core values, now it self polices like 99%. I bet once a year, twice a year out of 1100 people, leadership actually has to have a discussion with someone goes, you can't do that. And maybe we fire one person a year. You know, you would think out of 1,000 freaking people. But no, they, number one, we tell people that coming in, then they get here and after 90 days we review with them in their first 90 days and they go, I couldn't believe the audio actually matched the video. You really don't do this. No, we really don't do this. And we really don't borrow money and we really live on a budget and we really live on less than we make and we really don't have credit cards. We really do the stuff we teach. We're not freaking hypocrites. And if you want to be a we, this is what we do. And so, you know, it's an interesting thing culturally to observe that when people actually believe it's going to happen, they believe there's consequences and accountability. They will self enforce.

Yeah, it's so good. Can you tell the story about the first time that you had to fire somebody sort of for this in the company? And it's such a good story. And the salesperson.

Yeah, man, one of my top salespeople, she was incredible. She was selling so many and we were tiny. There was only just a handful of us, maybe less than 50 of us. And. But there was a cloud. You ever walk into a place and you just in your, in your spirit, you sense there's something wrong, it's like almost like something runs down your shoulder. It was just like this cloud. We were doing good. The numbers were good, the show was growing, all the book sales were. Everything was seen to be moving, but it was just like this and I couldn't figure it out. So we had a little, we had a little staff meeting. We have staff meeting every Monday morning still. And you know, I guess they're probably 30 people or something like that. And I had an appointment right after and I ran out to my car and when I got out of the car and forgot my stupid keys, I came back in to get my car keys. And when I walked back in, this person was having the second meeting. And we've all experienced the second meeting where someone stands up and says what everybody thought, what they thought everybody was thinking when the, when the leader was saying otherwise. So anyway, she was just trashing me, how dumb I was. And it's one of the companies stayed open under my leadership and, and her back was to me and she didn't hear me come in through the door because it was one of those silent, closed Door things. And the other people are looking at me, and they're like, you know, and. And after. I mean, I just stood there and listened to her for about a minute and a half, two minutes, which is an eternity to hear somebody trash you in person that you're paying. You know, it's just like. Yeah. And so finally, I guess something happened, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck. She turned around, looked at me. She goes, oh, blank, right? I'm like, yeah, that's probably. That's probably accurate. And so she goes, well, well, well. And she starts trying to. I'm like, hey, listen, both of us are not dumb. You're dumb if you stay here and work for a guy as bad as the guy you just described. And I'd be dumb if I kept somebody and paid the money. That feels that way about me. That'd be dumb, too. So we're pretty much done. Come on in here and I'll sit down with you. I'll cancel my other appointment, and we'll. We'll figure out your exit paperwork. And she's like, no, no, no, no. The worst part was when I got home, I told Sharon. She's like, I told you not to.

I get that. They're always right, too, aren't they?

I know. It's 100%. So we. We actually now, that's one of the reasons we also do spousal interviews. God, I wanted to talk about that. Yeah. That's another thing. And it just. The spouses go on the final interview, both the person being hired and the leader leading them, hiring them, because the spouses can smell a rat a mile away. And I've had people being interviewed, and the spouse looks at us, looks at him or her, and goes, you don't want to work there right in front of us. I'm like, good. That's the time to figure it out before we go through all the onboarding, before we go through all this. We got the expense of recruiting in at that point, but I don't have all the other stuff that's not a fix. Figure it out. And then we've had people go. We go home. The wife. My wife would say something like, I don't know. It just. Something feels bad. And that's pretty vague. But if my wife says that we don't hire them and that she's probably said it three times in 30 years. She doesn't. Doesn't play that card. She's scared of that power. She doesn't want to overuse it. Yeah, but but if she, if she has that feeling, I want her to say it. I want her to say. Because every time she has that feeling, somebody's doing cocaine or somebody's doing something, you know, something's going on and I'm just, I'm just like a Labrador retriever. I just. Everybody's great and I'll just hire everybody. And she's like, no, there's. I smell evil there. There's something happening. Okay, let's. Let's avoid that one. And then we always find out later that that person that we avoided, you know, God protected us.

Yeah. You know, my husband always says it's either an F yes or it's a no with hiring.

Yeah.

Every time I go against that, I regret it later.

Exactly.

Every time. But I've never.

Because you want to. You're trying to get the work done. I'm trying to get the thing filled. And so I tend to just claw. I kind of had that. Now push that to the back. I know better. Yeah, but the resume is good. Yeah, but I know, but he. The way he treated his wife at dinner. Nobody would hire that guy. But yeah, but I'm going to. And I'll make it okay. It's like, it's like missionary dating. It's like dating somebody and you're going to change them, you know. Oh, crud. No, just date somebody of quality. Hello.

Yeah, it's true.

Just. I've done it. Oh, I've done it wrong so much.

Yeah, but you do have really good ways to go about it. I thought the spousal interview was the most. I've never heard of that before. I thought it was really smart. And also I think if somebody else can put up with them for a long period of time, it's also a great sign. I'm like this other person who seems reasonable can. Thinks you're good enough to stay with for a decade plus. Okay.

I like that some of our best team members, when we sit down at the final interview with the four of us, go out to dinner, you're more impressed with their spouse than you are them. And you go, well, if you can pull that off right, then you're probably gonna make her take. You can attract her, you can attract him, then you know, yeah, that's good.

And keep them. I really liked that. I also liked how you think about a screening process that is sort of the same every single time. What else do you think makes it possible to hire a players every time or all the time or often? How do you screen people to find the best people.

We just remember the pain of when we didn't. Every time I. Every time I let crazy in the door because crazy will screw up the building, man. Oh, my God. It just. There's not enough drugs on the planet to handle some of these people, man.

So it's just so true. And every business owner feels that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. But every time I find the door they used, we put a lock on that door. So all I. And all I got to do is go. The last time I ignored this, it just about killed me. The last time I put loyalty ahead of integrity, it just about killed me. The last time I thought, well, I knew this guy back, you know, 20 years ago. Yeah. But every time I ignore these things that are tickling at the back of my spirit and my, you know, in my brain, then I. It kills me. So, yeah, we. And so we try to say, okay, we're going to do different things, checks and balances, to do that, and we're going to measure them, and we want more than one person to look at them. And we're going to take time. And every time we say, oh, this is. We just got to get them in here and we shortcut. Oh, every time it screws it up. Take your time and do it right or you get to do it over. Yeah, it's the old mom thing. It's like, you know, anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time, you know. Well. Or you get to do it over. That's true. And then, not only then, but you got all the lost productivity of all the humans that have to deal with that person that came in that shouldn't have been here. It's just it. And the good news is, these days, there's hardly any of them. They're very, very. They know what they're getting when they come in here. And if they want to sign up for this and pull off our interview process, they're freaking pathological. If they got through it, if they're nuts, because we. We're going to spend enough time with them. Different settings, calm, discussing, asking questions. Lots of questions. Let them ask anything they want to ask. We don't need them. We just need them, you know, and it's okay. It's not. We don't emotionally need you to be here, but we'd love to have your help. Ray Ban Meta glasses come with open.

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You know what's interesting? I'm curious. Have you ever fired somebody that you regretted firing? Or do you usually wait too long to fire?

I have. I promised myself when we opened that because in my early. In my 20s, I struggled with a temper, with anger, and it's been part of my spiritual walk to no longer struggle with that. And I don't struggle with it today. But I promised myself I would never fire someone while I was angry, and I haven't. I've managed to pull that off. I did wait two days to calm down before I fired a person that had, you know, a major thing they had done. And I was definitely angry, but I just said, I'm not even going to look at them. I'm not going to deal with it. I'm not going to be in the same room with them until I get my head straight and then I walk in and then I go. Then I can be kind, but also, you know, do what's necessary because this person cannot be a part of our organization and do those kinds of things. It's not optional. And so. But yeah, I mean, you get that. But you know, again with the four or five times you could. I could say that has happened.

Yeah.

Then I can look back and go, every one of those are because I kept them too long.

Yeah.

Because I ignored the signs and I'm again, my loyalty to the person. Well, they've been here 10 years. I owe them. They poured their life out for this place. I'm going to. So I'm going to give them one. And you end up becoming an enabler if. If you're not really careful as a leader. And I struggle with that. But. But it's never gone on so long that it destroyed the company or something like that. But, man, that's the pain point for me. You can feel it just talking. Me talking about it.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I found every owner I've ever talked to has the same thing, which is we usually wait too long, even when we know it's not right. And I ask the question all the time because I need to remind myself. I always keep people too long, too. And I think it's a little bit of, like, a God complex, too. I'm like, no, I could fix them. I could help them. I don't want to be mean. And I have to remind myself that it's actually doing them a huge disservice because they could be amazing somewhere else. It's just not a good fit for me.

Exactly.

And so you've been at this longer, so it's nice to hear you say.

It'S exactly the same thing. You're. You're exactly on it. And it is a bit of a God complex, but it's also just a. A kindness thing. And, you know, I'm a Southern guy, and so, like, we're specialists at passive aggressive. So, you know, we're like, bless your heart. Bless your heart. And that can mean slit your throat or it could mean bless your heart. And so, you know, it's. But we were taught that, you know, it's not nice to have conflict. And the truth is what I. The thing I picked up about 20 years ago, and I say it all the time, and our leadership is indoctrinated with this is to be unclear, is to be unkind. And so when I sit with you three times and tell you that you're not cutting it at this, this work is not. How can we help you to get you there? Because this is not. We're not going to continue like that. When I tell you that three times, there's probably not going to be a fourth. And we're going to talk about that the second time is there's not going to be a fourth. Okay, we're going to have a discussion here because I'm not going to sanction incompetence. It's not an option. As much as I love you and as much as I love hanging out with you and doing stuff that doesn't matter, you still can't be here because we got to get our work done. Guess what? If I suck on this microphone, people don't listen. Hello. I get fired. So that's how it works.

Yeah. You know, I want to actually talk a little bit about entrepreneurs. I think it's a super lonely journey. This book is for builders in particular and owners. And one of my favorite parts is your categorization of where somebody is at in business, because I think all of us have felt in business numerous times, hey, my business is struggling. I'm not making any money. Hey, we're making a ton of money, but it's moving so fast, I don't know what to do next. And you kind of categorize entrepreneurs into a few different types. Five levels. Treadmill operator, pathfinder, trailblazer, peak performer, legacy builder, Five stages. The five stages, what are these and why do they matter as an entrepreneur?

Well, most of us that are entrepreneurs. The oddly enough, the your if you have dyslexia, you are more likely to be an entrepreneur than anything else. The if you have ADHD or ADD confirmed or unconfirmed. Dave talks too much, he's hyper. Was on my report card every single year. Unconfirmed, but probably, you know, and so medically unconfirmed, but the you know, so you're probably in those categories because what happens to those of us that have those different things is we. We live our life doing workarounds. And that is the ultimate definition of an entrepreneur. You're finding a problem and solving it. You're doing a workaround for somebody that doesn't even think that way, doesn't even know they have a problem. And you're going and solving it for them. And that turns into a product, a service that becomes very profitable and very much of a blessing to the customer, as we talked about earlier. So we find a high degree of those folks and we start as a treadmill operator. We start with, I'm going to go get this thing done. And you get up on treadmill and you start running and running and running, running. And you get home at night, you're exhausted, and you go, what'd you do today, honey? I have no idea. But I worked my butt off. But some stuff moved around. I know that. And it's very chaotic and it's very dependent on you. And that's the problem. It's not sustainable. You don't yet own a business at the treadmill stage. You own your job because if you don't show up, you don't make any money. You don't show up. The customer doesn't get anything because nothing's produced because you're the producer and you're the producer of revenue and the producer of the goods and services. And so that's how it started here. So it starts with most people, and then you begin to go, okay, this isn't going to work. I'm going to die of burnout. I may, I may die happy because I don't work for somebody else, but I'm going to die burning. I got to get some other people helping me and that's called delegation. And you begin this dreaded hiring process we were just talking about and you learn, oh, this is hard. Hiring and firing is hard, but it's harder. It's not as hard as working by myself and trying to do everything myself. So, you know, we start adding folks and doing time management and working on the right things. Working smart, not hard. Get a little bit of work, life balance. All of a sudden you can actually be home before 10 at night. You can actually not have to panic about payroll every Friday because you actually get some cash reserves. We start putting some things like that. Now we're starting to run a business and that moves us into that pathfinder stage. And from there you start doing some planning and you actually think past Friday. And that's the stage. I learned the phrase strategic thought. I was very, I'm totally tactical. I mean get it done, get done right now and we'll deal with it later. But no. And so I was just constantly running through the labyrinth trying to figure out how, where the end of the bushes were. And some guy standing up above goes, if you turn left, you get out of there, you know. And so that's strategic thought. You got to get above the problem and look, give it the 30,000 foot view. And so always laugh and say, I got to the point. I finally started hiring people that MBAs. I don't have an MBA, but I've got great admiration for that level of business education. And 100% of the MBAs I've ever hired, I guess it's indoctrinated. In every program are wonderful strategic thinkers. They are taught to get above the problem. And I always laugh and go, okay, the MBA's taught me how to get above the problem. I taught them how to work because when in doubt, I worked my butt off, you know, so you know, that's the trailblazer stage. And then that stuff starts to work and you start to do something you mentioned earlier and you go, I'm going to put some systems and processes in place so humans don't have to do everything by paper. We don't have to kill so many trees. And this thing is analog as it can be. This P and L ought to automatically spit out. It shouldn't be like sharpen a pencil. We ought to start putting these systems. And when you do that added with a strategic thought and you get the second layer of leadership. Your first layer of leadership is just you got other people leading. Now you're leading people that lead people that lead people. Now you're moving Into Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a sweet sweet spot. Money is coming in, you're bailing it, you're bailing money, you're making money. You're good at what you do. It's a well oiled machine we always say around here. And that's a fun time. It seems like Midas touch, everything you touch turns to gold. The danger is as you start to believe your own press clippings and you don't iterate fast enough. You don't kill it before it needs to die. And so we break stuff before it needs broken around here so we don't get stuck there. Because you can try to, you know, you can be Kodak and say I don't, you know, film is the way it's always going to be. Digital cameras are never going to happen. And then all of a sudden you're gone. You're a memory. You can be blockbuster and be a memory if you stay in the Pathfinder stage and don't constantly iterate and break it before it's broken and new products and learn skills you didn't have and bring in leadership that's smarter than you constantly and figuring things out, blowing your mind with how smart they are. And that keeps Pathfinder vibrant. And then you've got to realize that you're immortal and you're not going to outlive this thing called life. And I did that at 48, 16 years ago we hit the legacy builder stage and we started working on succession plan. Then how does this brand survive? How does this leadership team survive? How does this, I don't work my whole life and build something and then just evaporate because I do that's kind of dumb. And especially for a guy that teaches financial responsibility. And so you know, we started working on at that point the Ramsey personalities were born. The early iterations of them. The leadership team has always been good and strong. So that was fairly easy handoff at my death or retirement. The ownership, you know, the next generation has got to be able to carry the, have the wisdom and the character to carry the thing. The, the Ramsey kids as we call them were younger at that point. They're all old people now. They're all in their 30s and 40s and they're very capable. So we've got ownership dialed in, we got leadership dialed in. We've got a brand transfer lined up where you don't have to have me on the microphone to survive. You don't have to have me doing a book to survive. And so today our survivability index which is our accounting Metric says that 96% of the revenue will survive me if I die today. Next year, 96% would survive me.

How do you measure that? Do you have like a little. Do you have an algorithm?

Yeah, we run a. We run through all the P and ls. We ask all the leaders to look at their product lines and give us a case study as to why they believe what they believe. And then, you know, what would happen. For instance, we've got one that's probably 99%. Our high school curriculum is, you know, 10. It's a 25 million dollar a year business and people buying higher high school curriculum to teach it in high schools. It's almost zero dependent on me. I'm not even in it. And so it's got my, it's got Ramsey on the outside, but Daniel Ramsey's my son. So it's, you know, it survives because they don't care if I'm here. When the thing was 100% me on talk radio, and the revenue from talk radio that year was 35 million and I die, that'll be a Rush Limbaugh event. It'll evaporate. That revenue will evaporate. That affiliate network will evaporate, which is what's happened with that one. Largely. Not completely, but largely because there was no succession planning. And so. And Russia's a friend of mine. It's just sad because he was Elvis of talk radio. Yeah, but that network is not. I mean, it's probably a little more than 10% of what it was before he died. So it's, you know, the actual show itself, I'm saying, not the company. I mean, the company's I heart. So they're fine. But the, the, anyway, it's not to run them down. It's just that that's what happens if you don't have a brand transfer in our world, the podcast world.

Well, what's interesting is that every business should have this ability for the owner to, quote, unquote, die in some way, shape or form, move on, get a new project, do a new revenue line, and it should still survive theoret. But a lot of businesses obviously don't have that. And I think this type of business, which is you described as like a content or media business, has typically the lowest survivability because it's a personality. So it's actually a really interesting way to learn from the business that would typically have the lowest survivability in order for any business to increase its survivability. Because at the end of the day Apple like of course it misses Steve Jobs and his brilliance, but not really important at all to the survivability. If we just look at it mathematically based on its revenue. I had never thought about that before is Most media companies1 are bad business models. Right. They have super lots of volatility, third party ad sponsors, no proprietary products and huge key man risk. And so you basically diversified all of that away, which is interesting.

And you know, when you're diversifying it has to be quality. So the when the Ramsey personalities are sitting doing the Ramsey show, which was originally the Dave Ramsey show, now it's called the Ramsey Show. Yeah. And when they're sitting and doing it, you know, I took several weeks off and Sharon and I were out of the country and when I came back the ratings were up. Distressing. Makes me mad. I don't feel as important.

Well, it's, you know, it's interesting too because I think that's probably a reason why egoically a lot of us don't put these things in place. It kind of feels good to be.

Oh yeah. And even with a small business that, you know, I talked to a guy the other day, one of our people were coaching in entree leadership. He's at one of our events, he owns a heat and air company and he's like, he's the only one that can do it. And I'm like, you're not Jesus. That job's taken. The messiah is gone. You're not him. You're the only guy can run a heat and air company. You've got to be kidding me. What kind of self importance is this? I can tell you this one the biggest when we watch these succession plans, Gen1 to Gen2, the founder turning it over is the hardest succession plan emotionally because the founder is always a hard head. We're always stubborn, we're always self important, we're always have that messiah complex. We always have that. And it can be in any business. Media is particularly bad because we dare to step on a stage or in front of a microphone which requires another level of ego. But yeah, you really gotta fight against that and start to realize, okay, it's the message that's important, it's the method that's important and someone else can do it. And if you don't believe me, watch when someone else does.

Yeah, you know, it's a great point. Like one of our portfolio company CEOs, he's an incredible operator. He's run this business really well for a long time. But to get to the Next level, you can't do the same thing to get to nine figures as you did to get to low level eight. It's just not going to do it. And so what's fascinating is he surround himself kind of with this, like, band of merry fools. And they were okay for the level he was at before, but they are actually detrimental for the next level. And so I actually gave him this book because my point was, like, you have felt good and benefited from the fact that you were the head of the table and everybody listened to you. And in your next venture, if you are the person everybody's listening to and they aren't smarter than you, you're never going to make it.

You walk into that room of youngsters and not know what they're saying.

Right.

If you're not that guy, then you're gonna die. You're gonna get taken out. The marketplace will shear your head from your shoulders.

It's bad.

It's brutal out there.

Yeah. You really got to get over your own bs.

Yeah.

Which is hard.

And again. But it takes a level of that to start something. The people that don't have that oomph, that it factor that I'm gonna throw my shoulders back and show the world, you know. You know, if you're. If you're just a timid little mouse, you're not gonna start anything. So you gotta go bust into it. You gotta knock stuff down. You gotta create friction and piss some people off. I mean, that's. You gotta go do that and then. But once you get to doing that, you gotta realize, okay, the best way to keep doing this is have people smarter and even better at and more energetic than me around me.

Yeah. And kind of get excited by that. Like, look who I attracted. You know, we just hired a new president for my company, and he's gonna. He's gonna chuckle that I'm talking to him about this, but he come. Came from this other company, Mr. Beast. Right. And so big, huge YouTube company. And so I'm like, you know, Mark, we got to do a press release to show that you came on board. He's like, I don't need that. I'm like, no, it's for me. I'm like, I'm really excited that I attracted you to the business. This means that, you know, you're a signal to the marketplace that we hire great people. People that are better and smarter than me.

Well. And that we're coming. Yeah, look out. We're coming. Here we come.

Yeah, that's right.

And notify the competitors. Exactly.

I shouldn't do that. But yes, you're right. Yes, you're right. What would you say to a young. A young builder, that crazy type of human that wants to do the psychopathic work of building a company? What would you tell them to do? Where should a young builder start today?

Well, I mean, the first thing that. And I just talked to our team about this morning, a staff meeting, reminding them yet again, one of our core values here is if you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money. So too many times when we start something, we are enamored with our own idea, our own ability. And the idea is the thing rather than the customer. And what I want to do is I want the person that is not inside the building to be blessed, to be changed, to be served, to have their mind blown. The people inside the building all get their mind blown. Not so much. Not so much. That doesn't do anything. What happens is when all those people out there all over the world, I get the opportunity to help one of them with their budget. I get the opportunity to help one of them with their marriage. I get to help one on their spiritual walk. I get to help one on with their small business. We don't build anything for us, we build everything for them. And when you first start, that's not natural. That's paradoxical, because you're kind of into what you're doing and you're like, oh, I'm kind of good at this, and this is kind of cool. And it was for me anyway. And so when I did the first cassette tapes or VHS tapes, you know, I was like, wow, look at that guy. He's. He's funny and he's good. And it kind of started coming to me. No one cares except your mama and your wife.

And they also don't.

They don't care that much. It's like. But I think that's a thing. Serve, serve, serve. And if you can find a way to make other people's life better and let them be the hero in the story, as my friend Donald Miller says, don't you have to be the hero? You can be the guide. And you know that kind of stuff. It just makes you have a good quality life. And you've got a good philosophical, spiritual underpinning to your business, then that you can. Okay, we're about service. We're about service. And when you interact with an organization, a business that is. That is about themselves, you feel the take rather than the give. And when you interact with a company that is all about service. You. You come away with your mind blown because they're fairly rare.

That's such a good point. Yeah. It wasn't a Don Miller that talked about the fact that you think that you're Skywalker as the business owner, but you're actually Yoda. I need to remember that often. And I love that visual. I love the visual because, one, you're like, you know, you're not the sexy young hero of the story. You're like the wrinkly green, old, you know, kind of in the background. And then also that everybody thinks you're the hero in the story. So it's.

Since they. Since they think they're the hero, if you put yourself in the hero seat, they don't want to talk to you.

Yeah, it's true.

But if you're. If you'll show them how to live their life and be the hero in their life, then that's. That's the story. Brand is the book that Donald did and the talk. He's a wonderful communicator. But the idea of a story arc as a marketing plan and the idea that, okay, I'm going to position myself, and we did that. He mentions it in the book. We do that with the debt free scream, and the people get to be the hero, and they scream, I'm debt free on that stage right out there. And that's not like, I love Dave. I'm debt free. I'm the hero. Thank you, Dave and Ramsey, for showing me how to be the hero to change my life. And so anytime our team is instructed, anytime someone comes up and says, you changed my life, they always say, oh, no, no, no, no. We showed you how.

Yeah. It's so incredible, you know, and you can notice it kind of everywhere in the headquarters. It's one of my favorite things whenever I get to come to a company's headquarters, because I feel like you can almost immediately tell what the soul of a company is by the place that they choose to build. It's your physical manifestation of. Of who you are and who you think your company is. And so, you know, when I came, there's only one other company that I've seen that's as intentional as yours, which is my friend Andy Frisella is at first form, different brand, but, you know, the. The truck you have with the books that you use to sell out of the back of it, then the cookies that you give people to sit in front and how you built a studio thinking that they might watch it for free, you know, then the fact that you have a wall with everywhere somebody signed if they've become debt free and also somewhere they can take a picture. It's like the headquarter money but it's also for the, the individual and the person. And I think those little reminders, it goes back to your point of like, well, once you set it and you enforce it a few times, it becomes self enforcing and it's even in, in the way that you design everything here. And so I, I didn't realize that when I was a first time founder and I'm learning it more and more the more businesses we build.

Well, this is the fourth building so I didn't realize it early either.

Makes me feel better.

We've gotten better.

Yeah, but, but how cool that you know, as a builder you can do that same thing. So I think it's really interesting. I just have a few questions I want to struggle or I want to summarize with. My dad has this line that I always go back to about being a builder which is like, you're not in the game unless you've sat in the dark, head in the hands, completely unsure of what to do next. And if you have, then you're in the game, then you've played. What would you tell somebody that is in their business right now and they are struggling, they are in the pain cave and they don't know how to get out. Welcome to Walgreens. Looking for a holiday gift?

Sort of. My cousin Freddie showed up to surprise us.

Oh, sounds like a real nice surprise.

Exactly. So now I have to get him a gift, but I haven't gotten my bonus yet. So if we could make it something really nice but also not break the bank, that'd be perfect.

How about a Keurig for 50% off?

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It's so true. I keep this meme on my phone that's. It's like a picture of a. Just, just. It's like a drawing, but of a man that just looks like he's going through it and he's staring up at God and he's like, you know, why have you presented me the most horrible challenge yet? And you see Jesus look down at him and he goes, man, just go take a walk outside and get some vitamin D and get off your phone. And I giggle every time I look at it. Because the solution is, like you said, it's this one step in front of the other. And also realizing that entropy is physics, which just means problems get worse and worse and worse, but we become more capable of fixing them.

Yeah.

So it's a great, it's a great reminder. And also, man, thank God there's problems, otherwise we'd make no money because that's the only way we get paid, right?

Easy.

Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. So this next book will be one of now the next, the next series of 30 million books you'll have sold.

Oh, your lips to God's ears.

Exactly. When you put this in the next gen's hands, what's like the one thing. If they could take one thing out of this book. As you can tell, I have a ridiculous amount of notes in this thing. But if you had to pick one, what would you hope somebody takes out of this?

We have learned around here, and it's true of this book, in this material that there is great hope and a clear path. That if I can see that this is where it's going, then I can keep my energy level up. When you can't see where it's going, we experience burnout. When you can see where it's going, it's only fatigue. And so I can see where it's going. I can move from treadmill to pathfinder. I can use these six drivers in business that we talk about in the book. And these are systems and Paths that help me make the next thing. And it's a buy a guide, a Yoda that's trustworthy because not only have I been there, done that, but we've also been there, done that with 10,000 businesses. So this is not think tank theory, this is not academia. This is actually people freaking running businesses. And it probably won't work if you're running, you know, $700 billion business or something. It wouldn't work for Apple. That's not what it's written for. It's written for the veterinarian, for the heating and air guy, for the young podcaster, for the whatever, somebody that's starting and or is in the early stages or they've been running it for 10 years and they just feel stuck and they don't know. Well, you're supposed to be there now and somebody needs to tell you that and show you why and then show you what the next things are to level up. And so the clear path gives hope.

I love that. Well, I think one of my richest friends told me that if you can do one thing in life, it's if you can buy somebody else's 10,000 hours, you should. And so this is a pretty cheap price tag. Thank you for sharing it with us. Thank you.

It's honored to be with you. Great job.

Same by the way, you guys, little sneak peek. We are sitting in Ramsey Solutions headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. This place is wild. It's somewhere between 400 and 600 million dollars. Multiple buildings, this huge campus that they built with zero dollars in debt. And now if you've ever built a business or a building, you know how ridiculous that is. Super interesting about this headquarters too, is that it's one of the most intentional headquarters I've ever seen. You know, all around me are these little notes, these little messages to all of you, to the people out in the audience who are actually making change in their lives by becoming financially free. And so I'm going to give you a little sneak peek of this. Go to Instagram, you can check out the stories of the headquarters. I think you'll see what I see too, which is don't despise humble beginnings. Because man, if you can start out where he did and get to where he is today, I think we'd all be pretty happy with that.