A few years back, Dave Ramsey himself told me he would fire me if I worked for him. I told him right to his face that I’d never work for such a self-righteous jack wagon.
Well, I would have if he’d been standing in front of me.
Probably.
Well, I almost certainly would have been passive-aggressive and said something like, “I understand.” And then I’d do an EPIC eyeball on the way home.
The first part is true. I actually called his radio show one day. I’d been home sick from work and squirming on the couch with illness-induced frustration. Too wiped out to move, too foggy to think, too anxious about business woes to do much of anything. I didn’t know it at the time, but my company had one year left of life.
I was scrolling on the phone when I saw a post of his. IDEA!
I dialed the number for his show 37 times. When I finally got through, I perked right up. It was at that moment that I realized I had no idea what I wanted to talk about. NOW, I know. I wanted someone who I thought was a business Titan to tell me it was all going to be okay. He was going to tell me what to do, and maybe, just quite possibly maybe, he would offer to buy my struggling moving business and save the day.
“What’s your P&L look like?” he said. “How much are you taking in every month?”
“It’s variable,” I said. “Up to $100k in the busy months, maybe $40k in the slow months.”
He dug in. “What’s your variable rate spanner during an Asian cornswallow harvest?” He said, or something like that.
“I’m not sure,” I said, going for it anyway. “Somewhere between 30 to 40 percent.”
That’s when he said something like, “Son, you have no idea what’s going on with your business, do you?”
I protested. “Look, there are factors, Dave. FACTORS.”
“If by some miracle you came to work for me, I’d fire you.”
And that made me sad.
/Fin
******
Of course he had a point. It’s beyond irresponsible to run a company grossing more than $1 million per year and not know where every dollar is off to, or better yet, every penny. $1 million is not a lot of money for a small business with a fleet and small workforce. I’d been winging it for a long time.
Just like I was doing when I called Dave Ramsey. I’d had a golden opportunity to get some solid feedback, maybe a little exposure, and he left me with, “You’re doomed.” About one year later, his prediction was proven correct.
What’s the lesson here? Actually, I had three:
Lesson #1: Be ready when opportunity arises. What does that look like? Ideally, it means that everything is squared away. You have systems in place to manage all the important variables, leaving just the smallest aperture for the “X-factor” to squeak through, meaning that when, not if, surprise challenges come up, you know how to assess and handle them.
It also means you know exactly what your cashflow looks like, what resources you can bring to bear, etc. When the opportunity comes up and you have to make a decision on the spot, you can know what’s possible without having to say, “Let me go run some numbers.”
In this case, I should have been able to bring Dave Ramsey up to speed in 30 seconds or less, leaving him time to give some recommendations. Instead, I gave him a lot of, “Uh, let me look into that,” while frantically searching through my company’s Byzantine file system on my little phone for that one spreadsheet that I think I started putting together last year…
Lesson #2: Clearly know what you want. My call to Dave Ramsey was more like a prayer to a deity I didn’t quite believe in than it was a strategy session. I was flinging my amorphous hopes at the man. Given my psychological state at the time (stressed, panicking, despairing), I would have been better off calling a buddy who would shout motivational slogans at me.
I didn’t even know what my objective was for that call other than, “Help!” At the time, I’m not sure I could have told anyone what I really wanted to do with the company. It was killing me and doing not-so-great things to my marriage, but it was the only thing I had going. The income was irreplaceable, and believe me, I tried to replace it. If I’d been able to tell Dave Ramsey, #1, what the situation was, and #2, where I wanted to go, I could have gotten some actionable advice. But, I didn’t, so I didn’t.
Lesson #3: Be bold and decisive. For all the grief that has resulted from jumping off cliffs and building parachutes on the way down, I’m still a big fan of it. The #1 thing that stops most people from acting on good ideas or taking risks is fear of the unknown or second-guessing the life out of divinely inspired ideas. Everything I preach about being organized, planning ahead, and being a clear-eyed, sober-minded slayer of To Do lists is absolutely true, but it’s pointless if you never hoist your flag and march through the cannon smoke.
This part I did right. Talking to a nationally syndicated business and personal finance guru live on the radio (and streams) moments after conceiving the idea? The guy whose book, “Entreleadership” was absolutely foundational to my neon green early entrepreneurial days? Let’s do this. I saw the opportunity and I went for it.
It just…didn’t go as planned, obviously.
******
I get some bewilderment from friends and family for taking this tack with my writing. “Hey Chris - love the writing, but why do you always write about your failures?” Well, #1, they’re often hilarious and make good stories, but #2, there are a lot of people out there who would do great things, reach higher, or “rise above” if not for the fears marbled throughout their own foundations. I believe (or theorize, at least) that if people could see that failure, humiliation, financial ruin, marital stress…(I almost forgot where I was going with this…) do not mean the end of the road. Just as we can learn great lessons from reading people’s success stories, I think we can learn a lot more from people’s fail-stories. And here’s the thing: every success story is the result of a thousand fail-stories.
That’s the theory, anyway. I’m still working on my success story. Stay tuned, subscribe, or upgrade your subscription to paid to see how it turns out! ;-)
Keep it coming, it’s super helpful, just helped me today, I know the known expenses and revenue every month, but my team doesn’t, transparency is super important in as a leader, I’m getting my whole team every number
Yeah, I try to live by his philosophy. Floundering towards debt free for a decade now... Post 2020 I've had a hard time caring what he has to say though, I have a hard time listening to "experts" with 1 or 2 children and you're not entirely sure their wife exists or not. He also dismisses and refers a lot of real legitimate difficulties to "therapy, divorce, marriage counseling" on his show like it's trivial.
If him or his wife had a major health event and were isolated from family like a majority of people that look for work, he be singing the communist bandwagon song.