Hiring and Retaining Top Talent—Live From Summit

foreign Opryland the summit entree Leadership Summit we are doing an unusual version of the entree leadership podcast I'm your host Dave Ramsey and I'm here with our Platinum members of summit you guys make some noise thank you we've got a great week with Incredible speakers and thought leaders and authors from all over the world and uh absolutely uh Stellar work has been done on this stage all week and so we're getting ready to lower the bar for the next few minutes and uh we're going to take questions from the audience instead of calls like we usually do on the on this podcast if you do want to participate in this podcast in the future you can call in and leave a voicemail at 844-944-1070 or go to entryleadership.com ask if you didn't know I'm your host and I've been doing this for 30 years this being business if you want to talk to someone about Theory or think tank or some academic about business well you got the wrong podcast you should move on uh now what we do here is I actually did this stuff today I'm the CEO of Ramsey Solutions about 1100 team members and I still with a great leadership team lead our organization I have the difficult conversations I still make payroll on Friday we still do the stuff in the trenches every day and I have for 30 years so that's who's talking to you who's helping you with your q a your questions and again we're going to have live audience questions from the this entree Leadership Summit audience today rather than calls coming in and so we're going to start with Martine Martinez from Tallahassee Florida hey Martine how are you I'm great how are you doing great doing great how can I help okay my question is um I am the CEO of a chiropractic practice in Tallahassee and how do you motivate staff when your budget or your finances don't allow for more benefits or more money how do you do that well uh more money comes from more Revenue so everybody getting to share in the revenue increases uh in some way or another would be a great thing to put on the table as a possibility if you can if you can pull that off in other words we're at this point today a certain point today if we can get revenues up we can change some of these things so that's a carrot to lay out there but I don't recommend small businesses uh try to compete with corporate America on benefits packages we don't at Ramsey I mean we have some basic stuff with a thousand employees that we didn't have when we had 10 employees uh you know we've got a lot more room a lot more room in the budget to do the quote benefits package but the difference your brand differentiator for hiring and for motivating and for keeping people is not the quality of the benefits package you're never going to compete with huge corporations on that and you don't want to because you want to let them have those people that are worried about benefits I want to bring people on a chiropractic practice that care about healing they care about people they have a huge heart that loves the work and want to be involved in the work and that's motivating they're tied to the mission so we're tying back into the mission rather than money just won't motivate the unmotivated that's that's a lie that people have out there and benefits packages won't motivate the unmotivated so what we've got to do is plug the folks into a role where they can sense that they are moving the needle in someone's life that they're moving that mission along and Chiropractic's huge on Mission I mean the whole thing is the whole movement of Chiropractic is a mission and so plugging into that uh into the healing aspects of that I think is I just constantly be putting that in front of them rather than oh raises or oh we're going to have this benefits package or whatever the second thing I would do a third thing first things don't try to compete head to head with corporate America on benefits package second thing is we're talking about being on Mission the third thing that comes to mind uh it is uh uh we need to be constantly talking through where we're all going together and we can get people tied in on the same Mission and the same desired future we call it around Ramsey we stole that from Henry cloud and this idea that we can plug into this desired future and we're all unified we're all heading this way see I can treat you like family in a small business situation I can I can really love you well I can know your spouse's name I can know you uh no know what's going on in your life you don't have that luxury in Corporate America they're too scared of their own shadow to start with but number two there's too many of them and so um I can't at Ramsey anymore with a Thousand Eleven Hundred people I can't know that about everybody but I can make sure my leaders all do and you're in a small enough situation you can know everything that's going on with those folks and have this really deep rich wonderful personal relationship and I highly recommend that that's a brand differentiator you don't get that in Corporate America Corporate America just treats people like a unit of production they treat them like crap and so you've got that opportunity to create a relationship difference as well uh so how long you been doing this uh about 14 years now wow good for you good for you well done how many team members six to ten okay perfect size yeah that's what I was guessing that's typical practice so good stuff very cool well thank you for what you're doing and thank you for your question very very good stuff very well done so guys you got to remember you know I don't want to compete head to head with large business my brand differentiator is is that we're not Corporate America thank God a bunch of us started our businesses because Corporate America peed on us at some point you know we don't want to we don't want to be like that I want to be back in that again I got away from that and so you don't want to go that direction hey this is the entree leadership podcast a special edition from the Opryland the Gaylord hotel where we are doing the entree Leadership Summit this year back in a moment welcome back to the entree leadership podcast a special edition from the uh entree Leadership Summit live in the ballroom here at a lunch break we're hanging out with some of our closest friends taking questions actually from the audience here the studio audience we'll call it for today rather than actual call-ins but if you want to call in and be a part of the show in the future this is a new call-in format on this podcast where I answer your questions and um it's completely free and some say it's worth exactly what you pay for it so give it a shot the phone number is 844-944-1070 or you can leave a message at entreereleadership.com ask our team will get back to you and set you up to be a caller here in the future now we don't talk a ton about Legacy Builders but entree Leadership Summit is actually a great example of how Ramsey Solutions transitioned into this final stage of business back in 2015 entree leadership had a bunch of different events going on and there were several one-day events we had a performance series we did a Master Series twice a year here and back then I taught every single lesson at Master Series and we reached a point where I said I'm not doing that anymore and if something doesn't change the company's going to be left high and dry when I retire because if I'm the only Talent that's doing it hey how's that make the we got to make our events less dependent on me that doesn't work and that opened up a whole world of possibilities ultimately we landed on the idea to create an event so good that if I wasn't hosting it I would want to attend it anyway the quality of speakers the high level of thought leaders the people that I listen to a lot of them are now friends and the people that have helped me bring my business along hey I wanted to bring them to you we called it Summit and that's where Ontario Leadership Summit came from and we bring you the top Minds in business and Leadership because that's the type of conference I would pay to attend and next year's Summit is our 10-year anniversary it's going to be April 21-24 in Dallas and it's going to be a party y'all you don't want to miss this you won't believe this lineup I mean people like Mike Rowe are going to be there man it's going to be incredible James Clear from Atomic habits it's going to be a quite a lineup you don't want to miss it check it all out you can learn about it at entrailivership.com Summit and get your tickets there so on the microphone up next is going to be Kathy hi Kathy how are you hi Dave I'm great great where do you live I'm in Sandusky Michigan cool what kind of business a title agency Community First Title Agency ah very cool very cool how can we help so I'd like to know what your take is on incorporating AI into customer interactions and how you can balance that with human connection uh you better balance it with human connection uh and when you're not when you are using AI you need to be sure from an Ethics standpoint that the people on the other side of it realize they're not dealing with a human that they're dealing with AI and so um ah I think AI has a opportunity to pour uh fuel on a lot of things we're doing doing faster doing easier doing more efficiently but the idea that we're going to replace a human connection or a human touch is a really dumb idea I think the companies that do that it's going to screw them up and so I'll give you an example a thousand years ago people used to actually call businesses on the telephone and stuff y'all remember that and uh we we have a receptionist her title is uh the director of First Impressions because when they call in the person that answers the phone that's their first impression of our organization so how good she is how happy she is how wonderful she is as a human being and and we went through a period of time in business you all may remember this 10 or 15 20 years ago when everyone did away with the front desk they did away with receptionists and you had this phone tree this answering thing and you call in push four to get this department pushed through and it's all automated well it lost the human touch and and we made the decision to instead of going that direction we're going to double down and we gave the director of First Impressions a raise which we're going to actually demand even more of you now and so we're you gotta you gotta you gotta create a world-class experience now and so instead of using technology to replace a human we used a human then uh to keep the human touch and use technology to enhance the experience and so that's the way we're going to go at AI from a Ramsey perspective and that we're going to avoid the ethical problems of uh you know no one wants to be stuck on hold with a customer service agent that can't even speak English and we all have had that experience you know no one wants to interact with a bot unless they want to interact with a bot and so you can give them that option but it needs to be clearly stated what it is it needs to be clearly stated that you're choosing to have this type of interaction versus a human connection and then we're always going to have humans overseeing the AI not the other way around where humans are watching the quality control watching the actual content because uh it is it's a great technology and it's really going to do some fun stuff but it's fraught with danger when you pull the human element out of it and uh and again we lose from a small business perspective we lose what is one of our advantages if we're not careful which is the Personal Touch is the human touch and so that's how I would go at it and in your world I mean most of your interaction is not consumer most of your actions with real estate agents right and so yeah and so from an efficiency standpoint they may choose a technology just to get something executed you know get a document executed get it back that kind of stuff you know just a DocuSign thing or whatever and throw it out there they may want to choose that from an efficiency expert efficiency standpoint speed standpoint uh that kind of thing which is fine as long as they know oh that's what they're doing and I always want to give them a human option and as well and maybe where you choose to blatantly not use AI do what we did with our director of First Impressions and double down and go not only are we not going to have the phone tree welcome you to Ramsey the the recording welcome you to Ramsey we're going to go beyond that and we're going to really create a superhuman experience over here with her and then if you need to be in a phone tree we can drop you into one and you can hit four to go to that department or seven to go to that department or five to hit the you know to go to somebody's desk or what all that kind of stuff so again what you want to be careful of these Technologies is where that they uh create a fake insincere uh response or connection to the customer because our advantage in small business is always relationships with our team with our customer it's a real human to human connection but we're going to be using AI a bunch I promise you because in the broadcast world we as much content as we produce we'll be able to do a lot of stuff with it but we will not be doing it uh unless it's managed by humans and and anytime that a customer is having an interaction they're going to know it so thank you very very cool good stuff this AI thing yeah good question good question thanks guys yeah this AI stuff is uh man it's quite a topic I mean we're all it's all fresh for all of us uh and any of you that have experimented with it it kind of blows your mind what it'll do our guys the other day said uh let's have Dave Ramsey do a rant about something that I would never do a rant about it was I forget what it was and it was the silliest funniest thing but it was really sounded like me it was a little bit scary yeah just to show the power of this technology it's it's a lot of fun now it's going to mess with trademarks and copyrights too if we're not real careful this is the entry leadership podcast all right welcome back to the entree leadership podcast I'm your host Dave Ramsey hey guys you are our marketing plan we don't have one otherwise you're at satisfied customers is what we call it they tell other people and in the digital world that means we need to ask you to actually tell other people there's three things you can do to help this podcast if you're watching us on YouTube or listening as a podcast that's all great listening on YouTube however you're doing it uh maybe you're on Apple or you're on Google Play or you're on Spotify I don't care wherever you are with this thing thank you would you do me a favor and help us by subscribing or following or whatever the appropriate thing is with the technology you're using if you subscribe you follow not only are we going to be able to deliver this to you each week when we do it but it helps with the old algorithm over there on the internet uh yeah pushes our show forward and helps us keep in the top 10 leadership and business podcasts out there which we pretty well stay there all the time but it's because you folks help us by subscribing and following oh and share a lot of those Technologies share function click the share button send it out send it out send it out if not just clip clip the link and send the link out that's cool too and of course you can leave a five star review one Stars aren't helpful mama said if you ain't got nothing nice to say don't say nothing at all if you hate the show what the flip are you doing listening to it just troll somewhere else okay so leave us a five star review that's helpful thank you for that we appreciate it this is the entree leadership podcast a special edition from the ballroom here at the Gaylord Opryland hotel where we are today uh wrapping up a week of entree Leadership Summit and I'm in the room with the Platinum attendees doing this special edition up next to the microphone is Mark hey Mark how are you great Dave how about you better than I deserve where you live we live in Thomasville Georgia oh yeah fun fun how can we help uh my wife and I own and real estate and personal property auction company primarily doing auctions on an online platform and we're in the process of building our team out and we've got our core values down and our our mission statement down but when we're interviewing hires how do we ensure that they're going to be a good cultural fit for a Christian based company with strong conservative values what you can do legally and as part of our interview process at Ramsey is we just State real clearly Who We Are and then we ask the question how does that feel and so it's stuff like Dave Ramsey closes the show and has for 30 years that there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace Christ Jesus he's a stated Evangelical Christian leader in America today how do you feel about that he's the CEO and the owner of the company how do you feel about that but you can't say we require you to be that's completely illegal by federal law and you don't want to violate federal law we would never recommend you do and we don't okay what we found with all of our legal counsel and all the crap we've been through over the years with this stuff is we're allowed to make statements about us and it's perfectly legal to say how do you feel how do you feel about that and they'll give you some response but at least they know what they're getting into and 99 of the people that don't align somehow with the statement you have made they don't want to be there they're going to opt out and so just uh it's cool to make statements it's perfectly legal to make statements about who we are this is what we are this is Dave okay you know so again if the folks that think that that's nutty and Flaky and weird that's okay it probably is but you may not want to be here then because you're probably going to be freaked out so that that's exact that'll work perfectly but again just don't be real careful don't violate federal law you don't want to do that you don't want to get in that lawsuit you don't want to do things illegal we don't ever want to suggest you do things illegal but it's perfectly legal to make statements about who you are and then ask someone about how they feel about that and that'll get you there so good question thank you for joining us this is the entree leadership podcast good special edition of the entry leadership podcast I'm your host Dave Ramsey we're broadcasting from the ballroom at the Opryland Gaylord hotel where we've had about 3 000 folks all week at entree Leadership Summit the Platinum attendees the folks sitting up front have come back from lunch a little early and are hanging out we're taking questions from them from the floor rather than from the phones today and thank you for joining us if you want to be a part of the show in the future leave us a voicemail at 844-944-1070 we'd love to have you be a part of the program that way up next is Tanya hi Tanya how are you I'm great Dave how are you better than I deserve where do you live I have actually off the coast of North Carolina oh fun yeah cool cool what kind of business you got oh real estate development horrible housing I love it good good how can I help so we are starting in the Legacy stage of business uh stage five and starting the succession planning and um I've got a couple of challenges or more fears that I'm hoping you can give me some advice on besides the fact that I'm facing reality that I'm now old and need to start thinking about retirement but really how do you take your hands off the control and allow your successor to come in and and maybe make decisions a little different than you would have made even though those decisions may actually take the company a Direction that's even more than you could even imagine it comes with that too is as you go through that succession planning and the transition because it's not a you know one day event type thing is how do you get the rest of the staff and your external influences to accept that transition while you're still active in the business I don't know if you've sorted that with with Ramsay and yeah we've been working on this for about uh 15 16 years at Ramsey and so um it is a gradual process and there's a lot of questions built into your question there so let me see if I can kind of comb through some of them the first one is the fear issue there's two things happening there I assume you're the founder the start you started it okay yeah the first generation turning over to the second generation it that that's that gen 1 to Gen 2 is the most emotional of all successions because we Founders are hard heads we're stubborn we're gritty we're control freaks that's how we freaking got here because we would not be denied and now you're asking to pry my fingers off of this thing that I've held really really tightly for a long time it's an unnatural act it really is and as soon as I started doing it I knew intellectually what I had to do and and but what I didn't see coming was how emotional it was going to be and and so it was like I started planning to be replaced and then it started working oh crap you know like I'm planning to be less important and then suddenly I was less important that's kind of disconcerting you know like the like your ground's moving under your feet and I kind of had to just say out loud like this is um I don't the the little Davey part of this is doesn't like this um now the more noble CEO and leader and head of the family is succession is proper and it's what I should be doing that you know the higher calling part of me is like yeah this is what we got to do it makes sense it's a smart thing to do but then crap I'm suddenly not as important as I once was they don't need me you know they don't need me they can pull this off I mean these guys put the stuff together and I didn't plug one thing in you know it's crazy you know so the second part of that fear so that fear is normal but you've got to work through it but it isn't that it's and it's particularly bad for the founder because we started for you know I was here when by God nobody was here shut up you know it's like you really can lean into that if you're not real careful and I I've had to catch myself a time or two going I got socks older than you come on you know but I I managed to keep my mouth shut and just try to be a little bit more mature and deal with that fear the second part of that fear is Justified and it's a standard fear succession is the ultimate delegation and the final delegation because it is final when you do it you can't undo it it's done you know and and well I guess you could but I mean it's very very difficult and delegation there's always a fear for any of us in leadership when we're delegating and there should be a fear because if we do this stuff and you know I put somebody on the stage and they screw up our brand you know I've delegated my part of my brand to them and so you cannot delegate and you should not delegate and you should be afraid to delegate to someone who you can't trust their competency and you can't trust their integrity and that's a basic delegation lesson in entree leadership but competency and their integrity and so they're going to take the company somewhere that I might not have taken it and it might even be a better place only if they do that while abiding to the principles that brought us here we don't worship processes at Ramsey processes change every day AI we were talking about that of you know in the last time you know another question a few minutes ago ai's going to be a different process there's going to be a new process but the principles of relationships matter the principles of people matter that's still going to be regardless that that principle can't change now how we go about it what media we use what medium we used I mean when I started Ramsey I mean I'll go ahead and invented the internet yet so I mean we've had lots of new processes and lots of new Medias and mediums come about so processes need to change but not principles and so you've got to to trust the person that you're bringing on on to take the tank that they're going to stick with the principles while they take the business to a whole new level with different processes and that's the integrity and the character you're delegating out to so you gotta you got to build that and that requires some time you know there's you walk alongside someone before you let them walk ahead of you and uh and they may walk behind you for a while and then beside you for a while and then walk on ahead of you but they have to prove out that they're going to stick to the principles that got us here while changing the processes and taking the company to even better places than maybe I could understand because you know the iPhone it's not native in my hand but this next Generation it's native they have never known a world without it and so they're going to know things naturally that I didn't know and that's wonderful but we got to stick with the principles while we change the processes so I can I can turn loose to them and and I can make that fear go away the more I trust in their integrity and in their competency to stick to those principles and and how we treat people at Ramsey how we hire how we fire these you know because people are involved this is how we deal with a customer that's upset all those kinds of things are still very very much a part of our DNA very much of what got us here and so you've got to have that down or I'm not going to turn loose so you're not a control freak when to to not turn something over to someone whether it's succession or simple delegation you're not a control freak you're wise don't turn it over to them until they've proven that they're competent because they're going to screw up all your work whether it's succession or whether it's just a simple task that they're doing wrong because they're not competent it's called training it's not control freak it's called training and mentoring and discipling so all all of that to say that'll come and talk of the last part is how do I bring the customers and the team along with this uh they're already wondering what's going to happen when the old man the old lady dies and so we just need to talk about it out loud to everybody so we've shared our succession plan with our customers for years we've shared our our process out there it's very we're very open about it and we'll share it with our team until the team's sick of hearing it but they at least know that we have a meeting once a year the uh if Dave dies this year meeting what are we going to do if Dave dies this year here's how here's what's going to happen this this and this if Dave dies this year and I call it the Monty Python meeting I'm feeling much better it's just a flesh wound but yeah yeah so um because it's weird to sit in a meeting and talk about dying you're this year and I do it once a year it's weird you know but we talk about the leaders know the Ramsey airs no my wife knows you know everybody knows what's going to happen if something happens and and that prepares everybody for the ultimate that when we do step aside due to death health or just choosing to retire um then then everybody's fine with that so this year we moved Daniel Ramsey into the president's role in January uh just the other day and um that's been an 11-year process he's worked all over the company and they didn't we didn't move him into the role because I wanted to move him in the role or because he wanted to move in the role we knew we were ready when the key leaders the top leaders in the organization the operating board said we need to do this now and so when I talked to my friend Dan Cathy his son Andrew just took over a Chick-fil-A Andrews in his 40s and uh I was asking him how Andrew was doing he said he's doing great doing great you know and uh and Dan said So Daniel moved into the president I said yeah he said so was he elected on the elevator or in the boardroom and I said I want the elevator the team was ready for him to be in that role and the leadership team is ready for him to be in that role the only one that really wasn't was me you know and so I know I actually was but I mean it's still it's because it's another sign that I'm getting old it's another sign of my mortality you know and and again I get to deal with those emotions the good emotions is I get to walk with him now for the next season the next five years ten years whatever and I'm the CEO and he's the president we get to do this together just for fun and it's just a father and son thing we're just having a blast since January it's the first time he's ever worked with me directly he's always worked for someone else in the company so all of that to say we've broadcasted to the customer so much and so gradually over time that they thought well of course he was going to do that it was kind of obvious not because he's my kid but because they could see the track they could see him moving along the way the team could see him move along the way they could see him being ready that he was getting more and more ready every year and it had nothing to do with his age it had nothing to do with his uh Ramsay person Ramsey family affiliation it has to do with his competency his integrity and it was an obvious good play for everyone involved and so that's what you're looking for gradual talk about it a lot lots of over communication it's natural to be afraid and for it to be a weird moment emotionally for you like it is for me but the other part of the fear is a warning to not turn it over too quickly and abruptly way too many of you guys in business your succession plan is as you're dying you clutch your heart and as you fall back in the grave you toss the keys out and that's your succession plan that almost never works you have doomed the place because no one was ready the person who tossed the keys to wasn't ready the team wasn't ready to accept that person the customer base wasn't ready to accept that person and you you know you just created Stress and Anxiety for everybody involved so the more gradual everyone in here needs to start thinking about their succession plan now if you just opened your business last year start talking about it now and the succession plan can be you just sell it that's in game I'm going to sell the business it doesn't have to be to your family whatever you can do whatever you want to do but you need to start thinking about it now because your customers are thinking about it the old man is getting old the old lady's getting old what are we going to do when they die what happens to me as a customer I depend on this service to run my business what what's going to happen that thing going to fold up like a tent over there because it seemed like the only ones competent over there is that one that's getting old and you know the customers are having these conversations in their head they're thinking it and you think nobody cares you know everybody that's dealing with you cares so start talking about it start laying it out there making a gradual layer upon layer upon layer that's a great question thank you so much for joining us we appreciate it hey guys remember better away Warrior than a quivering critic leaders serve leaders are active not passive leaders act on principle not appearances this world needs more high quality leaders so choose to lead I'm Dave Ramsey your host thanks for listening to the entree leadership podcast cash [Applause] [Music] foreign

Channel: EntreLeadership

Views: 13,256

Keywords: entreleadership, dave ramsey, Hiring and Retaining Top Talent—Live From Summit

Id: vsJR87oIpwc

Length: 31min 31sec (1891 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023