Craig Groeschel - Conflict, Burnout, and Baby Steps Millionaires (with Dave Ramsey)
— Dave welcome back.
— Honored to be here as always.
— Last time that you were on, it was one of the, not only most helpful podcasts, but I think one of the most popular ones that we've had the most viewed and one of the highlights was we actually wore the same shoes.
— Yeah. That was a big deal.
— On the last podcast.
— You and I are known for our shoe cred.
— We have shoe cred all day long. And so this time.
— Sarcasm for those of you that don't know.
— This time we are strategically wearing different shoes.
— Yeah, yeah. And you out shoed me today.
— I don't know if I out shoed you, but I'm in the game. It's great to have you back and I'm like, I can't wait to get caught up with you and talk about what's going on in your world. I'd love to start in and I wanna talk a lot about your book, Baby Step Millionaires, in a little bit and thank you for writing it. It's super, super helpful. In the last couple of episodes on our podcast, Dave, I talked about something that I learned recently. I know you're one of the best leaders that I know, and when we've been leading through crisis for the last couple of years and what kind of dawned on me recently is that leading through crisis, although it's not easy, it's often pretty clear what you need to do. You have to make quick decisions. You need to overcommunicate, you need to conserve cash, and it's pretty clear what you need to do. Then it dawned on me that as things are starting to settle down in some parts of the world, I started to go back to kind of my pre COVID mindset of leadership. And I recognized I needed to not just be leading in crisis or leading like before crisis, but now I actually had to be leading out of crisis and really help people to come out of a difficult time and go back to some of the basics, help them deal with some of the challenges. I'd love to know in your organization, you lead fantastic team. Has your mindset changed any in this season leading into where we're going than maybe it was the last couple years?
— Well, I mean, it has to. The thing that doesn't change that you're referring to, I think is we always teach our leaders that if we have really clear values, really clear principles by which we lead, the decision is usually made. When the issue presents itself, you know what, your principles and your values will tell you which you have to do. That's the easy part, the hard part is then you actually have to do it.
— Right.
— Which it usually involves pain. It usually involves tenderness towards someone who's hurting, or it involves warrior mentality. I'm gonna fight my way through this with a dad blamed machete or, but I mean, you know what you've got to do, then there's the doing it. And when we were in that pressure cooker during that time, and you and I have talked off camera a lot about this as friends, the stuff that our organizations went through and the pressure that that puts on us to lead well through that. And I mean, we went at it with a full blown warrior mentality to fight our way through the COVID jungle, because that's how we ascertained that we were going to survive, which was good for our customer and good for the thousand people on my payroll. They'd like to keep their jobs.
— Right.
— And so we had to fight through, and there's a lot of angry people, a lot of scared people who were super angry and a lot of people with opinions. And all this. And so, that was but really clear like you said, during that time. Now, it feels like it's almost like we're getting fat again. Almost like we're getting, like mailing it in again. And we've had to look up, the weird thing was, was 2020 ended up being a record year at Ramsey and revenue, which scared us to death. I don't wanna get there the way we got there. And then '21 was good. And then we start seeing some trends where some of that stuff is starting to completely change. Like we're catching the second wave of stuff hitting us, is hitting us harder than the crisis did.
— Yes.
— And so we're having a reacting wait a minute, we were kind of resting on an old way of doing things and we can't do that anymore.
— Right.
— So it's, we got kind of gotten raw and real again.
— Yes, yes. So that was one of the things we talked about in the last couple podcasts that if your current plan is similar to your pre pandemic plan, it might be a bad plan. And...
— I would just say it is.
— Yes, yeah. And interestingly enough is we are now like, at Life Church, we launched new church locations. And so we had a three week period where we launched three new churches. And these were plans that we were making back in 2019. It takes a couple years to get campus outta the ground.
— Yeah.
— And so we're executing now on plans that we made years ago, and we're asking ourselves, how aggressive do we wanna be, do we wanna continue with a model that was really strong in 2019 when the world is changing? And it's a sobering question to ask, how much needs to change about our mindset and in leadership. Here's what's interesting, is that you continue to adapt. You continue to innovate and a lot of organizations don't. How is it that your team, as we're aging, as leaders, you continue to see opportunities and take a very similar, consistent message and drive it into the culture in ways? What keeps your team innovative when it's hard for most organizations to do that for 10 years, much less, 30 years?
— The answer is not very pretty. I'm scared.
— Okay.
— That's the truth, a little healthy desperation. And I'm scared that if we don't do that, we're gonna become irrelevant in 20 seconds. And we would be, we would be, so it's a healthy, I call it healthy desperation, but yeah, it is a healthy level of fear. If you're not growing, you're dying. If you're not adapting, you're dying. If you're not trying new things and shooting new bullets out there to see what they hit. And I don't turn the whole car that way. I don't wanna oversteer and flip the car, but if we're not, let's try something different.
— See, I think that's brilliant. And I hope there's some people listening right now. We said before that the greatest threat to future success is current success. And you've been incredibly successful. And yet you're not riding on what worked three years ago. You're leading with a healthy fear. Saying, if we don't change, we're falling behind. And I think, and we actually have to ask that when we're succeeding, not after we're succeeding.
— And my fear is not that God won't provide, that's not my fear. And it's not a lack of faith. And it's not a fear is not a fruit of the spirit, Dave, you say that all the time. I say that all the time, fear is not for the spirit. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It's not that, it's not a faith. It's not a faith based fear. It's a fear that I am so narrow or so lazy intellectually that I become, that I start counting on one thing that works in a world where nothing works for more than about four years.
— And maybe four years is generous in two days, you're cultured.
— Maybe, maybe.
— Right? Yeah. So I'm interested, you'd said, and almost implied, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but in some ways, this season where we're leading in right now, it should be easier than it was a year and a half ago. But in some ways it's not. In fact in many ways, it's probably more difficult.
— It's a different kind of stress.
— Yes.
— The other was an overwhelming pressure because the unknowns were everywhere. And now it's like, everything's sort of getting back to normal, but it's not.
— Yes.
— And it's a strange thing in the air.
— Yes, yeah. I agree.
— We're getting there.
— And now, you're right. And so I see that we've got very capable team members.
— Definitely.
— That have always been consistent, predictable, and they're struggling for the first time. And so I'm having to ask myself, what's the reason behind it, what can we do to help? You're so good at creating employees that wanna stay with you. Your retention rate is unusually high. What are you doing right now to recognize the tension points with your team members and what are you doing to help them heal and get back to a place of being completely healthy and bought in.
— We're teaching healthy conflict, which allows them to get some of this existential crisis out of their system, that the culture has put on them. There's this thing in the air that's like, everybody realize suddenly they're gonna die someday. And it's like they didn't know it or something before. And it's like, oh, maybe I don't like my work. Maybe I need to do something different. Maybe I wanna work from home. Maybe I don't wanna work from home. Maybe I, and they're having all these moments where they, an epiphanies they're blowing up everywhere. And in the middle of that, they've gotta have a place within a good organization to vent that out and have a leader that loves them. That's helps them come to the right conclusion, a good mature conclusion without oversteering the car and flipping it. And that sometimes can be a disagreement. Like, I don't agree with your mask policy or I don't agree with your stance on this, or I don't agree. Okay, that's fine. Can we still be friends? 'Cause I got a lot of friends that don't agree with me. I kind of like friends that don't agree with me. They bring stuff to the table.
— So if someone's listening right now and maybe they're really conflict avoidant in their business or their ministry.
— No, you're really gonna, you're exasperate this.
— Yep.
— I think.
— Yeah. What advice would you say to give them the courage that conflict is not only not bad, but conflicts necessary to have a great organization.
— Conflict that is not belligerent or does not have the eye roll of contempt. There's not arrogant. That is not assassinating the person's character you're having conflict with is healthy conflict. And this is how we teach people to have conflict in marriage. If you got eye roll going in the marriage, you got a real problem, 'cause that means I completely discounted you 'cause you're just not worth arguing with we got a real issue then. And that's the body language of the negative types. So the positive type of conflict is we're not, it's not you and me arguing about whether you are a good leader or I'm a good leader or the organization is sick somehow or there's a systemic problem. I love that phrase. That's always thrown around, which usually means it's not there. And, but the, healthy conflict is we're attacking the task instead of each other. We are fighting about what excellence looks like, not about you're substandard or I'm substandard or you're lacking in character, I'm lacking in character or you have a policy that's unfair to what, oh, come on, let's fight for excellence. This is what excellence looks like. And I love losing those fights because I've really stirred up some really good ideas in the room when I can get those fights going.
— I wish I could remember the author or teacher that came up there. There's I think he called him the four dark horsemen of marriage and he said basically...
— Les Parrott.
— Was it Parrott?
— Dr. Les Parrott.
— Okay. So he talked about basically you can tell if a couple is gonna make it by how they fight. And I think that would be really true if you look at any kind of core leadership team.
— Yep.
— If there's not, and like, I mean, we have some really good fights that don't last long and end with a better result.
— But we're arguing which play to run.
— Yep.
— We're not arguing, is football evil?
— And there's gotta be a safe place for someone to say, Hey Dave, that was dumb, I got a better idea.
— Yep.
— Let's talk a little bit more about retention. Because again, we talked about we're living in a time, they call it the great resignation.
— Exactly.
— And most businesses, ministries are seeing people leave faster today than ever before. And I don't know if you're experiencing a little or a lot of that, but I know that generally speaking, your turnover rate is ridiculously low. What is it that you do in your organization to create a culture that people love? Why is it that they don't like to leave working for your team?
— We are experiencing some of it, but nowhere near the numbers that the general public, so to speak are experiencing it. So we've had some turnover from that. We had some turnover, frankly, that just disagree with our COVID policies. We lost a few on that. We're at 1,167 people today. We're up, have been up in the number of team members every month. We've never gone backward. We've never lost so many that we could not rehire. And that kind of thing. We'll hire 300 people this year. So that's what's actually going on at Ramsey, not rumor that's fact. So then what is causing the retention? Well, what we said a minute ago, we are learning one of the beautiful lessons that came through COVID was allowing people to disagree without being disagreeable, allowing them to argue about the task, the issue. Okay, why are we doing this policy? This scares me, help me understand. That's a good way to disagree. Not like, you're trying to kill your employees. That probably doesn't work. That's probably, that's not gonna go well. So learn to disagree without being disagreeable and create an environment where that is invited and that gives people great dignity. The second thing that we've always done that's not add on, is that we do not hire people that want a J-O-B just above board. We don't want them just above board. We don't want them mailing it in. They're on fire for this stuff. They're getting it. And you don't have to motivate those people 'cause you really can't motivate people. All you can do is direct motivated people. Motivating people is impossible. It's just, I had one lady say I have to quit, I'm burned out. And I said, that's impossible. You're never on fire. Motivating people is ridiculous, but I love getting people who are fired up and wired up. And even if they go make a little mess over here somewhere, I'd rather do that than make the mistake of inactivity.
— Yep.
— Based on fear or laziness, or apathy or whatever. Be on fire for something, set yourself on fire and start breaching. Let's see who gathers a crowd.
— Andy Sandy always used to say, I'd rather say woe than giddy up.
— Absolutely.
— And so let's take someone who's going somewhere.
— Absolutely.
— Rather than trying to jumpstart him. I wanna come back to the whole burning with passion comment in a minute. But I did wanna tell you, I bumped into one of your employees and I wish I could remember the details, but I was in Colorado Springs visiting our church in Colorado Springs. And this guy came up to me and I think he had been on your team for about 14 years. He was somewhere in a technology department. He was super excited to talk. And I asked him the question, I said, Hey man, you've been there for a long time, what do you love about the place? And he told me two things and I love what he told me.
— That's interesting.
— He said number one, he said, what we do matters so much. And so it was the mission.
— What work that matters.
— And then the second thing he said is, and what I do contributes to it. And it was really, really special to hear that. So this was not a guy that was, I'm on the team for two years. I'm still excited to be in near Dave Ramsey. This was a veteran. And he said, overall, the mission matters and his contribution. And he felt that and told me with great emotion, just meeting and talking out as we were hiking the mountain.
— We talk about that every Monday morning in staff meeting, you're breathing rare air, you're getting to do work that matters. People spend their whole lives sometimes wishing they could do work that matters. Oh and by the way, when you outta line of code here, yeah. You may have saved somebody's marriage. You may have led them to Jesus. When you're outta a line of code here, you may have gotten them outta debt and changed their family tree. When you were outta a line of code over there, you just made some stockholder money and you don't even know what happened.
— And we have to work really, really hard in any line of business, any line of ministry to connect the, what we do every single day to the end mission and the end mission can't just be profit, our businesses we want them to be profitable, but we all have to have that. And something that really matters or people aren't gonna care.
— The interesting thing is those are all tied together, what we're talking about a minute ago, this, okay. I'm passionate about what I do. I'm connected to it. It connects to the ministry, connects to the mission. I know what the mission is. I know what my part in the mission is. So now I'm ready to fight even Dave.
— Right.
— I'll even go into a room and fight with Dave, which by the way, that's Dave's favorite sport. So I'm not offended by that. It's just, don't be belligerent. It's like, Dave, you don't understand 'cause I'm 28 years old. So iPhone is native to me. You still can't spell iPhones. So I get how this thing works. My brain works this way and our user experience just sucks. And you have got, and I love these kinds of arguments and that guy right there, that you're talking about, whoever he is, will fight with me that way in my office. And I'm love that. I invite that. I adore it.
— So I can only imagine some people out there right now thinking I've avoided that my whole life in leadership, and maybe they should step into it and say, we can be better if we will be willing to step into some healthy conflict.
— Well, I mean, you know you're wrong sometimes. So you might as well give somebody a chance to go NA NA NA NA NA.
— So speaking of that, I had to go apologize recently for being wrong. Is there a time in the last year or so where you recognize, Oh man, if I could do it over, I'd do it differently.
— Oh, virtually every day. Yeah. I mean I do three hours of talk radio every day. That's an opportunity to script something everyday
— Yeah, that's for sure.
— Yeah. All you gotta do is read my hate mail on my internet. Comes in by, we bail it.
— Yeah. Everything you say is out there forever.
— Yeah.
— Right.
— Digital tattoo man.
— Yeah.
— Yeah. The most painful ones are probably not for public consumption, but more than anything, in the last two years and I told that my team this I've apologized was that, that I was so game on, I was so in warrior mode on their behalf to make sure things were protected. That anything that guy came across my path in that moment was gonna get Ron code. I mean, sliced and diced. And so I had to go back and go, I'm sorry, can I put that back together please? And it's like, I can't believe I did that.
— I think there's probably a lot of leaders that were like that because just the weight you felt for your 1,100 team members.
— I got plenty of money. I was gonna be okay.
— Yeah. But you feel like you feel a different weight for them.
— It was them, I was worried about.
— Yeah. So you mentioned something earlier about your team member, the one that had never been on fire, I'd love to know how you continued because you drive change. You create innovation. How do you create a culture of urgency without overwhelming and burning your team out? How those coexist?
— When you're doing something you love, you don't get burned out, you just get tired. And fatigue is makes cowards of us all. We've heard that quote. And so all we've gotta do is just manage our time constraints. And so here's an idea while you're at work from seven to four or whatever it is work, I don't want you on your personal Facebook account, unless you're in social media. You need to be like working and stuff, the stuff we're paying you to do and stuff. I mean, my gosh, that's what I'm doing. And so be tired when you go home, but that's different than being burned out, burned out is you did 80 hours at something you don't even know what it is. You're writing code 80 hours a week or you're in customer service and you don't even know what the end game is or you're writing something never sees the light of day or, whatever it is you're pouring your life into, it doesn't seem to go anywhere that'll burn up anybody. With boredom and with frustration and burnout is more about lack of meaning. Fatigue is from too much of a good thing. And that's an easy one to dial back and get back to, okay, I need to breathe a little bit, need to go put my feet in the water somewhere.
— So we were looking at some people here. I had one team member tell me that there are a lot of people that are kind of overwhelmed. And then she told me that, but they're really not working too much. And it got my attention. I said, wait a minute. They're overwhelmed, but they're not working too much. So I started to dissect and ask some deeper questions. And what I found, David, you can tell me if you agree or disagree. I think there's some people that are just working too much, period. I think there are other people that maybe they're not working too much, but they've got external pressure that's impacting their work mood, or they just don't even know how to recover well, meaning they might work a seven or eight hour day, and then they go home and they're not doing things that replenish them and so they come back into work and they're messed up. I think there's a third group that just doesn't have a tolerance yet for a good, hard work day. Meaning they have to learn a bigger work ethic.
— And I don't know where it fits in those groupings, but to me, most of the time when I find somebody who's on mission, who's got talent and then they're overwhelmed, they just need a good prioritized to-do list. Because overwhelmed means I got six things and I don't really know, oh no, which one? Which one, which one? And it's like, well, let's just, okay. Number one. And number three doesn't get talked to or about and done until number one's done. And so sometimes just line them up, line the ducks up in a row rather than letting them fly all over the place out of formation gets rid of the overwhelm. Because basically we're saying, if you don't get to number six that's okay.
— Right.
— And the old fashioned prioritized to-do list.
— Yeah. An older book called Getting Things Done by David Allen, that getting things done and we'll put it in the show notes, but that's a great book that really talks about prioritizing. And so I think that's one thing is teaching people to, yes to prioritize and then also...
— Carey Nieuwhof, our friend, he does that. And Christy writes book about on balance. Our Ramsey personality does that. So it's all about do the right thing at the right time. And then you're not overwhelmed.
— Yes. And my theory is, it's not just what you do at work, at the office, but it's what you do in your non office time that also contributes to your success in the office time.
— Absolutely.
— I think people, if all we do is we go home and just look at social media or watch.
— If you eat six bags of Doritos and watch Tiger King every night, you're not gonna make it during the day.
— That's what I was trying to say.
— Yeah.
— Yeah, that's what I was trying to say.
— Yeah.
— Yeah. Is Tiger King still out?
— I don't know. I just made that. That's how relevant I am.
— Okay. I think there's a tiger. I think Tiger King is back. I think I said something.
— I don't, Lord help us.
— Okay.
— Jesus is coming soon.
— Well, I'm from Oklahoma. Tiger King is from Oklahoma. So.
— I'm sorry.
— Yeah.
— Everybody's gotta have something.
— Let me read you one of your quotes that you said on social media, you said, success is not a gleaming shiny mountain. It's a pile of mistakes that you're standing on instead of buried under.
— Yep.
— Maxwell might call it, I think he wrote book, Failing Forward. What's an example of something that you just totally screwed up that you learned from and made something special out of it.
— I'm convinced in regard to that, that about 90% of what we have tried at Ramsey was horrible.
— 90%.
— I'm convinced that everything you know us for and that has been life changing for someone and has been financially successful is about 10% of our ideas. Now the good news is is that they didn't have all the same weight, but I'm just talking about sheer numbers of ideas or numbers of, Hey, let's try that. Ooh, that was really bad. That kind of thing. 'Cause when you're going for a run in the morning or you're sitting on your back porch with a cup of coffee, you and Jesus, everything's a good idea. But Jim, when you put it out in the wild, you go, Ooh, that was dumb, it's like, whoa, that would hurt. That'll leave mark. And so, yeah, I mean, we've tried, goodness, I can't how many dumb things this week. I mean my tech team, they don't call it failure, they call it iteration.
— Right.
— It's a way of life in the tech world, in the digital landscape, lots of shots on goal, they call it. How many shots on goal and that equals number of goals scored. And hockey team loses you don't get shots on goal. And so life I think is that way. So every time I meet someone that we all think of somehow on some pedestal, I usually meet people who we all sit around and laugh about the stupid stuff we've done and we just go and I survived it.
— I think I have a theory that almost every great leader, great organization is guilty of way, way, way more aggressive mistake than passive ones.
— I mean, nothing moves unless it's shoved, then anytime there's something shoved there's friction. Expect sparks and expect somebody not like it, expect their critics to come out, expect somebody not to understand and expect to have to go do it anyway. And then it still doesn't work and they were all right. And that just, and then I gotta go do it one more day and then we get one that hits and go, wow, that was fun. Let's go look for one of those again.
— Yeah. In many ways you're, I mean, you're known now for so much more than just money, but that's teaching people to manage their money whereas is really where it started and that was born out of massive.
— Same thing.
— Personal failure.
— Yeah.
— Lost everything I owned.
— Lost everything you owned.
— Had the opportunity to start again and, but you know, I mean, we've been, Sharon and I will been married 40 years this summer. And when she and Amy are hanging out, she'll tell Amy, we've had 33 good years of marriage.
— Which is better than most, right?
— Yeah.
— Right.
— So I'm not sure which seven is she talking about exactly. That's really scary. But we've done our whole estate plan, is predicated on me dying first. I think she has a plan. I'm worried.
— She might. Yeah. I'm sure she's be well taken care of if you go. In fact, that was how I got to know you. I can't remember the year exactly. But I was in my twenties and I think one of your first radio shows was in Oklahoma city. Is that right? And so I somehow came across it and got to know you, Dave did a teaching in, at Rose State College.
— Yes.
— And I was like a door guy. I volunteered.
— We had volunteers. I went to door guys. I mean, they helped us check people in.
— Yeah.
— Probably six or 800 people at the event.
— I was a very good door guy. I helped check people in and got to go to dinner afterwards and met you. And yeah.
— We were like big time. I mean, we went to like Longhorn stage.
— It was exactly then.
— We rolled out some big nuts on the floor.
— And I was the annoying guy that came up to you. But anyway, you were so kind and gracious. And I started following your teaching then. And I wanna talk about your book. It's so helpful. Baby Step Millionaires. And I'm gonna go and show for those of you that are watching on YouTube or wherever you're watching. Tell me who's this book for?
— Well, I didn't really intend to write a book this year and it's ended up being our eighth number one bestseller. But I kept having two things happen that were at loggerhead with each other that lit me up. And so I'm like, okay, I'm doing this. So the first thing I was running into was after 30 years of teaching people to get outta debt, using the baby steps and then get outta debt so that you can have money in your emergency funds. So you can build wealth. So you can change your family tree. So you can have something in your 401k, so you can get your house paid off. And so you can build wealth. The whole thing is so you can, so you can, so you can, 'cause a godly man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. We're gonna change our family tree. So after doing that all these years, he debt free screams every day, three of them a day on the radio show and people come up to me wherever I am. They'll come over and they never yell at, they yell if they're debt free. But they'll walk up to me and almost whisper and go, Hey man, I'm a baby steps millionaire, I've been doing this since 20 years.
— Interesting.
— And they were everywhere. It wasn't one or two times, it started happening everywhere I went. It was like, because now we've got like grandkids of my original listeners that are doing this stuff. So we're third generation of financial peace babies now. So we're starting to see this stuff, the effect of God's ways of handling money generationally and over time. The second thing that was lit lighting me up was of course, interacting on social media and in the media as doing appearances. And sometimes you've got the counterbalance on the other side of the argument or whatever. I kept running into these hope stealers and these hope stealers are out there saying, well, you can't do it in America today. The only way you get wealth today is you gotta inherit it. And everybody knows they're systemic problem. And there's these problems and that problems and you can't, and they're basically stealing everybody's hopes. So there's no reason for you to try. If you don't have a rich uncle, you're not gonna have money. Just forget it. Your dad, forget it. Just give up. Just, Eeyore is my spirit animal. It's all bad. Not gonna be able to do this. And so, and I knew they were wrong because I was running into it anecdotally. And then we did the study a couple years ago for Chris Hogan's book and ended up using that study in this book as well on the largest study, a millionaires ever done. And we started going 89% of America's millionaires are first generation rich. They didn't start with money and we've got statistical evidence to data. This is not theory. This is not arguing with your broke brother-in-law at Thanksgiving. This is data, it's like the law of gravity has proven this has proven 89% of America's millionaires started with nothing and did not inherit their money. Okay. So I have to basically punch these hope stealers argument, I have to knock it down. And so that's what this book is about. So we go at it from a faith perspective. We go at it from a data perspective, lots of stories of baby steps millionaires in there. And it was kind of the answer to the negative ninnies on social media and out there in the culture and at your Thanksgiving dinner table with your crazy relatives and whatever, you can't get ahead, do Ramsey. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. I don't like people stealing people's hope when hope is real.
— Yep. Well, I'm so grateful for just both your passion to motivate people. And then your practical teaching for years and years. We were doing the envelope method back when envelopes were the only way to organize your cash and you're right. Consistency over time. You can talk about sometimes the, baby step plan can be almost boring and not exciting. When is boring good?
— When it works.
— Yep.
— When it's a systemic process that you stick with it, I mean, I don't know any, I mean, there's a few people would tell you that exercising every single morning is like the most wonderful thing in the world. But at some point it gets pretty boring. At some point, the repetitiveness of it, the habit that you get into, as our friend James Clear talks about, all these kinds of things, there's still a, even though it becomes automatic, there's still a boredom to it. And your 401k, just putting money in there, out of every check and getting them in action. These millionaires that we studied, the typical 1 million to a $5 million net worth, they had a paid for house that was four, $500,000, 600,000. And they had 800 to a million dollars in their 401k or the Roth IRA and good gross stock mutual funds. And they took them 12 to 17 years to accomplish those two goals. And they're millionaires. The people that get there with get rich quick stuff, they're not in the book. I mean, the number of millionaires that we interviewed that did it with airline miles on their credit cards was precisely zero. I mean.
— I thought that was the plan.
— I thought that was it.
— I always thoughts that was the plan. Well, the book is called Baby Step Millionaires and it's available anywhere books are sold. Number one, New York time, best selling author, Dave Ramsey. I wanna have a little bit of fun with you in the lightning round and I'm gonna fire a bunch of questions with you. These are gonna be really hard, really controversial.
— See if I answer them the same way I did last time.
— Be super nervous. These are different. Do you have a book you've read recently that you really enjoyed? You wanna recommend favorite recent read?
— I'm a late bloomer. I just read Clear's book.
— Oh yeah.
— And I emailed him and told him how great it is 'cause he's whipping my butt on the bestseller list.
— The book is Atomic Habits.
— Having two weeks whipping me.
— He is whipping everybody.
— Yeah. But I mean, he's...
— This is the...
— That's a solid knocked out, Atomic Habits.
— This is the modern day classic. There's How to Win Friends and Influence People. There's Rich Dad Poor Dad. There's What to Expect When You're Expecting.
— Seven Habit of Highly Effective People.
— Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
— Total Money Makeover.
— This is the Total Money Makeover.
— They're all on the wall street journal this week.
— This is the modern version classic that just came out.
— It's gonna be an evergreen.
— It's gonna be an evergreen classic. Yeah. Atomic Habits is fantastic. Okay. And yeah, you are late to the game.
— Yeah.
— That book's been out for like four years, but it's still.
— It's your fault, I read it. 'Cause I actually listened to this podcast.
— Yeah. It's still, it's something everybody should read. Your opinion, Dave Ramsey, the best dessert on the planet is?
— Chocolate chip cookies.
— Chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream?
— Probably.
— Probably?
— And that's only because I've given up donuts.
— Okay. I gotcha. On your perfect day off, what are you doing? Or what are you not doing?
— I'm probably on the lake skiing.
— There you go. Barefoot?
— Yeah.
— This dude skis barefoot.
— Yeah. Dave Ramsey, ladies and gentlemen. 40 years of marriage. How many years?
— 40 In June.
— 40 years in June. What is the quality you love most about Sharon?
— No drama.
— No drama.
— Low maintenance, no drama.
— And then let's flip it, but we're gonna ask it this way. What's the quality of yours that drives her the craziest?
— There's a lot.
— I thought you could say your romance. I kind of led you up to that one. Like you could had some fun with it.
— That's it, yeah. That's it, yeah. That's it. I'm going with that and sticking to a guy Craig's suggestion. Oh, I don't know. Goodness gracious. There's so many things she works on me. She works on me a lot.
— I'm never asking. I'm assuming you probably don't have a lot of tattoos.
— None.
— Yeah. If you had to get a tattoo, what would you get?
— Oh, see, I've not even considered it. So that would probably require a lot of, it would, I'm sure it would be something biblical.
— A Bible verse?
— Slacking oxymoron.
— A photo of Paul's face or something.
— Yeah. I'm gonna get your face on my arm then.
— Next time you're on here I'll ask you. Next time you come on with your tattoo.
— New Version Bible App.
— There you go. There you go. As you look ahead in life in the years to come, you've done so much, but what are you most excited about? What's coming up?
— I am still enjoying the succession work we're doing.
— Yep.
— Bringing the next generation of leaders, the next generation of speakers and thought leaders to the forefront and in such a way that they cause Ramsey to succeed when I'm not here. And it's working. It's not perfect. It's harder than I thought was coming.
— Takes a lot of work, doesn't it?
— I've had a lot of failures, but we've also had a lot of successes. Rachel, just had another number one best selling book.
— That's amazing.
— And.
— Well, she's fantastic.
— She's one of them but I mean, there's lots of them the John Galone, the personality is coming out. are doing a great job, but our leadership behind the scenes is really hitting another gear.
— Nine visible personality.
— Yes.
— Yep. That's a lot. We've got events coming up and I think EntreLadership, which I had the privilege of being at the last two, which were really, truly unbelievable. Is that one sold out?
— It should be.
— Yeah.
— It's within one or two tickets.
— By the time this comes out, it'll probably would be sold.
— It's May 19th, in Orlando.
— So they're gonna wanna think 2023 and not miss that. And then we're doing an event together in October, right?
— We are and Amy.
— Yes.
— Yes. We've got Amy, Amy Groeschel.
— Yes.
— Yes. And Craig too, but yeah.
— Yep.
— And yeah, they're gonna be speaking on marriage. Our Smart Conference, which is a day long conference on every area of your life to be smart. And it'll be in Dallas in October 22, it's usually a six to an 8,000 person event. I think this one only holds about 6,000. It's already about half sold out, but it's so we'll be talking about career. We'll be talking about wealth building. We'll be talking about success. We'll be talking about leadership. We'll be talking about mental wellness. We'll be talking about money of course.
— How can someone find out about that?
— ramseysolutions.com
— Excellent. And the book is Baby Steps Millionaires. And if you see Dave on the street, you can say, gimme a chocolate chip cookie. You can say, nice shoes. You can say, I'm debt free. Or if you do this book and apply it to your life long enough, you can whisper, I'm a Baby Step Millionaire. Dave, thanks for your friendship. It is always an honor to have you on.
— Thank you, sir.