The Real Reason People Are Giving Up on Work | America’s Labor Crisis Livestream

foreign shortage three million fewer Americans are working today half of people who are quitting are not staying in the same industry who can afford not to work right now where did they go Workforce epidemic is unfolding in America labor shortages quiet quitting employee burnout tonight our experts will teach you how to find the right people celebrate hard work and grow as a leader get ready America's labor crisis live starts right now ladies and Gentlemen please welcome to the stage Dave Ramsey [Music] what's up guys how are you guys doing wow wow [Applause] you guys are awfully excited about a crisis hey thanks for hanging out with us we appreciate you we appreciate the uh 40 or 50 000 of you watching by live stream around the world right now we appreciate you hanging out with us as well I this whole thing started just a few months ago Mike Rowe and I were having this conversation about all of the different variables that are hitting the workplace and uh he had had a guy on his podcast he does a wonderful long-form podcast that if you're not consuming you should be it's absolutely incredible and then I had read a book and and two or three different things intersected and we kept seeing this pattern of this information and so we thought hey let's gather all those people together and let's have this discussion because there's a lot to talk about there's a lot going on in the culture right now and so Nicholas eberstadt a political Economist trained in the London School of Economics former Harvard Professor wonderful best-selling author Craig groeschel best-selling author and pastor of the largest church arguably in America today Life Church and is going to be with us Michael Easter who wrote A best-selling book called Comfort crisis we're going to talk with him and talk about it as well Ken Coleman Ramsey personality best-selling author of the book paycheck to purpose is going to have some commentary for us on this and Dr John deloney Ramsey personality best-selling author of the book own your past change your future from a mental health perspective is going to come at this so we've got a whole bunch of angles different ways of looking at it different doors we're going to go in to the barn through to where we can kind of get all of these different variables because it's very complicated it's not a simple one variable one reaction it's not we need to plant more corn because we have a corn shortage and just to get more corn it's not that simple there's a whole lot of things going into this societally spiritually emotionally mental health uh economically uh it's a lot philosophically in terms of economics and looking at the the philosophy of economics if you will and so I I call Mike and I I talked to him into coming over and hanging out and co-hosting this with me so of course Mike Rowe everyone knows from Dirty Jobs and from his amazing narrative voice and he's just a lot of fun and has been is just he's I get to meet a lot of folks and I'm always happy when they're who I hope they would be you know and he's definitely that guy uh the mic Work microworks Foundation where they put out millions of dollars of scholarships for the trades we'll talk more about that he's absolutely incredible please welcome my co-host tonight Mike Rowe foreign [Applause] [Music] good times good times hey thanks for coming to hang out so I guess you were serious serious about what come on down come on down to Tennessee we'll have an honest conversation in a totally unscripted way in front of a few hundred genuine people and see if we can't save the country all in one night yeah how hard can it be really right it's no it's no step for a stepper I'll tell you that so um you know what we've got going on out there right now is we've got this one of the things we've been talking about is all these different again angles at which this problem of Labor this problem of getting work done is coming at us we've got this quiet quitting which by the way I told our team uh their sponsor Ramsey will be allowed firing but the um so you know but we've got quiet quitting we've got the work from home movement or in some cases the never quit working when you're at home movement or that I do nothing and claim to work from home movement whichever way you want to look at the work from home movement right uh the middle of a lot of movements there there's a lot of movement there yeah all right and so uh this drift to mediocrity this worship of doing as little as possible to get as much as you can uh this thing of being told during the quarantine you're not essential uh this the great resignation we've got four million jobs a month for the last six months four million people quit their job a month for the last six months and went to other things now they're regretting it and and they're wanting to come back a lot of them and now we've got the great resignation has turned into the great regret so there's a lot going on a ton and it's not just it's not just 4 million quitting a month some leave some come back most most of you guys know that but if you really look at where we're sitting right now 7.2 million able-bodied men in the prime of their life males sorry males point of order your honor 7.2 million males between 25 and 54 able-bodied not only not working but affirmatively choosing not to look for work that was the thing that scared me and that was Nick eberstadt's that's in his terrific Book Men Without work the other thing the other reason I'm here honestly is that for the last 15 years my my Foundation has been trying to push this rock up the hill and 12 years ago I heard from a number of people in the trades that on average for every five Tradesmen who retire two replace them year over year this is what Abraham Lincoln called the terrible arithmetic he was referring to the slaughter at Gettysburg but it's pretty bad math too when you look at what it means for a balanced Workforce so there's a means you're not going to have a plumber it means that the conversation is no longer just about hey can a good plumber make six figures a year of course the answer is yes or hey Will a good employer roll out the red carpet to attract the plumber of course the answer is yes the question is how long do you want to wait for a plumber three days four days five days that's what's going on is not just in the plumbing trade virtually every trade we can't today find a single construction company in this entire country who isn't desperate to hire and I challenge anybody to find a construction project underway that's going to finish on time and on budget it just doesn't happen and the result is a labor problem yeah and it's caused by it's disturbing the economics it's disturbing people's dreams it's the streaming disturbing the flow of money it's changing everything it's a there's a the ripple effect of this is it's really pretty it's the earthquake analogy is very very real so the bottom line is that societally and culturally there is from a lot of different angles a war as my friend Ken Coleman says a war on work it has become unpopular to work hard whether it be physically whether it be mentally the push the perseverance the getting it done it used to be a thing that this was what you would aspire to and uh it has for a lot of different reasons it has become really we have a war on work and it hasn't happened in my view anyway overnight it's not like we just flicked a switch and suddenly woke up and said oh crap you know five against two that's bad 7.2 million sitting out that's bad this has been gone on a long time um it's always been very very popular to portray the trades in popular media as the brunt of some sort of joke back to my plumber you know you close your eyes and picture him in your mind's eye he's 300 pounds with a giant butt crack right I mean you you've seen him on 100 different sitcoms this is what we do our portrayals on Madison Avenue our portrayals in Hollywood on on virtually every level certainly in our schools right we have made an entire category of work into a kind of vocational consolation prize the thing you do if you can't get into the four-year school so I want to say early on and at the top of this this is not an indictment of higher education this is not a cheap shot at an entire generation whether it's Millennial or generation C I don't want to paint with too broad a brush but I don't want to ignore the data either it's real chickens have come home to roost we have 1.7 trillion dollars in student loans currently on the books we have 11.2 million open positions most of which don't require a four-year degree the mismatch the skills match or the skills Gap or the will Gap if you prefer these things are all real so I'm really here tonight because I look around and I see our country lending money we do not have to thousands hundreds of thousands of kids who are never going to be able to pay it back to train them for jobs that don't exist anymore that come with the magic four-year degree this is a mistake we have to turn the ship around we can't own the conversation but somebody has to lead it and when Dave reached out I couldn't say yes fast enough and you guys are a part of it too because if we do our job right tonight then you become evangelicals if you're not already because somebody has to spread the word and if we don't well we're going to be waiting three weeks for that plumber and a whole lot more so how is all of this impacting business particularly small business we do work with tens of thousands of businesses that are five to two hundred team member size uh and we just did the Ramsey research team just did a detailed in-depth research project talking to all of them and I haven't got time to unpack the entire white paper but a couple of pieces of data jumped out at us as we were preparing for tonight one in three small business owners right now one-third say they're struggling to find employees who can or will do the work they need now that's whether they're Tradesmen or whether they're white collar they could be computer programmers HR people they they could be ditch diggers and plumbers they could be anything but they're having they don't have the will they don't have the we simply can't fill I've got positions at Ramsey right now I could feel in a heartbeat if I could find cultural fit and cultural fit includes work ethic it includes the ability to leave the cave kill something drag it home that's what we do man I mean we're here to serve people and if you're going to mail it in we you're not going to win the Super Bowl and I'll need you on my team and so I'm one of these small business guys that's telling you this right now I got 1100 folk here now over half of small business owners with 50 or more employees say retaining existing staff has been very challenging during the Great resignation uh we have a lower than national average turnover at Ramsey but in the last 18 months it's the highest it's ever been by 2x or 3x and uh so but it's and we're way lower than the national average so we're doing better than average but I mean this is a suck bar it's really low a squirrel can get over this bar you know if you beat the average here right so one quarter of small business owners say they've had to shorten business hours due to labor shortages and everyone in there could raise your hand and say I have been in a restaurant I've been in a hotel where they wanted to serve me but they simply didn't have the people I sat down in a restaurant a day before yesterday I was in another state and wonderful people in there the one guy that was waiting tables was really working hard and you know and there was 50 60 people in the restroom well you'll see the signs going in I mean it's actually now a preemptive apology I live a little North of San Francisco and the Republic of Marin and um an office down in the room Republicans I say with love but you'll love to say it these are uh these are prosperous zip codes and with many many terrific restaurants in them and I'm telling you for the longest time the first sign you see when you go in is thanks in advance for your patience we're working with half a crew it's everywhere so I think we've probably outlined the totality of the problem the stakes are pretty real you know the question is how are you going to fix it because I'm super curious exactly and on the other side of this coin going into there's another problem is lending is to this there's a a portion of the workers that either aren't wanting to work or got got tooled up for the wrong stuff that's not there or something along those lines but there's also leadership crisis in America we've got great leaders in America but we also have some leaders that routinely uh if you don't know and if you don't run a business uh by far almost every single business that's open anywhere the largest line item in your in your p l is labor your cost of Labor your payroll line and so if if you're running a publicly traded company and you want to artificially temporarily Drive stock price up really simple to do if you're a simpleton with no morals or ethics you just lay off a bunch of your people you just drop you just cut them and so you lay off ten percent of your Workforce your profits will shoot up immediately if you have the same if you maintain the same Revenue level it's a short-term play but as soon as those profits shoot up you're going to shoot stock price up so if you want a jack stock price just check your people and uh now not everyone that's publicly traded does that but you've been seeing it lately big companies laying off ten thousand twelve thousand fifteen thousand people treating human beings with families and dreams and fears like units of production like something that could be trimmed as if it was a rose bush and we're cutting out the limbs now I'm not trashing you if your profits are down and you're forced to lay off someone I've Got a Friend running a big business right now is really struggling he was forced to lay off about 30 percent of people he know the money that's different that's not an Ethics question that's a math thing but these guys who are just chopping it and and so they're totally disloyal to their Workforce in mass and and then they're shocked that they can't attract quality Talent well no kidding doofus you just you you your loyalty goes both ways this is a two-way street absolutely and it goes I would even say that that's the micro problem that's the problem between employers and employees and it Fosters the very lack of essentiality that you were referring to before but the bigger issue and this was the the big underlying theme of Dirty Jobs and every other TV show that I've ever ever worked on it's it's the idea that it's not it's not just the employer and the employee it's it's the level of gratitude or the lack of it that is really expressed by the 330 million of us who are out there who who rely on a balanced Workforce one and a half percent of the country right now grows all of the food that 330 million people eat three times a day but farmer is beset by obstacles and angry acronyms on every side it's extraordinary the pressure that they're under and it's extraordinary the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that people have about where their food comes from and where their energy comes from and what we're talking about right now is the workforce overall my bias is skilled labor my bias is the the stigmas and stereotypes that right now they've have millions of parents and guidance counselors convinced that a welder can't make six figures well I know about 600 of them who are oh yeah we've got 1500 people who have gone through our program who are working in the skilled trades right now and they they defy and they turn on its head every preconception that most Americans have about the work in general so again there's a lot going on yeah so the labor crisis is really part of a deeper crisis is what we're saying there's a lot going on out here I mean physically as a culture we've become addicted to comfort we don't do anything hard I was laughing earlier if I can't drive to it or have it brought to me I don't do it you know I mean physically we we we whine if we can't get a parking spot close to the door at the gym all right we're emotionally and mentally fragile every little thing sets us off and we become debilitated emotionally we can't we can't endure anything we're disconnected from purpose and from dignity and from push and we don't know how to do hard things this is a war on work it's a war on the Dignity of work on the nobility of work again whether it be the trades or whether it be a a white collar uh you know programmer on a platform it doesn't matter and so what we're going to do is we're going to start unpacking this for a few minutes with each of these guests now Nicholas eberstadt I heard Nick on your podcast is on for about an hour and 10 minutes I know that because that's how long I was walking and I was listening to you and trying to do hard things and um your taste is impeccable yeah I'm telling you Thank you the ability for pick a podcast by Dave Ramsey is off the charts and so um but Nicholas Nicholas was on there and uh sadly Nick called a little bit earlier today and his favorite aunt had passed away and he had to go to the funeral so we lost him for the this evening the good news is is that Mike has completely absorbed every detail of this nerd's book and so have and I've and I've gotten the high points of it so we're going to go back and talk about it one of the things he talks about in the book uh men without work and he's got a new post-pandemic version out this guy is again London train London School of Economics train Harvard former Harvard Professor American Enterprise he's got all the digits after his name this is important right because like a lot of you I think we've all grown weary of well of experts just for the sake of expertise now don't be talking about me this guy walks the walk he's dedicated his life to understanding the data and why people work and why people don't work and for me I had him on the podcast because it was very gratifying when you suddenly realize that the headlines have caught up to what you've been preaching right it did when the headline the headlines made dirty someone writes a book and says you're a prophet it's a good thing it's a nice thing that right right and and you know Dirty Jobs has been around a long time and my Foundation started 15 years ago and nobody really wanted to have this conversation and so I was talking anecdotally about what I saw on the job site in 2008 when the country was going into a recession Dirty Jobs was a big deal and all anybody was talking about was high unemployment but on dirty jobs everywhere we went we saw Help Wanted signs so that was the beginning of my contention that there was another narrative going on in the country where opportunity actually was alive and well and high unemployment had nothing to do with that fact it was Nick's book in 2015 that originally could confirmed a lot of that stuff that I've been blathering to Congress on and on about anybody else who would listen and it's his republishing of that book after The lockdown that really puts a point on it so he's the one that found the 7.2 million males uh 25-54 that are not even in the numbers they're not in the unemployment statistics they're not claimed to be unemployed they're not even looking for work they're obviously being supported by someone else and uh you know he's the one that brought that thing up and uh the other thing he brought up is in in the same breath which is really their their numbers that are congruent with each other is that the way we calculate the unemployment statistics what was it what was he called the statistical called it a Depression era artifact the horrible math terrible look the the single most unreported stat that should matter to everybody in the room is the workforce participation rate it's also the least reported stat we're still focused on the number of people who are unemployed now it's an important number but what Nick meant when he said it's a depression-era artifact is that he was referring to a time when the number of people who were unemployed actually rhymed pretty well with the lack of opportunity and so basic math said The more opportunities we create the more the unemployed can find work and we all live happily ever after and that we saw that in the 30s and 40s it happened we are in a completely different world 11.5 million open positions today right combined with we don't even really know how many people are out of the workforce we still stubbornly look at the unemployment number like it was brought down on the second tablet from Sinai it it just is not nearly as relevant as it was it almost is that old but the um the the so what we're saying is is the actual numbers when you dig into the data about three layers down tell us that we not only don't have a five percent unemployment rate we are currently have a negative unemployment rate we have way more jobs than people actively looking for jobs period and you've got these 7.2 million males sitting on the sideline and they're a microcosm of a bigger problem that I mean they're women even included females in that he just discovered this stat by going through a Department of Labor stats and looking at what they're doing and so then the question on the podcast was immediately comes up is uh how are they eating yeah who's supporting them so it gets dark right A lot of them are living in their parents basement a lot of them are dependent as Blanche Dubois said on the kindness of strangers some are on the Dole some are on disability that's a whole other conversation because fundamentally the 7.2 million number these are these are people who are capable of working and we we can have a whole different conversation about what disability truly means but in essence it's a sidebar when you really get into what these what these men are doing sorry males um their faces in their screens they're spending over 2 000 hours a year interacting with a screen a full-time in a great irony of ironies playing Call of Duty yeah d-o-o-t-y or is it a d I don't know um but I know that if you work 40 hours a week right 50 weeks a year what's that's like 2080 hours or something like that these men are spending about the same period of time so let's just be clear if you can spend that amount of time on porn or on gaming you probably could spend that amount of time programming as a remote worker and be employed so let's just be I mean so the disability if you've got the ability to stick with the screen for that long you could be doing something on the screen that creates an income and gives you a feedback and gives you a level of dignity well these males are focused for sure you know they're focused on yeah that parasites yeah yeah and you know unless we the first thing that happens to a guy like me because I'm an old hillbilly redneck and so the first thing that happens to me is I get a little bit disgusted with this type of you know outline of person but then when you dig into it the next thing that happens is if you have a soft heart then you start going and they're miserable and Dr John deloney will be out later talking about the statistics of Despair the diseases of Despair the level of anxiety among this group is unbelievably High the level of depression and the suicide rates among this group is unbelievably high so the bottom line is it's not working well for them it's a it's a sad lot it's not just that they're these pitiful lazy people we should all hate or be angry with That's my kind of my first reaction but then when you dig into it the next thing happens is I just feel really bad for them well many of we have done them a disservice by allowing them to do this we have convinced them that they are in fact not essential well we told them during the quarantine again and again we told whole groups of people you're not essential I don't know what more of a put down that you could come up with you're not essential yeah you know I mean when I think this is personal for me because Dirty Jobs was the granddaddy of essential working shows that's why I did it and so we've finished up in 2012 we got locked down essential work becomes headline news and people start writing and saying you should bring the show back right and I say why not but then when it went on the air to your earlier point I was kind of horrified to realize that the word essential which used to be a genuine complement to a very specific category of unloved unglamorous jobs was now being used so often that you didn't have to say that someone was not essential all you had to do was focus on the people who were and pretty soon just by default a lot of people started to think that what they did didn't matter not just to their own personal economy and that'll cause you to sit at home that's right and feel okay about it because what's the point what's the point I mean there's a hopelessness a despair that goes with being told you're useless you're not essential and so this is what happens when the medical community gets and interferes and tries to do math which they've proven they can't do and they also and they interfere in stuff like economics and make these decisions because you know how we decided who was essential in the state of Tennessee tell me whoever wanted to be well let me tell you that's what a government official told me he said are you going to reopen Ramsey and I'm like yeah we're reopening he goes well I thought you were open all along we thought you were essential and I'm like Dad Gum I'm essential and that's the point everybody is essential to somebody even if it's just themselves and as we go through these beats some more than others obviously but look it's impossible it's impossible not to think George Bailey right Jimmy Stewart at the end of It's a Wonderful Life actually at the beginning when he's standing on that bridge looking over the side at that swirling water coming down Bedford Falls right and just deciding what's the point he didn't have anything to live for anymore in spite of the fact that he had Donna Reed at home and those beautiful kids and you know he had a wonderful life right in front of him but but when you tell somebody that they don't matter and then you prove it to them and then they look around and they see really no hope and no gratitude yeah if you're unless your heart is completely hard it'll break for them yep yep that's absolutely true so one of the things that uh eberstatt that Nick says too is markets solve economic problems they do not cure social pathologies now that's a mouthful that's right no Market is going to be able to convince you that this is a good job or that's a bad one that this is worthier that's unworthy markets just look at the data it's a utilitarian result in the marketplace there's not a spiritual element to it there's not a moral component of this is good this is bad right in a market it's just a it's an execution of numbers that's right and it kind of goes to job satisfaction too A lot of people will talk about job satisfaction in terms of well if you have it it must be because your job is satisfying but if that were the case like every garbage man would be miserable every stock broker would be you know on top of the world every movie star would be well adjusted right it's it's your job satisfaction has much less to do with your job and much more to do with you and that unfortunately is as true as it is on popular we don't like to hear that but in my personal view that's dirty jobs 101. the question I most often get from people who watch that show was why is everybody having such a good time and the answer wasn't because we were covered in somebody else's mess it wasn't because we were scared it wasn't because we were dirty it was because we knew how we were doing we knew we were engaged in a purpose you know and in life cheerfulness is a big part of of work and we really tried to bring that back into that show and I and I really want to bring it in into this conversation too because honestly as my granddad used to say if you're not laughing the joke's on you yeah I mean that there is a thing that when you make work uh an evil thing that has to be you take you do take the fun out of it it becomes this thing you're not allowed to smile and you know this whole thing of if you're happy you should notify your face right and you know you ought to have some y'all have a good time with this you ought to be laughing sometimes you ought to be making fun of each other cutting up and there ought to be a Band of Brothers a band of sisters that are causing these things to happen and relationships are deep and built these are this is how work should function and it is not a uh you know it's not a tyranny to be to be stuck in that so uh if you're frustrated out there in your leader trying to hire right now uh we're going to throw out a little I'm gonna tell you about a little bit later but we we have a we work with small businesses through a brand called entree leadership and we have a digital thing called entry leadership Elite and it's a uh it's a whole process of working with small businesses with tools and one of the things in there is a lesson on hiring the proper way to go about hiring and getting the right people on the on the bus the wrong people off the bus as my friend Jim Collins says and going through that process so you can hit the QR code and get a free a free exposure to that for a month and you can start to get in there and unpack some of that maybe we can be of help to you in the process so at Christmas three people gave me a book called Comfort crisis including my son Daniel so if three people give you a book apparently you're somebody's seeing you ought to read it three people give you a book on weight loss that's an issue right that's what I'm trying to tell you something you know so this book is Comfort crisis and so I'd like okay I'll read it I'll read it I'll read it I took it on vacation whether it's over Christmas and and I started sharing Reddit while I was sitting there and then one of my other kids ready while sitting there okay I'm going to read it so I got it and I couldn't put it down and Michael oyster wrote this entire book he's an award-winning journalist Adventurer professor at the University of Nevada and uh he's going to join us right now to discuss his uh his best-selling book The Comfort crisis hey Michael how are you I'm doing well how are you guys great man thank you for joining us Dave Ramsey micro with you I loved your book brother you are quite an adventurer I appreciate it anybody that can hang out in the Arctic and uh that whole story of freezing to death and it was amazing it was powerful well I'm glad you enjoyed it yes I was cold for a very long time in the Arctic but I made it back and I learned a lot of things that I think have uh shaped me and it's been a good experience overall so one of the reasons we wanted to bring you into this is because there is a comfort crisis that goes into this whole issue of work ethic the ability to do things that are hard as you talk about and you you explore the negative impact of being too comfortable uh how have we become so intolerant of discomfort yeah that's a great question and I see it more as not that we've become intolerant of discomfort I think that humans are always wired to do the next easiest most comfortable thing but I think what has really changed is that our environments have changed and our environments have become much more comfortable over time so if you think about you know in the past if you wanted food you might have to run it down and hunt it and carry it home if you wanted warmth you would maybe have to chop down a tree cut that up and build a fire everything that you needed to do to survive it took effort if you want to improve your life you were going to have to do uncomfortable things well around the time of the Industrial Revolution things started changing our world started getting slowly more comfortable so now if you want dinner you can GrubHub it if you get bored you can as you've mentioned before you can play video games for 10 hours a day if you want to everything is climate controlled you know how often how much physical work do we have to put into daily life and this idea it extends to really every aspect of our daily life you know the things that really determine the course of your day today the most important things in your life they're all new they've all been invented in the last hundred years and they're all basically designed to make your life easier more comfortable my favorite part of your book Michael's Micro by the way um was the way you talked about boredom and how important it can be and how and how freaked out we get if we're not constantly stimulated so on the one hand you're up there in the Arctic totally out of your comfort zone freezing your butt off doing a long list of things that scare the heck out of you but then like in between those Adventures you're so mind-numbingly bored that you have to come to terms with how to keep yourself engaged and that I think is another muscle that we've really let atrophy yeah so we were hunting up there and uh you know you might think that hunting is action-packed if you've never hunted it's not it's a lot of sitting it's a lot of waiting I didn't have my cell phone up there I didn't have a book I didn't have a magazine I didn't have a TV so I find myself bored again right and to to cure our boredom we would do things like read the energy labels on our food you know you're you're reading oh this has uh 10 grams of sugar six grams of protein wow fascinating you know um so I use that as an entry point in the book about how boredom is this evolutionary discomfort that basically tells us whatever you're doing with your time right now the return on your time invested has worn thin now in the past that used to push us into things that would improve our life we would maybe go hunt we would maybe go pick food we'd maybe mend our shelters well now when we feel this discomfort we have a very easy effortless Escape for from it right in our pocket at all times uh the average person today spends more than 12 hours a day engaged with digital media so that's from cell phones that's from television that's from computer screens the stuff has really become Our Lives anytime you feel boredom now you can escape it very easily and boredom actually has quite a few upsides in terms of creativity in terms of walking you into something that might improve your life if you were to just kind of sit with it and think on it and also going through times of bored and it's also associated with decreases in stress so people are so burned out now well part of the reason is because we spend 12 hours a day on our phones and watching Netflix and watching the news and watching all these things that are just so hyper stimulating so one of the things you talk about is standing out from the crowd the this idea that doing the hard things or hard work in the case of tonight's idea equals dignity yeah so I think that humans we get internal rewards like deep internal rewards life satisfaction from doing hard things and that's the sort of evolutionary hack that you you wanted to basically in the past if you were going to die because you couldn't find food you wanted that food to be really rewarding when you found it right so we've kind of been programmed over time to get reward from going through struggles from thinking you know you're not going to make it I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this but when you do accomplish that thing that really hard thing it's like the best thing in the world I mean you think about probably the times in your own life where you can think you were happiness they probably came after times where you had where you had a struggle yeah it creates resilience it creates a mental callous when you do hard things but the thing too Mike is is you went it's seemingly in your book you went from a comfortable guy fairly ensconced in comfortable activities to this radical quest of going into this really alien hostile world and that's kind of scary I would think to to a lot of people are there baby steps like can you can you sort of tiptoe into this place of discomfort and and and get to the point where ultimately you're not just enduring it but uh embracing it yeah I think so so there's a study that totally changed my thinking about how wired we are for comfort and it found uh two two percent of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator available now 100 of those people knew that taking the stairs going through a little bit of discomfort would give them a long-term benefit for their health ninety percent of people didn't choose that so a lot of what I talk about is trying to be a two percenter and what I mean by that is taking the actual stairs and the metaphorical stairs benefits come from embracing short-term discomfort to get a long-term benefit and so if you can look for those opportunities throughout your life and take that every single time that's like the ultimate life hack right that could come from literally taking the stairs that could come from you're searching for jobs and you've filled out two applications fill out a third that could come from you might have to stay a little later at work to do better work I mean this just applies across the board what about um what about cold showers I've been reading about the benefits of cold therapy and I got totally sold on it I think I was listening to a guy named Andy uh huberman yeah huberman's been he sold me on this too so I haven't taken cold showers are good but not when you got a bald head it's just a problem no but it's but it's a you know it's annoying and it's kind of painful but it only lasts about three or four minutes and the return like when I get out of a cold shower I I feel better for a couple of hours like and then I just take Uber huberman will sell you on the physiology of this he really will right but but the physiology is one thing the question Mike is can you really get on a path I mean most people in this room aren't going to wind up in the Arctic bored to death and uncarified hunting Caribou like you did but yeah we can all hop in a cold shower we can all take the stairs what else can we do yeah that's exactly it it's it really is those little choices it's you know if you think about even something like hunger today eighty percent of eating is driven by reasons other than real hunger like it's okay to be hungry sometimes now you've gone I can actually give you some mental benefits um it really is just remembering that all good things in life in the context of the day they usually come through uh some short-term discomfort you're gonna have to go through a little bit of short-term discomfort to get a long-term benefit and accepting that realizing that hey I don't have to be comfortable all the time like you're not going to die right you're not going to die if you take a five minute cold shower you will come through that thinking hey I survived that I feel pretty good let's go tackle the day and it's just stacking up those wins across the day you know maybe at first you're like I just want one uncomfortable win today we're gonna see how that goes maybe tomorrow it's one again maybe the next day it's two and then three and then all of a sudden you look back and you're like oh wow my life has changed I'm a very different person didn't happen overnight nor should it have and then you're my friend who's I got a buddy who's a Navy SEAL who told me look the key to surviving hell week is not to endure it or get through it it's to embrace it it's to figure out a way to rewire your brain and Associate progress with misery I it's a heck of a hack but that's what your book is about and uh I loved it too I read it on the plane and uh for a minute I kind of wished we were going to land in the Arctic and then I was relieved that we didn't laughs so um do you think that this centers into having hard conversations this whole comfort thing yeah yeah I think it does I think especially when we think about you know we just talked about how much time people spend staring at screens I think we spend a lot more time removed from other people in real life and I think that we can select a group to sort of be a part of it like behind the screen so you can kind of go down this Rabbit Hole of ideas with a group of people who look who think like you and then if you sort of disagree with the other side you have this weird safety of the screen and you've all seen it people say horrible things on the internet it's like if you saw those people in real life you would never say those things to them you'd maybe even have a normal conversation but there's something about being behind that screen where it's almost like when you're driving there's a guy a philosopher Sam Harris made this analogy when you're driving and someone cuts you off people will you know they'll raise their middle finger there's they'll swear they'll just lose their mind but it's like if someone cut you in a line you probably would not do the same thing right it's kind of analogous to that so I think the internet has allowed us to sort of go down rabbit holes with like-minded people and be um be a little more intolerant of other people's views or at least when we hear other views behave more badly in responding to them exactly it's it's uh screens have uh allowed us with digital courage to say and do and be things that we're really not and it's invented a whole generation of trolls that really aren't if you were to meet them in person and confront them and it also it's you know it's one of the reasons we've got this huge bifurcation and this anger on both sides of issues whether they're political or anything social or anything else out there and uh the inability to have a a civil debate is energy that's now a that's a lost art it's a it's a lost craft and so uh we can bring it back though we can make a choice to bring it back just like you make the choice to take the stairs just like to make the choice for a cold shower you can put the screen down say I'm gonna have a conversation in person you put the screen down when I'm bored and say hey I'm going to contemplate life I'm going to contemplate uh God I'm going to contemplate uh you know I'm just going to sit here and read the label no I'm not but anyway yeah but yeah that's uh there's a lot going on there so or what happens Mike if you just say look I'm gonna show up 15 minutes early for work every single day and I'm going to stay 15 minutes late and I'm going to cheerfully volunteer just as an exercise for every crappy task there is I mean everybody I know who's done that who used to work at a McDonald's is now running a McDonald's yeah yeah I mean if you actually care and work while you're at work it's novel stands out you're right 98 of people take the stairs if you can be that two percent person who shows up 15 minutes early leaves 15 minutes late when the boss asks hey who wants to do this task that no one wants to do and you raise your hand first you're gonna go places that stuff gets noticed more importantly you learn something about yourself along the way you realize it's not that bad like living today is great we're in the greatest time period of all time I mean I spent a month in the Arctic and it's like I'm freezing the whole time I'm hungry the whole time I'm bored out of my mind just on and on and on and so when I came back into my normal everyday life it was like oh my God Modern Life is unbelievable how have I ever complained about anything before right like the we live in such an amazing time and it's such a great opportunity to be alive and to just sort of exist that is not the way to do it you have to choose to do hard things so you can truly Savor the time that you have in this amazing time period Michael Easter the book is Comfort crisis highly recommend it's a great read all of you pick it up at a great bookstore near you Michael thanks for being with us thanks man hey thanks for having me foreign it's ironic that he was on a screen well well and it's ironic that we are on a screen for 50 000 people but yeah put your screens down after this is over yeah so yeah his point too I remember in the book is you go from 72 Degree house to a 72 Degree car to a 72 Degree office and so we never experience anything physically but then that sets us up for the the inability to persevere and the thing if you do the hard things that come do the hard things that comes out of that is resilience so you very seldom found someone that's highly successful that uh as Larry Krebs says doesn't walk with a limp they haven't they haven't had things happen to them that were out of their control they haven't been broke or broken at some point uh and out of that comes not only a wonderful story and a narrative that looks like a comeback kid but also what comes out of that is resilience because it didn't kill me it didn't kill me I think they called it character yeah you know the thing tattooed on your face after years of trying well I mean it's like I remember a story at a sales conference I went two years ago the guy I was talking about a sales guy with one of the big real estate franchises and he sold more houses in the nation that year than anybody else in the franchise and they brought him up on stage and he was you know just a little unimpressive guy and they said well so you know tell us how you do this how are you the number one guy and he goes well it's just it's not real estate's not hard because I was in Burger King the other day and people were sitting there looking at home magazine I sat down and started talking to know and you know by Friday I sold them a house and they said well aren't you afraid to sit down start talking to him he said lady I did three tours in Vietnam I'm talking to somebody in Burger King's not a problem you know so it's you know it builds resilience just said you know what is real fear you know public speaking you know what is real what are you really afraid of and you know resilience comes from having done hard things or experienced bad things in surviving them yeah whichever whichever one it is so there's something that goes with that next up is Pastor Craig groeschel he's the founder and Lead pastor at lifechurch.com or lifechurch.tv you might know it as uh he's written multiple New York Times bestsellers he's a good personal friend and has a wonderful leadership podcast for those of you that are in business uh he leads hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people it's arguably the largest church in America today uh Life Church if you're not aware is if you have a little Bible on your phone uh called you version uh 600 million people do around the world it's one of the most downloaded apps in history is put out for free as a service by Life Church has developed and continually Rewritten continually done for that so he's absolutely incredible speaker in orator great leader and a man a great character he has a new book out called the power to change and he and I were talking about his book on my show to help him promote the book and I've been on his podcast a couple times and hang out at dinner and this kind of stuff and he had some really interesting things that fit right into this discussion and so we wanted to bring him into the discussion the book is the power to change Pastor Craig groeschel y'all welcome him thank you great to see you guys hey Dave hey Mike thanks for being with us brother how are you hey I'm fantastic I'm excited to be with you guys you're always doing something special making a difference and so I'm happy to join in well thanks for hanging out with us so let's start with the leadership aspect to this uh we're talking about work and work ethic and the labor crisis you've got hundreds of people on your team you've got hundreds of locations around the nation so how many people on the team let me ask total uh there's somewhere around a thousand people on uh on the team that includes you version and all the different uh different campuses okay how has this labor these labor issues that we've been talking about tonight impacted a church of that size the Staffing well I I talked to our HR team just to make sure I'd understand how they're down in the weeds and uh they told me about exactly what I was feeling that right now we do have a pretty big pool of candidates still as we're looking to select people for our team the pool is getting broader meaning it's more International than before unfortunately the um is almost feels harsh to say but the candidates are not as qualified as they once were so there may be more of them but we're having to work a little harder to find those that have the technical skills or the Pastoral skills that we're looking for and then they when they join the team kind of the biggest thing is that we are we're not able to make some of the assumptions that we used to be able to make that when they would enter they would enter in with maybe a certain level of work ethic or missional buy-in but we're having to go back and teach what we would consider in the past some of the basics of like how many hours a week is expected to work in a full-time job and that sounds I'm not even being I'm not belittling it at and I'm not I'm not being rude I'm not trying to demean anybody but I'm literally saying that that you have to start with some of the basics like that in teaching about you know prompt replies um coming in on time and and things that we would in the past we would have never had to talk about but we're having to talk about some of those things and the good news is that a lot of people are they're quick to learn and adapt but they're they're entering in with really a different mindset and what used to be considered hard work it's a lot more challenging to get that out of a larger group of people than it was in the past so as a leader take off the pastor's hat for a minute put on the leader's hat sure uh how are you leading through that it's a great question so one of the things we did Dave is we recognize midway last year that we just were not um thrilled with what I'd call the missional buy-in the um the hunger to make a difference and we're not we're non-profits so we're not trying to make money we're trying to um which is you know I'm super happy for anybody that's trying to make money but we're trying to make a difference and so there's a really really deep drive and we weren't seeing the mission buy-in so what we did is something we hadn't done before we started with our top 17 leaders and we went through a whole process of here's where our team's falling short and here's what where we want to get them to and here's the why behind it and so very very very basic then we went to the next 110 top leaders and brought them in for a day and a half session of going through everything again with the first top layer and then the next layer and then we brought the whole group in to spend three days together and just walk through step by step by step by step of what the expectations are and not just what we expect but the why we want this not just from them but why we want this for them and then we talked about just really um what I used to think was basic eight ways to stay vibrant and successful in Ministry meaning we're not assuming that they know how to work hard and stay healthy and so we're going over Basics with them and the really really good news is we did that about four or five months ago and we've seen the needle move significantly and so it's not that people aren't responding to good leadership I would say is that they need more intentional direct and what I call very basic leadership than we've ever seen I mean in 27 years of doing this and all the way to ground on that I mean that's a remedial reading how much eye roll did you get because you took it down to the basics it it's it's it's it's it's shocking and and we want more basic than you can imagine so in Ministry it was everything from you you know we spend time in in the word we spend time praying we take you know we work hard and we take it out and it was very basic but there was not um there wasn't pushback there was kind of gratitude meaning uh and here's what I found especially with the younger generation gen Z coming up gen Z is a little grittier um they're they're actually um you'd probably know they're typically a little better with money than some of their older brothers and sisters and they don't mind being taught they just haven't been mentored yet and so it's not that they're going you know forget you this is stupid they're kind of saying oh I didn't really even realize this like the honest to goodness there are some people that thought 40 hour work week was probably asking a lot and we had to help them see that that's a baseline that's where we start and sometimes and oftentimes it'll be more than that and once we kind of establish the Baseline and put the why behind it there wasn't what I say a lot of resistance yeah and we actually gave permission to for people to say if if this isn't what you want and if you don't really want to bring your best then we would recommend um that you take an off-ramp and we said it very respectfully and there were a few people that took it um but not many and there were more people saying thank you for raising the standards and and we're actually happy to step up but we had to lead them to it like it didn't just happen it had to be very very intentional and then there was a lot of people saying thank you and other people saying well I didn't realize it but okay if that's we're going to do it let's let's do it Craig the thing that worries me is that you've been talking about soft skills basically right show up on time tuck your shirt in be respectful all these remedial basic things in my world the employers I've talked to say two things they say our greatest challenge is acknowledging the fact that what we really need are people who can pass a drug test show up on time right and and check all these boxes the single thing we're most afraid to talk about are those things so how can you get other employers to follow your example out there in the real world well um you know like like Dave we talk a lot about leadership because we believe and this isn't my quote I think Maxwell said it that everything Rises and falls on leadership and I think more than ever before leaders need to step up and lead and we can't make assumptions about Basics whatsoever we have to be willing to talk about some things that might feel a little bit culturally incorrect maybe even Politically Incorrect and in order to have something great we've got to call people to Greatness and and greatness doesn't isn't a result of half-heartedness it's not it's never going to show up when there's a weak work ethic and so we kind of have to almost redeem some of the values that were once held in high esteem and say not only is working hard not evil it's actually from my perspective I'd say it's God honoring and it's important and it is how you can make a difference and it's not that we want to make work our King uh whatsoever we don't want to have an imbalanced life we don't want to sacrifice our families but one of the ways we love our families is to work hard and provide for our families and so I think we need to say it not in a hateful demeaning attitude not to shame people for being lazy but to to raise the bar to say if you want something better in your life let's go get it there's there's more opportunities today than ever before get out of your cave go kill something bring it back home and make a difference there's there's uh it's it's it's easier to stand out today than ever before if you want to stand down if you want to make a difference get up a little earlier stay a little later work a little harder smile a little broader love a little deeper and you can make a really big difference in the world that's powerful good stuff the book power to change is um one of the you I think you've got eight habits or eight uh practices that people need to engage in is that right did I get that right is it eight yeah so the I did a podcast on um eight of the um of the different habits and then the book that kind of complements the book so it all ties in together yeah that's what that the one that I picked up on was what Easter was just talking about he was just talking about doing hard things and one of the principles if you want to change if you want to become better in any area of your life your spiritual walk you're married your marriage your parenting your career we're talking about work your leadership tonight those kinds of things as you say you have to choose between the easy wrong and the hard right we were just talking about doing hard things so talk about that right well I appreciate you recommended the book The the Comfort crisis and I enjoyed that and I liked the example that Michael talked about that only two percent of the people take the stairs and uh I would say you know that's the classic example that in life almost everything that's worthwhile is going to take either a little more effort a little more sacrifice a little bit more grit more tenacity maybe a little better education maybe a little more sacrifice and so what we want to do is you know right now almost everybody seems to be lowering the bar to the lowest common denominator and you don't find greatness when you lower the bar what we want to do is we want to raise the bar and say if you want to have something special if you want to make a difference then you are going to have to choose the hard right over the easy wrong almost every time not every time but almost every time Dave and when there's a difficult decision if there's two options if there's a if there's an employee that's a little bit toxic or has a bad attitude or is sloppy around some edges the easy thing to do is kind of Hope or hint around the hard thing to do is to sit down and say hey I need to talk to you things aren't going well and if you don't make a change we're going to have to make a change and here's what you need to do to get better and so having a difficult conversation makes you a little more uneasy but that is the hard right and so what I try to do is very similar to what you've been teaching people to do for years and years is whenever there's an easy wrong or there's a hard right which what we're going to do is we're going to choose what we want most over what we want now even if it's a little bit harder if it even if people will criticize us even if it takes more work we're going to try to do the hard thing and almost all the time on the other side of the hard right there's a bigger win a bigger blessing a bigger impact bigger profit whatever it be but we have to be a country of people we were founded on people who did the hard right things and we have to do those things now so is the labor crisis a crisis in and of itself or is it a symptom of this other thing that we're kind of talking around I think that's a great question and I I think honestly it's a um it's one of many symptoms of um kind of a deeper problem in our world today and I I think one of the things is we are we are so blessed with so many opportunities that it's hard for people not to feel entitled and when we start handing out money we start to think money is easy to come by and um when you know unemployment's low and the job demand is high and people don't feel like they really have to work then they may feel it's just more entitled and so I think you know bottom line is we're not entitled to anything and the fact that we're born on third base we really have a responsibility to make more of ourselves because we do have so many opportunities and again I don't want to come down on people I don't want to be shaming anybody for where they are I just want to motivate and inspire people that now is the best time ever to sees the opportunity so to answer question Mike I do think that this is a symptom I think there are other symptoms of a deeper problem and um and I think one of those one of the roots of that would be a entitlement I think the other thing is like um the other book of pursuit of comfort uh choosing the easy thing lowering the common denominator to what everybody feels like is appropriate and and I think we can we can do better than that yeah so one of the things that you and I have had a lot of discussions with online and offline in front of people and and just in private is uh our friend James clear's book Atomic habits and you talk about some of that material in yours as well this idea that uh what we're really facing is an identity crisis and clear says if you're going to change your habit you don't just change the Tactical habit you don't change what you're doing you have to change your change your identity and say I am a person who doesn't overeat not I'm on a diet you change your eyes you change the verbiage and talk talk through that in in the context of this for a second sure well I love his book and I love his message and and he inspires me and teaches this as well as anybody the way I would say it which is um just a different way of saying what he's always said but you typically do what you do because of what you think of you and anytime you face any situation Dave um you know someone cuts you off in traffic or someone's late to work in your mind subconsciously studies show you ask yourself three questions you ask yourself immediately what kind of situation is this what kind of person am I and what is a person like me doing a situation like this what kind of situation is this what kind of person am I what is a person like me do in a situation like this so if you want to change what you do you have to change what you think of you if we want to become people who work hard then what we need to do is we need to see ourselves not as someone who takes shortcuts not as someone who looks for handouts not for someone who looks for the easy way but see someone who believes that we're capable of making a difference and we're capable of taking a step up and we can provide better for our family and we can be more generous and so we don't see ourselves as a victim or we don't see ourselves as someone who's waiting on someone else to give us a break what we want to do is change our identity if you want to change what you do change what you think of you and so who are you I would say to an emerging generation that I like I've got six kids and I'm seeing them rise up I'd say that no you're not just special because you get a trophy for showing up but you actually have gifts and when you put your gifts to work you really can make a difference and when you add value to someone else's life and you're not me centered but you're other centered that's going to be a blessing and that's going to be something that people will reward and that's what people they're going to want to be around you and so I would just take whatever I would look at people and say where is our negative identity the wrong view of us holding us back and then as a pastor and as a Christian I would try to help them have what I would call a more god-honoring view of themselves or we could just make it practical I try to make them have a better more healthy view of themselves so that they'll have the confidence to do the right thing whenever the opportunity puts itself in front of them and when you get comfortable on your own skin you own the world it changes everything because immediately you're authentic uh 24 7 7 days a week same guy on Sunday you are on Monday you've been doing this since I've known you since I was in my late 20s you were in your early 30s you've been you've been saying basically the same thing in basically the same way for 25 30 years and it works people believe you and you you're making a difference it's something that's doable achievable believable and effective Mike that's the nicest way anyone's ever called me a one-trick pony yeah yeah I was going to say a broken record but it works man yeah the truth has the way of uh resonating right it'll stick hey man it's effective why change it keep on doing it hey I love you my friend I love you appreciate you so the name of the name of your podcast for everyone if they want to join you it's a great leadership podcast I enjoy being on it enjoy consuming it as well what is it yes Craig Rochelle leadership podcast Craig groeschel leadership podcast you can find him the book is the power to change you can get it anywhere great books are sold and one of the eight habits is this idea of choose the hard right over the easy wrong choose to do again do hard things there's a pattern developing here Mike so I'm saying Craig thanks for being with us brother ladies and gentlemen Craig Rochelle I appreciate you guys thank you say one quick thing about that for me that's the most important thing we've heard so far the idea of choosing your identity and it's not like a big giant thing it doesn't have to be a big thing but for me I impersonated a host for 20 years and that's how I saw myself I've freelanced in this crazy business for a long long time and one day I wound up a whole long story but I wound up in the sewers of San Francisco filming an episode for this show called evening Magazine with a sewer inspector and I was literally baptized in a river of crap I I realized filming that segment that I was a better guest than I was a host and I remembered Dave like it was yesterday it was 20 years ago I started thinking of myself not as a host but a guest and that's what everything changed you know and and that was my choice and I think we all get to think of ourselves we get to choose our our life and we have we have this wonderful power of agency this right to just decide just to change just change I was walking through the lunchroom down here at the office the other day and with one of our programmers I ran into him and he like has lost I mean he's like disappeared he's lost so much weight and I stopped and said man how much weight have you lost he's 82 pounds like dude you lost a backstreet boy that's like unbelievable I said man that's so powerful I said that's I'm standing there talking to him and the more he's a great guy by the way I said I was bragging on him and said this is because it is it's impressive you know it was genuinely impressive it's not flattery it's just wow dude that's and the more I talked to him I said you know what tell me what you've been doing and and you look so good and you're you know your wife's got to be thrilled I mean your life you got to feel better he was standing straighter and straighter is you watched his identity that he was has stepped into out of the other you saw him shift you saw his body language move into it as he stepped into it and then I asked him the dumbest question how did you do it how did you lose the weight I ate less there you go all right that's it so Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is up next he has a number one best-selling book called uh paycheck to purpose and uh he has a radio show that we produce in the Ramsey networks it's on 75 radio stations a very popular podcast very popular on Sirius XM uh speaks with me very regularly uh around America when we're doing different kinds of events whether they be in the business setting the leadership setting or the money but he's our career and work expert um he also makes good choices uh he and Stacy have been married 25 years today and so he's in Europe with his wife on vacation to celebrate their anniversary but he did film us an idea or two because I want him to speak into this because he's got some important things to say in this space so here's Ken Coleman which I was with both of you and all of these great leaders that are tuning in tonight live and around the country I want to reframe what you leaders are dealing with in this world of work today and encourage you I'll start by challenging you with this thought I don't believe that we have a work ethic problem as much as we have an expectation problem and there are two main factors in the American culture that have created unrealistic and then unmet expectations that you as leaders are having to do with the first is the education system our system is outdated and I would tell you it's broken because it is creating test takers not Pathfinders in other words we're teaching kids how to memorize and regurgitate facts and so they are taught from the youngest of Ages to conform to color between the lines to make sure that the color matches up with the number that someone suggests and so creativity is stifled so they're not creating and thinking about how they can contribute creatively secondly the education message has been if you do good in school all the way through college and get that coveted college degree well then it's a guarantee for success but we know that that's not true but they come out of college feeling like I've got my degree I'm ready for Success show it to me and if we hearken back to the incredible data from earlier tonight we have millions of men without degrees who are quitting the workforce because they are ashamed of their social status and even worse they're staying home they're going home to the cave and they're not coming back out because their family feels bad for them their friends are supporting them so they don't have to go back the system told them that they would not be successful without a college degree and they believe it so they've given up the second factor that is causing unrealistic and unmet expectations are helicopter parents this starts very early in American culture through Youth Sports everyone gets a trophy no matter how good they played or how good the team did and in the early ages they don't even keep score because we want the kids to have fun but later on in life they're going to learn that winning is fun and losing sucks so they're praised for participating not producing they've been coddled their whole life well-meaning parents and I've been guilty of this we try to protect protect protect and so it becomes about making sure our kids are always feeling good and we've stopped coaching our kids how to do good in two areas hard things and scary things we try to protect them from doing both and so if they're not doing hard things they don't develop grit if they're not doing scary things they don't develop guts so how does this expectation problem that has been cultivated in those two areas play out for you well certainly with Millennials and now gen Z the data shows us that they want more money and more Mobility based on showing up it's about participation not production because that's what they've been raised in so when they don't get more money get that promotion as soon as they would like or as soon as they think they deserve it they leave now leaders that's the context that I want to encourage you to embrace this isn't it fun and it's really hard and leaders this is not your fault but because you have signed up raise your hand and said I want to lead men and women I want to assure you that it is your responsibility this is what you've been handed that if you want to lead welcome to the hardest part of leadership now there is research that shows from Gallup in the largest study ever done on employee engagement that there are three primary human needs that everyone needs met and as a leader you need to be aware of this they are people need meaning in their work recognition for their unique contribution and then a relationship with their leader and I want to lock in as I encourage you tonight on the relationship part of that human need now that doesn't mean a best friend and the metaphor that I'll give you tonight to encourage you is the coach the relationship that the SE employees need your employees need that every human that goes into work need s is a relationship with their leader to where they are being coached now this is simple to understand but very hard to do so I think back to my days of sports and my favorite coaches and then as I studying I've had the opportunity to interview some of the greatest coaches in the world coach Mike shasheski from duke Nick Saban from Alabama and here's what I see is what great coaches do and you as Leaders can do and you can meet these employees where they are number one is communication you've got to be clear and consistent you've got to be very clear on what is expected of them hey we're going to keep score here you get a trophy you get that raise that promotion when you do this this and this for this amount of time and here's how we measure you hey here's how you're doing you can do better here we want you to go get some more training clear and consistent communication checking in how you doing I noticed you were a little bit off today you doing okay that's what a coach would do on the court or on the field second coaches connect they really get to know their players they don't treat every player the same after all these are individuals and so are your employees you got to get to know them on a personal level and then you've got to care for them you've got to dive in and make sure that they know that you see them that you hear them and you want the best for them that's true connection communication is valuable yes but connection is where we go deep and we begin to build the bond of loyalty and they say you know what they're pushing me they're challenging me but I know why they're challenging me I can see that there's a better future for me the third thing that a great coach does is correction good coaches will stop practice Blow the Whistle Stop meet that player on the field or on the court and show them in the moment this is what you did wrong here's why it went wrong here's how to do it the right way look them in the eye you can do this let's run it again I believe in you you're okay it's correction in a kind but firm way and here's what we know about humans and certainly the younger generation they are craving mentorship and coaching they want to make a difference they're no different than any other generation so stop poo pooing them they just haven't been parented properly now they need to be coached and it's hard but it's worth it this reminds me of a question I recently received at one of our Building Wealth events a supervisor of nursing students stood up and asked the question how can I help my young nursing students deal with anxiety they're there they've done the schooling they're ready to go but they're terrified and so I looked at her and I said ma'am I would put my hands on their shoulders I'd look in the eye and say you can do hard things I will help you do these hard things and the patience that you're going to encounter in this Hospital need you to show up and do hard things I got you I'm with you the whole way I'm gonna help you I'm gonna guide you I'm going to teach you I'm gonna train you I'm going to cheer you on and I think it's that simple leaders this is the hardest part of leadership you asked for it it's time to step up I understand how it gets frustrating but if you want to lead and build a great team and a sustainable mission in your organization you must understand the times in which we live the environment that has created the workers and they're unrealistic and thus unmet expectations but when you lead like a coach you can give them realistic expectations and you can help them meet them and when you do you may be the guide that stepped in and change the trajectory of their life you are a coach lead like it I know you can do it and I'm here to help Ken Coleman ladies and gentlemen good word we had two good back-to-back Leadership Lessons there it's amazing I was just watching that and thinking you know you could cross out coach and write in crab boat captain I'm thinking of my buddies up in the Bering Sea I work on a show called Deadliest Catch it's been on for like 20 years now and when I when I think of the best captains on those boats and this is arguably the most dangerous job in the world fishing for king crab on the Bering Sea it's insanely difficult and dangerous but the captains who have the greatest respect and who run the best cruise and who have the most successful boats are the ones who will come out of the Wheelhouse in 20-foot Seas when it's blowing sideways sleet rain freezing rain 800 pound crab pots sliding across an ice covered deck slickered and snot unbelievably difficult circumstances and work the bait bin and start hauling pots with the crew some captains don't do that some do and I was there to watch have you guys seen this show Deadliest Catch your okay I don't want to assume too much and I'm not looking for cheap Applause but you'll remember the green horns the green horn is the toughest job on the boat it's it's the newest hire it's the most inexperienced worker and the first season that show was on I thought man this is going to do such this is going to make it so much harder for captains to recruit green horns because we saw guys like lose a finger we saw boats go down we saw people cry and get hurt you know it was it was an amazingly extreme show the next season nobody had ever ever seen anything like it they were standing in line on the docks people came in from all over the country for a chance to work as a green horn a chance to make no money a chance to certainly get seasick and maybe get hurt do hard things to do the hard thing it's it's so instructive we were talking about it over dinner last night you can learn a lot about recruiting from the military I'm a big fan of all the branches love the Army but you know the proposition be all you can be sign up do your time you'll come out better than you were the Navy the Coast Guard it's all a version of it's going to be an adventure it's going to be great it's good for the country you should give it a shot right the Marines it's probably not for you it's okay we just want a Few Good Men the proud right and so when you I what I took from Ken and and Mike Easter and and and Craig is that you can help people sometimes by challenging them and maybe maybe you kind of have to you got to get down in it you got to get down in it with them and and you got to stop and and Craig brought this up and you know as Leaders we've got to have we got to get folks an exit ramp um hopefully it's a smooth and kind as Craig's mine's not always that smoother kind um I mean we're always very clear um but we'll set you free in Jesus name and so um you know but the um because you know we we very clearly say this is what we do and if you want to be a we this is what we do you may opt out of being a we you may choose not to be a wee but if you're at Ramsey this is how we do it this is who we shall we look at the customer we we look at I was how we look at our resources we've been blessed to do one thing and that's help people that are not in our building you know we exist for the people outside these walls as well we tell our team all the time and if you're if you're not going to plug into that value system then you're not a Wii it's okay you could be away somewhere else well sometimes people don't know and they you know we have to just tell them okay you got to be away somewhere else because you're not a we it's the Band of Brothers thing yeah I mean you hear Team all the time but if it's the it's the awareness of knowing you're part of a venture that has a purpose that's maybe maybe greater than your own and that is I mean to me the best leaders I know create that feeling in the rank and file that there's something larger at stake whether it's a dirty job a clean job a dangerous job whatever it is it can't it can't just be about you right exactly so the last component of this that is easily overlooked because from a leadership or from a particularly a management perspective but certainly from a leadership perspective uh but you when you back out pan back far enough that you start seeing the spiritual and the psychological the mental health issues it the last thing is the mental health component Dr John deloney is a Ramsay personality uh two phds one in higher ed and one in counseling which means he has two more phds than us put together and so um brilliant and number one best-selling book a couple of times his latest is called own your past to change your future did a little quick read with him a little one chapter book called redefining anxiety that's now over 200 000 copies sold so he's this stuff is really touching a nerve he has a podcast that is on Ramsay networks that is absolutely exploded all dealing with relationships mental health issues boundaries all these kinds of things and obvious actually he is here on campus and so rather than bringing him in by screen we just thought we'd bring him right here and put him in the chair so welcome Dr John deloney [Applause] [Music] hey it's not lost on me there's this Legendary Classic deep radio voice there's of course micro and then there's hey guys how's it going Mickey Mouse is here tenor so yeah it's good to see everybody nice to see you too [Laughter] so John um one of the things you and I have talked about online on the Ramsey Show openly you talk about every day on your podcast as well is and it falls into the heading of just in general in the workplace but certainly the 7.2 million males that are not engaged and are really in a sad place to be pitied uh but the the statistics that you and I are continually covering are these what you call diseases of Despair and I I want you to talk about what that is and where we are with them and what's going on yeah so there's this phenomenon they call them diseases of Despair or deaths of Despair and you may have heard that that term and it's it's really made its way to the popular literature as of late but it shocks most people to find out that over the last three four five years even pulling the coveted numbers out the average lifespan of a U.S citizen is going down and you instantly want to go to the political topics like murder no it's not it's what they're calling deaths of Despair suicide addiction right whether it's alcoholism opioid fentanyl especially organ disease failures heart disease liver disease and so when you back up and you look at folks and this is especially hitting folks with secondary education or less okay so you've got this band of human who has been told they've been given this life that it all it's I'm overly generalizing it making it pretty simple but there's three big things number one purpose connection and hope you have a generation of human who literally has no purpose right and you you dismantle overnight what what I would call traditionally masculine jobs and it doesn't mean there's not incredible women in the trades and incredible women police officers of course there are but overnight we took them out of schools we took them out of the workforce we said you're an idiot if you do this or if you can't cut it over here you can take the B Team jobs we've got entire cities saying we'd just rather do without police officers and then you've got firefighters folks like that who work really really hard in their salary can no longer pay for a home and a car and and clothes for three kids right and so you look around and you know what makes purposelessness go away alcohol opioids or even Netflix Netflix has solved this crisis they just took that away they were like hey look we know you better than most of your friends we're just going to start the next episode for you and we just go go go okay and let's watch it we just watch it right and so fentanyl works you know what else Works rage being angry all the time it duct tapes over that feeling of I I serve no role and you all talked about it earlier Mike you said this a few years ago when you hear when you were here on campus and it haunted me when we told 300 million Americans hey you're we don't need you just go home we'll send you checks there's some literature on Veterans with PTSD in some of the emerging conversations are the worst thing you can do is tell somebody hey you are broken forever just go home full disability we don't need you anymore we'll just mail checks it takes people's soul from them right then number two this idea of of connection we have created the loneliest generation in human history if you if you send somebody to prison and you take away their family their home they take away everything you we keep one card in our back pocket for prisoners and you get in trouble in jail we put you in isolation we send you to the hole because it's torture and that's the world we've created for ourselves even with me like take me and my wife for instance I can text her all day I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you and it goes into her brain as data but her body never feels safe it never feels loved like it does when I walk in the door and I see her and I smile and say I'm so happy to see you or when I do something insane like pick up my underwear right like let her know I'm loved we have the loneliest generation ever and so you got a group of people with no purpose and no community no no group of people around them and that then it leads me to the third picture and this is why my man I I say this with all due respect not just because you're sitting here what you've given people with dirty jobs it hope I think for hope you have to have a picture and I had a couple of football coaches who showed me what this looked like my dad was a homicide detective and a SWAT guy I have a picture in my head of a guy putting on a bulletproof vest and going into the fire right we don't have that anymore we just took it out and now you've got no hope because there's no picture that's why it shows like what you do men are so critical because at least it gives some kid flipping channels a glimpse of hey those guys are smiling and they're doing hard work and I've never even seen that that done right so you've got no hope you've got no um Community you got no accountability and you got no purpose and then Dave we're wondering why anxiety and depression rates are shooting up through the through the roof we've just pulled the thread on every single thing that makes us whole and we said go out and get them and man they're going out and getting them in the basement right with their headphones on at least you're picking up your underwear thank you to start there's a reason my wife is not here tonight Mike hey uh thank you for the kind words about the show um I do think that we're surrounded by examples we talked about it before you know the way we portray work is a conscious Choice um we get to decide the definition of a good job there's a bunch of stuff we can't decide but we're totally in control of that and we're totally in control of the degree to work of work ethic we we choose to embrace but to an earlier Point too it's not just what's on the TV it's not just what's on the screen it's what's in our schools and when we took shop class out of high school my God we unleash the kraken right when we took shop class out of high school we affirmatively said and tell me if you agree we we told a whole generation of kids in so many words these jobs are so unimportant you don't even get to look at them wood shop metal shop auto shop all those things we just we just took them right out we Arbitrage them right out of the curricula and we're still reaping the Whirlwind I think we did that on top of telling a generation of three four and five and six year old especially little boys you're the problem if you can't sit still and shut your mouth for eight hours and do this worksheet you are the problem you need to be pumped full of medication you need to be set out aside because you're the issue and then when you get to middle school and I I got a little boy man and it gets I remember some of those early conversations and my wife was Dr deloney long before me and she can steer laser beams through somebody telling her there's a problem with her son right and so we sat in these meetings and then they go to middle school and they go to high school and there's no outlet and then the only the only potential path is a glorified version that cost a hundred thousand dollars of the hell they just went through and then if we're surprised that they just head to the basement and say Mom cash out your retirement I'm playing games of course right makes perfect sense we we've stolen from the kids we've stolen from them and by the way let's be honest like we're participating in this too for 20 years I've sat with moms and dads of students in my former job in the conversations were about hey my kids got anxiety my kids struggling with ADHD what I would consider routine questions about how to love your kid and how to learning exceptionalities all that stuff the questions I get now are is this thing over as democracy run aground are we done and that's a complete absence of Hope of people just cashing their chips out and I think it's up to us to begin to spread optimism begin to spread joy and begin to put um light back in a dark place and that starts with us helping these kids out and it starts with us cheering up at our own homes and our own interactions with people and I mean it starts with us guys it starts with us absolutely one of the things we talk about a lot is that we're talking about those hard things but the idea and again you and I have unpacked this um it's underhand pitch back to you but the um this idea that the the weird thing is is the there's a circular argument here or a circular cause effect thing it's not as simple as One Direction in that uh depression for instance or anxiety is lowered with activity and vitamin D in the sun right I mean movement yeah there's equal movement also engaging and winning at something so good hard work where you get some wins uh if you don't have that it tends towards depression if you do have depression it tends to help be part of the answer to solve it I'm not a mental health professional you are tell me about it yeah there's there's uh I think the latest studies out of Australia where they're recommending Frontline step one of someone struggling with depression is exercise movement go move right your body releases chemicals I mean your body's made to move right and so yeah let me say it like this so you remember the self-esteem Movement we like to bag on it and it came from a I think I think is a good place they looked at CEOs and they said what does making these CEOs so ceoe and it was this irrational belief in themselves they can do anything in any capacity in an effort to help a generation of young people they took that irrational belief and they tried to just inject it into kids by just telling it to them over and over and over again and what they fail to understand is that irrational belief comes from failing a whole lot and getting punched in the eye and getting back up and failing and getting back up and getting back up and getting back up this irrational belief was not irrational they learned they were confident because they had accomplished their way towards this goal and they'd gotten really lucky along the way and so we just have a generation of kids that we've like you're special you're special here's a trophy here's a thing and we've robbed them the opportunity of falling down and getting back up right we've taken it from them I'm just thinking about the early episodes of American Idol you know we all remember the winners we remember the final competition but my favorite episodes are like the the very first ones where a couple thousand people many in their early 20s show up to audition and it's not the fact that most of them can't sing that's so fascinating it's the fact that they don't know it no one told them no one told them no one told him till Simon Cowell came they have no one that loves them they have the worst moms on a 22 year old's face to learn for the first time on National Television that they can't carry a tune in a bucket right this is not a good way to raise your kids there's just no consequence along the way there's no truth that's why Simon Cowell is worth 600 million dollars you're special you can't sing you can't sing Simon Cowell became everybody's surrogate dad right hey I used to have students who would come and they would sit in my office and they would say hey I need you to know um after years of intense prayer God has called me to be a Christian music singer and then they would sing and I would say I assure you he didn't but he didn't I'm confident we're praying too again you're probably going to head back to the old prayer closet yeah so listen there's there's this idea of confidence what does confidence come from comes from Little steps towards the goal right when I first joined the radio a member covet happened and Dave was like hey man I know you got an 18 month ramp up plan we're gonna have to figure it out live because I helped you I hired you to help hurting people in the whole country's hurting I was not confident and I had somebody that walked alongside me and showed me hey don't do that and we'd dive across the desk and keep me from canceling the show all kind of things that he kept the thing going but you I gained confidence slowly not just because Dave said you're great you're great but we walked he walked alongside me I had some scaffolding there and we walked alongside it and that's how you gain confidence what I take from your work honestly and one of the great lessons of of dirty jobs too was that just because just because you love something doesn't mean you can't suck at it and and the T-shirt of the night man and conversely there's a lot of wives elbowing their husbands right now yeah pick up your underwear and uh and just as importantly just because you you hate something or really have no interest in it doesn't mean you might not be great at it my mom and dad are listening right now at home to this live stream my mom called me in 2000 good grief when was it probably 2003 working at evening magazine and and said to me look your your granddad's 90 years old he's not going to live forever wouldn't it be great if before he died he could turn on the TV and see you doing something that looked like work so my pop he he could he was a magician he could build or fix anything and I was so sure I was going to follow in his footsteps all the way into my teens until I realized the inescapable truth of My reality was that the handy Gene is recessive and just because I wanted it doesn't mean I could do it and when he told me that I could be a Tradesman but to Simply get a different toolbox things started to make sense and it lines up perfectly with everything you guys have said tonight it's it's not about our dreams it's not about our wish fulfillment and it's not purely about our skills it's about lining it all up showing up early staying late and playing the cards we got as best we can this isn't an outline but can I just talk about something that gives me hemorrhoids listen don't this whole Follow Your Passion thing listen you become passionate about what you're good at and you become good at what you practice and most of us practice at least in my world what I was made to practice somebody said you gonna take care of this stuff you're gonna keep showing up you're gonna keep showing up so you can do this job and I have become passionate about things I originally didn't like my mom made me take piano lessons and now 30 something years later I can run around on stage with a guitar because she made me do that stuff right and so this idea like I have to feel good all the time no man you got to work really hard and you the passion and the joy and the Love Will Follow that hard work and that accomplishment and that achievement it's magical this guy's on the payroll absolutely you should keep him I'm trying hope he doesn't quite quit yeah um yeah it is hard to be on a live stream about working and your boss is like right there no pressure so John's new book is coming out in the fall called building a non-anxious life um since I'm the CEO I get the privilege of reading the manuscripts before we put them out with Ramsay publishing and uh and even making some comments here or there and we've just finished the uh the final polishing on this and getting it ready to print for the fall uh and and in that process uh to build a non-anxious life in a highly anxious actually the most anxious culture in the history of humankind how do you build a non-anxious life the core of the message is choosing the hard path so there we go again doing hard things but still I I think that's important from a Leader's perspective from a workers perspective whether they are aspiring to be successful they are ambitious or whether they maybe tonight got a little bit of fire lit under them a little bit of Hope where they didn't have it before talk about this idea of choosing the hard path yeah so I actually finished Michael Easter's book and I called him I thought tried I used my uh Powers as a YouTuber to find out how to get in touch with him and he picks up the phone and he was on a hike in Nevada and I just said I need you to know your book uh is gonna change my life I read it I blacked out some words and I handed it to my 12 year old son and said this is your next book you have to read it and we're going to talk about it at our weekly breakfast and my son went through it so that was kind of the Genesis of it is this idea that your body is made for hard things um it's like we've created a culture where we all go to the gym and we took all the weight off the bar and now we're all mad that we're not getting any stronger and we're blaming the gym right it's on us we've created this world and also you can't just walk into the gym and load it up with every plate in there you're gonna kill yourself right you have to have spotters you have to have people that walk alongside you right so um we've created a world that our bodies can't exist in and here's the The Meta message about choose your heart being a hundred pounds overweight is really hard it hurts it's uncomfortable you don't sleep losing a hundred pounds is miserable the option isn't one is easier than the other the path before you is to choose your heart being a good husband who listens and says the words I'm sorry and keeps showing up and keeps showing up that's hard and having a miserable marriage is also hard so the path forward is not I'm just going to take the easy Road or I'm gonna go do this hard thing no you're gonna do a hard thing either way choose the one that is most beneficial for your family for you for your faith for your legacy choose your heart and man if you're married and you can sit down and say who are we going to become let's reverse engineer who we are going to become and we're going to do hard stuff together whether that's doing a budget together whether that's committing to not going to bed angry that's committing to get on same page with your parenting whatever it is choose your heart man that's that's that's it at the end of the day you got to choose your heart yeah so as we wrap this up I'm gonna take a left turn right quick uh as we wrap up this second politically I was just kidding a right turn okay I don't have a left turn on my car but the um uh notice that everybody's to his left exactly Dave only even takes right turns in his car so straight the uh what I don't want someone to come away hearing I mean you've got a PhD in higher education you came out of higher education and I don't want them to hear Mike Rowe say because he didn't or Dave Ramsey say or Dr John deloney say that we are anti-four-year degree or that we're anti-higher education we are not higher education is awesome when applied properly the the fallback position or the problems that we've outlined somewhat is that we we left the trades out in the discussion that's a horrible thing we've just we've covered that but in higher ed we were talking about this the other night on a panel in California John you and I the currency got you know what happened was in the 50s and 40s we started realizing it was you know it was very smart to become smarter to gather knowledge knowledge would help you go to places you hadn't gone before knowledge was great and we became we associate that with becoming educated he's well educated she's well read she's literate she's you know and well spoken articulate has a you know an actual vernacular and so on and so we began to associate that and then we dumbed it down oddly enough in education to say that that means a degree and so instead of making knowledge the currency of success and by the way success comes from increasing your knowledge if you graduate from anything and you stop learning then by definition you have stunted your growth people who are successful are continual Learners they're engaging in things like you all are engaging tonight thank you or for watching and for being in the audience you're getting information you didn't have to have a better life tomorrow that you didn't have yesterday that's adding to your knowledge base and so knowledge is the currency of success it's what you spend it's what you collect it's what you make deposits in in order to build success not a degree and we change the message and said the degree is a guarantee of success which is a complete lie and we all know that and then we made it even worse we said the degree in anything I mean German polka history left-handed puppetry whatever nuanced crap that makes you into a barista right you can get a degree in anything that makes you useless in the marketplace you can get no job doing that except teaching other people to get that degree that's the only job there is for German polka history graduates is to teach other German polka history graduates it's the only job there is doesn't exist by the way I made all this up but um the point being that the degree doesn't matter and a worse than that a degree that doesn't add a knowledge base that's useful in the marketplace does not give you an Roi on your investment into education and so we're not angry at higher ed anger at 1.7 trillion dollars in student loan debt that is partly stolen The Hope and increased the anxiety of two entire generations and the idiot Congress that continues to make these loans to 19 year olds who couldn't get a loan to buy a dog at the pet store but we the people give them an 85 000 loan to get a degree in left-handed puppetry this is dumber than a rock America okay it's out of control and worse than that we stand around talking about how they're so bad we should forgive them and at the same time we're making them that's intellectually dishonest to Washington D.C that's my message to the Island of Misfit Toys right there so anyway the this whole thing of higher ed is not bad I all three of my kids have degrees I have a degree and I the stuff I got in my the tools I put in my belt to get a degree in finance and real estate at the University of Tennessee go Vols have helped me grow Ramsey Solutions right so I'm we are not against education we're against stupid education overpriced education and the idea that a degree makes you somehow a superior human and that a degree is actually the currency that you can trade on to get success none of those are true all that times 10 for me um I'll also say something in defensive screens since we gave them a pretty bad rap tonight um when I graduated in 1984 two years at a community college went to work briefly then I went to a university and got my communications degree so I'm a communicator I didn't have the device that you're all holding or sitting on right now I didn't have an internet connection and I didn't have a smartphone which means I didn't have access to 98 of the known information in the world right if you have a curious mind you're armed with a fearsome tool more fearsome than anything you referred to in your tool belt right now you have unlimited free access to all of the knowledge on planet Earth I just watched a lecture from MIT two weeks ago lying in bed I woke up flicked around there it was it was for free and it was the same thing that that lecture hall full of kids paid who knows what for my point is it's out there and in 2016 some of you will remember this during the presidential debate Marco Rubio made a quick comment I forget what the back and forth was exactly but he said to Great Applause what our country needs is more welders and fewer philosophers right so oh my gosh it was a big Applause line and I went over to my screen later that night on my little Facebook page where six million of my friends said hey sounds like this guy's singing your tune and I had to tell him the truth and the truth is no that's not my tune my tune is our country needs more welders who can quote Descartes anichi and throw who I believe First said all men lead lives of quiet desperation we need welders who are curious enough to access the most powerful tool in their box and get the liberal arts education available to them for free conversely we also need more philosophers who can run a straight and even bead we need both sides of our brain equally engaged in this great gift that we have and to talk about blue collar versus white collar well where do you think the skills Gap lives it's right between those two binary fallacious choices the color of collars is nonsense that ship has sailed and until we get people who can talk intelligently and with with real curiosity and satisfy that Curiosity and the ways that I'm that I'm talking about at the same time Master is skill that's in demand that we're going to keep pushing this rock up the hill I'm afraid so let me speak directly to business owners for just a minute and leaders out there some of you that run small businesses in that same survey that same piece of research I told you earlier Ramsey research team did um we found that despite all these challenges this seven in ten business owners rarely or never think of giving up so if you're here or you're watching and you're a business owner or you're in a senior leadership position there's a 7 out of 10 chance that you already have courage and grit and resilience and what we're saying tonight is we really need you America needs you the future of this country needs you to stay in that fight and do the things that Craig groeschel is talking about do some of the stuff we're going to give you in here just a few minutes we need you to stay in the fight my grandkids need you to stay in that fight our future depends on it so we've got three really kind of Tactical suggestions some solutioning if you will for some of this whining we've been doing for the last couple of hours number one if you're hiring out there start a referral program if you get some good people on your team I heard a guy years ago he said you can't win the Kentucky Derby with a donkey you need a thoroughbred so when you get some thoroughbreds on your team what you're going to figure out is is that we become who we hang around with and thoroughbreds run with other thoroughbreds so the easiest way to find new team members that are thoroughbreds is to send your existing herd of thoroughbreds out into the marketplace and we at Ramsey we pay you a bounty if you bring in your friends who are thoroughbreds the other good thing about thoroughbreds is they know their family and they know their friends that are donkeys and they don't want to work with them so they will tell you don't hire him I saw him in here interviewing don't hire her she's not good don't do that she's not a we don't do that they'll tell you they'll tell you right up front and it works we get a a good percentage of our hires currently in this crazy world we're talking about right now of quality people that care deeply that are thoroughbreds that know their stuff through referrals and we do it all the time don't we John yeah I mean you hand out cash in the staff meetings it works it works and hey I've got I'm thinking of two friends right now if I texted them and said I'm I've locked myself in a closet this crazy guy named Dave Ramsey is trying to kill me I need help they're back in Texas and they would say the government took away our license so we're going to be on a bus just hang in for about 18 hours and we'll be there and they would come to my defense they'll be at my funeral God I would never hire them they're the worst never hire them they're my closest best friends in the world they're not they're not people that I'm going to work with day in and day out right right so referrals is a good one another one or Nancy another ones tell a good story oh man everything's a story right if you if you don't have a good story then well you don't have a pitch and if you're trying to hire then all you've got is a salary right all you have is an offer it's give them a narrative give them a beginning and a middle and an end Dirty Jobs was about stories and now to be fair it was the same story over and over it was the story of somebody who mastered a skill that was in demand and then applied it and then enjoyed something that looked a lot like Prosperity but you know tell them the truth about what the opportunity is and if the occasion arises you don't find the heroes find the heroes in history find your personal Heroes you know we were talking about Shackleton earlier you know one of the greatest explorers of all time who I think displayed the greatest leadership of of all time nobody died on that ship that was locked in the ice for like over a year I mean what he did was extraordinary and if you read the endurance right if you read that book uh you can't fail but to be inspired so you know people get their inspiration from different places just make sure you find yours somewhere yeah and here's an ad when he got asked people to come and join him was put in the local newspaper he said men wanted for hazardous Journey low wages bitter cold long hours of complete darkness safe return doubtful honor and recognition in case of success that's exactly what was in my job description he got 5 000 applications you got 5 000 applications it's just like the the green horn on the crab boat exactly same thing tell them the truth but it's a great story yeah this is going to be hard you're going to be changed by how hard it is you're going to be formed by how hard it is you're going to be doing work that matters you're going to be doing something that matters plug in and let me tell you gen Z and Millennials the good ones they are more missional than the other Generations put together they will buy into this you want I've got 450 of them on the team they are amazing generation they're amazing now the good ones and they're an amazing generation because there's only two kinds awesome and sucks so you can pick out the other ones real quick no no you're not a weak and but the man I love these guys because they they Embrace this kind of thing they Embrace a narrative a story that's real and we're real this is who we are I mean we are changing people's lives we're changing their family trees John's changing their mental health Ken's changing their their whole career track and path and doing stuff like we're doing tonight this is stuff that matters this is not empty rhetoric and so they get to plug into that and that's a narrative that's a story they want to do I remember um when I was in Texas one Christmas and it was like everyone decided to be the Griswolds and it was a an unseasonably freezing patch of weather and everybody turned their Christmas lights on seemingly at the same time and the Transformer right behind my house blew and we had no anything and you know we've got a newborn I got my son I'm trying to be super tough I don't I'm just flipping the breaker on and off just doing nothing and then this guy drives up in a truck at about 2 30 in the morning and I got up my son was still up because we were freezing we went outside and he goes up in this big bucket truck changes the thing out and I just walked out into the alley and I said man thank you like you saved us and he said y'all are mine and it was this oh he's like this is my you know when the grid lights up it lights her out this is y'all are mine he was a part of the story right and he knew all these Christmases depend on me and dude that dude was out there at 2 30 and it was freezing cold and I just remember thinking this is Incredible's happened in front of my son man you know what I mean I here's how much I love that story I was on my way to jump out of a perfectly good airplane with the golden knights for uh for a show and I was completely in my head and I was nervous gonna pull my own shoot this is at Fort Bragg seven years ago maybe and I'm checking out of the Holiday Inn Express and I'm walking down the hallway and I see a guy on a ladder I only see half his body right he's he's up in the ceiling doing something and I walked by and I look up and he looks down and he sees me he says mike wrote Dirty Jobs I said yeah hey how are you and he comes down the ladder and I said what are you doing up there and he said well the customers are upset my pipes something's going on up here and if I don't get my pipes fixed buy two my customers are going to be this that and the other and he he talked for a minute but it was the pronouns like like there's a bit of headlines going on about our choice of pronouns these days you think but this guy was all about my pipes my customers so on the way to jump out of this perfectly good airplane I took a picture of the guy and I took a picture of the hole in the ceiling and I wrote the story I just told you it wasn't much of a story but it was a story and it had a moral and it was you know when you run into people who personalized their work and truly own it a janitor in the ceiling got me out of my head so quick so I just write them up I throw it out there on Facebook I go I jump out of a perfectly good plane I go back to the hotel later that night and I log on my screen and I look at this post it had reached 14 million people so the moral of this story say what you want about social media say what you want about all of it people are starved not just to hear these stories but to share them and they're simple stories they're simple stories about dignity and ownership thirdly if you're recruiting and trying to bring people onto your team you have to be attractive you have to be a leader that some become the leader identify as we said earlier uh quoting James Clear change your identity I am a leader of an incredible well-run organization that has a culture that loves its team takes care of its team and expects a lot from its team and coaches its team and corrects its team I am that leader I'm a world-class leader and that's the narrative that's the identity that you assume you have to become that person because that's who people want to work with that's who they want to be they don't want a boss we don't have bosses at Ramsay we don't even have managers at Ramsey managers count stuff we have leaders we just have leaders that's all we have we have 200 leaders out of our 1100 and it's the leadership team not the management team uh and because we're not managing we're leading we're going to show you where it is we're going to be ahead of you leaders are in front bosses are behind and you move the whole herd at the speed of the lowest common denominator when you're a boss when you're a leader you're out front and somebody might not make the train but maybe they weren't a wee because this is our speed and you can't keep up this is our level of excellence and you can't deliver and so maybe you don't get to stay on the train and that's a leader out front so you got to become an attractive leader that's telling the stories that's building the referrals that's putting this together and those are three really practical things you can work on if you're in leadership in an organization and you're trying to attract team members right now it's very very real so when it comes to hiring don't acquiesce Craig said that earlier don't don't give up and say I'm just going to bring bodies because that's a short play that's the easy wrong and when you just bring the bodies in and you give up you just go I give up I got to have the help I got to have the help screw it I got to get this project out screw it I got to get four people on this screw it you're bringing crazy into your building and you're going to be running an asylum you're gonna have enough monkeys you're gonna be a ring master I mean it's a problem and and every time we have let our guard down at Ramsey we we hire too quickly because we get all excited about the projects all excited about the outputs and we don't pay enough attention to who's coming in the door it causes us so much problems that we can't get the projects out anyway because we're sidelined by cray-cray all through the building and it should and ain't nothing worse than managing crazy man it's it's hard to get out once it gets in so take your time and do this stuff right hiring is hard it's one of the hardest things you're going to do as a leader for over a decade we've helped tens of thousands of small businesses with all kinds of things on how to run their business but hiring is always the number one thing they want to learn about and it's one of the things that drove us to do this tonight is to say in this environment it's the worst it's the hardest it's ever been but don't acquiesce to it don't fall for it if you don't match our values you shouldn't be here you just stand for that because that's your best long-term play it's your best long-term play you might get some work done by Friday with the other but you're going to struggle with it so in this entree leadership Elite that I mentioned earlier you get a free 30-day trial with it it's got the tools it's got the coaching it's got the lessons in there there's a key lesson in their own hiring and we're going to give you a free 30-day trial and just click on this QR code and it'll show you how to get in this thing and you can learn these tools and how to level up in your business how to take your business to another level how to take your organization to another level and go to the next thing again it's completely did I mention it's free a free 30-day trial the other thing I want you guys to check out and Mike I want you to unpack this is the microworks foundation the scholarship work that you are doing through that foundation and the actual work you're doing in the spirit that you're injecting into America is it's singular there's no one else doing it talk about it thanks I think you're right it's important to be attractive it's also important to be persuasive your most persuasive um spokespeople for your businesses or your own employees and your satisfied customers and I learned that uh in in Dirty Jobs and I I learned it in my Foundation right now I still lead it but the people that do most of the talking for me now are our scholarship recipients who five six years later are now telling their stories and their stories are welders female welders making 160 Grand a year all day long plumbers steam Fitters pipefitters people who have proven HVAC right that something that looks a lot like Prosperity can happen as the result of mastering a skill after my mom called me all those years ago to tell me to do something that looked like work Dirty Jobs happened halfway through Dirty Jobs this Foundation started it too is a tribute to my granddad and uh how it evolved doesn't really matter what matters is right now in 2013 will give away a million dollars next month and another million in September specifically for work ethic scholarships that's what we do we don't give scholarships for thanks I appreciate it to Dave's point we've got no truck with four-year degrees no problem at all if you can afford it great if you want to do it fantastic but these scholarships are reserved for people who want to learn a skill that's in demand and so we get thousands of applicants now we go through all of them and there's some hoops to jump through I need references you know not one not two I need a pile of references I need an essay I want a video you have to sign our sweat pledge you have to make a case for yourself and I say this to you not because I'm going to put the arm on you for a donation it's easy to donate if you want to I've never done big fundraisers there's 50 000 folks watching this online somebody needs to save a million dollars tonight okay I'll just go put the arm on you just do it right now all right look it's the money is great but the purpose of the foundation to be perfectly candid is not to help as many people as possible it's not to change as many lives as possible through our scholarship program it's to help the people who can tell my story better than me and finally after 15 years we're doing it the evidence demands a verdict as Josh McDowell famously said absolutely all those years ago and that's what we're doing if you want to help out consider yourself officially invited we do these scholarship programs every six months and that's who we are so to summarize where guys were in the middle and folks were in the middle of this war on work um what can those of us who are business owners and those of us who are watching are in here who aren't business owners or aren't a leadership do to begin to impact these nine or ten different variables we've laid out here that are causing this labor crisis the labor crisis is a symptom it's not a problem it's a pathology it's not the disease and so to go back to eberstat and uh so it's not the it's the effect it's not the cost so how do we get up under this uh obviously we're not going to do it in one night and it's not three easy lessons in a poem um it's but there are some things that we can do uh what do we do about this John I see you start with moms and dads and grandparents if your kids don't have chores you're stealing from them you're stealing their ability to learn you're stealing their dignity you're stealing their their opportunity to learn confidence in themselves so at home give them chores hold them accountable don't give them an allowance pay them a salary or pay them on commission teach them sit them down and let them force them to make you to watch you do a budget begin to bring them along in this crazy adventure called life don't wrap your arms around them and say I'm your bubble wrap and I'm gonna I'm gonna protect you we've tried that and it has failed so all of this stuff starts in the home with those little eyes and by the way kids don't listen to you they watch you you want them to be hard workers you work hard you want them to not complain about everything stop complaining you want to not be scared of everything turn the freaking news off and be connected with your kids they watch you starts in the home [Music] for those of you that are in the workforce working stop romanticizing mediocrity this is Karl Marx's message don't embrace it it's called communism stop embracing it and don't don't hang out with people say not in my presence you're not going to say I'm going to work as little as possible I'm going to do as little as possible and I am expected to get free stuff because I breathe air good you're not going to be in my presence I don't want to hang around with you because that's a wrong philosophy and I don't want that disease I don't want it to rub off on me not as for me and my house we're going to go for it we're going to leave it all on the field we may lose but everything's going to be left on the field so we're not going to embrace mediocrity we're not going to say ambition is a bad word success is a bad word winning is a bad word Building Wealth as a result of having served a huge number of people is a bad thing it's not and so hanging out with me if you bump into me somewhere people don't come up to me and go hey other than credit cards are great because they know where I stand let people know where you stand on this subject of success on the subject of mediocrity on the subject of I think it's great to steal from your employer I don't I think you're a thief when you go to work and you don't work while you're at work and you're being paid to work that's just wrong morally and ethically stand up for something push back against this garbage that is being shoveled out there it has to stop and it doesn't stop until a whole bunch of us raise our hand and say not on my watch man that's good um so I think the country still needs the Boy Scouts and skills USA and the 4-H club and a lot of these youth Civic organizations the Boy Scouts saved my life and of the many Scout laws or there's only one Scout Law but 12 components right trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous kind obedient cheerful Thrifty Brave clean and reverent don't forget cheerful it's buried in there but it was at the guts of Dirty Jobs there was a mission there was a theme but be of good cheer be in on the joke look for the humor where you can find it pick up your underpants and smile about it right right and call it back four times in one talk in one evening I know how to land the plane dude Stay With Me hey let it be known I had a great underwear joke that I didn't just make then okay good and don't pick them up while you're wearing them so you know the Scout Law was interesting to me because it was the first time somebody asked me to raise my right hand and and promise something the pledge of course to the flag came before that but I wasn't raising my hand I was I was putting it over my heart and the 4-H and skills USA all these organizations they have a code they they challenge you to make a promise to yourself and it's easy to make fun of that you know and it's become very uncool to do that kind of thing but I mentioned the sweat pledge in my Foundation sweat stands for skill and work ethic aren't taboo and this pledge says things like the number one is I'm I'm grateful above all things I live in America I've won the greatest Lottery of all time I walk the earth I'm alive you know I already won right 11 other tenants like that and if you don't agree with those things and if you can't sign those things then I get to say what you just said in my own way which is well okay this particular pile of free money is not for you right and we can move on but at the at the center of all of it is a request to make a promise to do a thing so challenge your people to do that it doesn't matter if it's corny mission statements matter if they come from the heart and they reflect your own identity and they reflect the identity of your company Ramsay Solutions has an identity that's obvious their mission is tattooed on all of their literature and in everything I've ever heard you say there's a version of that in every going concern that I've ever seen and in every decent charity that I've ever encountered so be of good cheer but make a promise and try and keep it so I'm 62 when I was 12. 50 years ago literally yeah uh how do you recover from that um my dad and mom are in the real estate business and they took us to took me to this uh a series of things but that year I remember specifically we went to a sales training and motivational thing um Zig Ziglar oh I was blessed to later become friends with was headlining and speaking and absolutely incredible iconic if you're in the auditorium tonight there's actually a wall out there dedicated to him as you go out one of the other speakers was the famous Celeste Brown uh another great voice and uh passionate wonderful orator really really great job and 50 years ago he wrapped it up that night with this and uh I can't think of anything better than the micro with this narrative voice to read this out for us it's not this thick relax this thing that thing mind if I put my glasses on yeah you will because you won't be able to read otherwise one year behind you brother yeah I do not choose to be a common man it is my right to be uncommon if I can I seek opportunity not security I do not wish to be a kept citizen humbled and dulled by having the state look after me I want to take the calculated risk to dream to build to fail and to succeed I refuse to barter incentive for a dole I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor by dignity for a handout I will never cower before any Master nor Bend to any threat it is my Heritage to stand erect proud and unafraid to think and act for myself to enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say this I have done all this is what it means to be an American [Music] [Applause] and pick up your underwear come on is each of us has got a part to play and each of us has got a choice and the change that we're all looking for begins with me and the change that you're looking for begins with you the good news is is that there's a lot of us left we're not out of business common sense is not gone strong character is not has not dissipated and completely disappeared off the planet contrary to what you see on the news there are actual human beings out there like you and me that care about this stuff and hopefully tonight we've given you a little information and a little inspiration to stand in the Gap and help us solve this and make capitalism work because capitalism works when we love our customers and when it works when we love our team and it works when we work thanks for being here tonight God bless y'all [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: EntreLeadership

Views: 337,440

Keywords: entreleadership, dave ramsey, The Real Reason People Are Giving Up on Work | America’s Labor Crisis Livestream

Id: hM7wMX9SeCU

Length: 142min 15sec (8535 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2023