How to Get Rich [Full Interview with Dave Ramsey]

0:00Bring on a pandemic. I got cash. That's how I went broke. Walk me through how you ended up scaling that. If you had advice that you could give 40-year-old Dave, what would you tell him?

0:17I am super thrilled to be here today because uh Dave's a legend. And uh I'm going to I'm going to give a little bit of an intro from my perspective um of you. This is a little scary. Um and I and I actually wanted to take the first like few minutes to um actually just kind of like hype Dave. And I think it's because like in the marketplace of attention right now, I

0:37actually still think you're underpriced. Um I still think that you are underappreciated for the amount of value that you provide to the audience at large. And flattery will get you everywhere. Got me here. But one of the things I wanted to hit on was um like I see and I'm sure you do or your team does, like there are a lot of people who take I would you know I'll use the term figure, but a lot of people who haven't achieved, you know, a 100th of the level of success that you have that take a lot of shots and at you and you know, a lot of specifically around your

1:08views on debt, but sometimes just in general. And um you know, we have a big belief at at acquisition.com that the only people ever hate you um are never ahead of you. Uh and I feel like that's been extremely true and been tough for people to be ahead of you in general. Um but I just want to give context for my audience that number one uh you've been doing this for three

1:32decades? Yeah, a little over. Yeah. Three decades uh and your overnight uh three decade success. Yeah, for real. And Just just in time to get old. And I what I'm going to be directing the the conversation today around is actually around business stuff. So, Dave has a zillion things on personal finance. I mean, I think that was the you know, the the wedge product that a lot of a lot of

1:56everything. But because our audience is predominantly business owners, I want to focus on the actual building of Ramsey Solutions and kind of some of the things that you that you learned along the way, some of the big mistakes that you did, some things that you'd go back in time and would have done differently. And even as you've kind of scaled the

2:14brand. So that's kind of the direction. Does that work? Okay. So um can you give a little bit of background in terms of how Ramsey Solutions the education business, which was the first business, correct? They've all kind of evolved together. Okay. Um how did that come to be? And then what was your thinking around the business

2:36model at that time? And like what has it evolved into? Well, um all of it started extremely primitive. I mean like 1 + 1 equals two barely, you know, kind of thing. And so like for instance, we started a I went down there's a talk radio show or talk radio station in Nashville at the

3:02time that was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And there was a guy doing a bad financial show, like a Saturday Night Live skit, you know, on there. I went on as a guest on the bad financial show. And I didn't have any books. I just went on for fun. I was actually promoting a real estate club I was in. And he said, "Hey, I hear you're helping people with your with foreclosures and helping them stop getting the car repoed or if they're having financial trouble over at your church. Are you doing that?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm just kind of doing that for fun just to help folk

3:31at as a ministry at the church." And he goes, "Well, if you got any questions about that, call up." And phone rang and he never got any phone calls. He didn't know what to do. He didn't even know how to put the guy on the air. And so he said, "Hey, come back. Let's do that again cuz his phone never rings." And so I went I did it like two times and then he quit. And then we went down talked to that guy that that was running that

3:50station into letting us work for free. And so, a couple guys, me and a couple other guys went on the air uh answering questions uh um in a really heavy hillbilly twang. Uh WW T N you're talking Niceville. Y'all call in. I mean, it was it was nasty, buddy. I'm telling you it was nasty. And uh but with information was good and the phone rang

4:12Yeah. from the very first day. A- A- About the same time I had finished writing uh on my laptop in my living room uh on the very first version of Windows. This is 1992. Uh my first book. And uh I self-published it, carried it home in the trunk of my car, got 1,000 copies. And I went on the radio and said, "Hey, y'all get my book." And um some people

4:34did. And uh and the 18 months later educat- to get to your question Yeah. we moved the uh card table out of my living room and one old beat-up desk from the days when I went bankrupt and opened an office in an 800-sq-ft month-to-month rent. And me and another guy, another guy was going to do financial coaching the way I teach to do that. I was going to continue to do that. And we launched a in April of 1994 a class on how to handle money. It was

5:04actually how to avoid bankruptcy. Um and one of the lessons was on the different types of bankruptcy. One of the lessons was on how to stop a foreclosure if it's an FHA, if it's a VA, or if it's Fannie Mae, different processes to stop a foreclosure. Um and you know, all these different thing. And

5:19the people that came weren't bankrupt. They were just making a lot of money and spending it all. Oh, okay. So, they were broke. It was all the money comes in, all the money goes out, only the names are changed to protect the innocent, but they weren't behind on their house payment. Right. They just were fighting with each other in their marriage, and they didn't know how to do a budget, and no one ever told them about insurance. So, I took the bankruptcy and the foreclosure lesson out and replaced it with a uh uh retirement lesson and a here's how investments work lesson. Uh compound interest, woo, and which is, you know,

5:50still for the general public causes their uh brains to to just go melt down in in a wonderful way the first time you see compound interest, right? And so, yeah, we that was called life after debt um in April. And uh four people came the first night. I sold three of them. So, for you digital people, I had a 75%

6:11conversion rate set up, right? But, um I'm telling you it was primitive. Overhead projector, bad suit, you know, that whole thing. And then we changed it to go to called it Financial Peace University the 5 months later in September, 6 months later. And now Financial Peace University's had 10 million people go through it

6:29and 50,000 churches have taught it. Unbelievable. So, for context, the services that you had was education with some level of service kind of like holding accountable or keeping them consistent on top of that. Which the reason that I I was really intent on talking to you was that in the space that we're in today, and obviously

6:49the the marketplace has changed a lot. Mhm. You have an education business. Mhm. And I would say that the vast majority of quote education businesses are not perceived as legitimate. Mhm. How do you think you've been able to anchor in it like it's it's very clear that Ramsey Solutions is a legitimate business, obviously. Um but what do you Why do you think that so many of them are not

7:14perceived that way? Um What's the gap? What are what are people missing there? I I honestly don't know. I I know that um in the financial world in general, um and I think most of your listeners and you and I will agree to this that that there's a lot of us I grew up in that world and and and I'm a nerd by nature and got a degree in finance for God's sake, and so I In other words, I thought the way to

7:40to everything was with the math. Mhm. And math treats the symptom Right. not the problem. And what our brand differentiator and it may be the difference in what you're talking about as well is that we did come to understand that it's a behavior problem. It's personal finances 80% behavior, 20% head knowledge. I've said that like I don't know 8 million

8:00times in 30 years. And um but it is. And the problem with my money is the guy in my mirror. If I can get him to behave, he can be skinny and rich. And we've talked about this all these lines. These riffs that we do. And we do them over and over and over and over and over again. And but it but but that's the differentiator. That's

8:16the thing that said, oh, yeah. Because I mean knowing how to do a budget is different than actually doing one. Knowing how to live on less than you make or that you should is different than actually doing it. Knowing that eating 73 donuts will make me fat is different than not eating 73 donuts,

8:34right? Yeah. Personal testimony. But the um but yeah, that that stuff I think that's the difference. And then what has happened is that if you go through and you do the stuff that we teach and we've got the systems in place to help you be held accountable to do it and encourage you when you're struggling and scared and hopeless um but if you're arrogant and prideful, either way we're going to be there in your grill saying we love you so much that you need to change. If you do the stuff and you actually make the changes due to the accountability that that you that cuz you keep doing what you've been doing,

9:12you're going to keep getting what you've been getting. So you got to change the recipe. So if you change the recipe, you have success. And lives transformed is legitimacy. That gives you legitimacy. And so in in other words, I don't know if they set out to be illegitimate. Mhm. But they didn't maybe they didn't have the uh the the the life wasn't actually

9:34changed. Mhm. You know, if I join a gym Yeah. and then I don't get anything out of that. Yeah. I don't have any weight loss, no increased muscle tone, no um you know, increased aerobic, whatever whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. If I don't get any of that, even if it's my fault,

9:52Yeah. it feels like the gym is illegitimate. I don't think the gym's necessarily illegitimate, but the results were illegitimate. And so then you get labeled that way. Yeah. And so I hear people say Dave Ramsey stuff doesn't work. The haters, right? I know. And it absolutely does not work unless you work it. Yeah.

10:09Like I guarantee that. I can make you that personal guarantee. Shifting back to the business, um explain to me how how the actual products we developed over time. So in the beginning you had the education and then you had the services that that layered on top of that. Was that the main thing for like a decade or and and like walk me through how you ended up scaling that. Was that all through media? Um we had the the

10:34yeah. Okay. The the radio show didn't make money for a decade. Mhm. Um because I don't pay you to do radio. Uh even today I don't get paid by radio stations. I have a a clock split with them. And so um and we didn't have anything to sell when we split the clock and so we didn't make any money. So whatever we put in the radio was lost

10:54dollars. Um but it was the megaphone. It was the uh the the the lead mechanism. Mhm. Uh okay. And so we we I started doing some speaking and then I thought, "Hey, we could do like a little public event in town because we were on only on the air in one town. But we so we went on the radio and announced and I think we had um I don't know 100 people or something come out and um paid us like 40 bucks or something to sit for 3 hours or 5 hours or whatever it was and listen to me yammer in my hillbilly twang about getting out of

11:25debt. And so we had the live events started to develop. Uh we had the little book, so we had a little bit of a publishing thing going. And we had the class itself, uh which was a long form, uh it's a combination of 12 step and curriculum, so to speak. Um and and and so radio, publishing, live events, those were the first and what becomes Financial Peace University were the first element Oh, and one-on-one coaching. One-on-one counseling, we called it in those days. We now call it

11:52financial coaching. Um so there's no confusion that we're not licensed therapists. Um cuz some people can't seem to It's not clear, but anyway, coaching is hard to mess that up. So, um yeah, so we do that, and each of those things grew at different rates. And so, there were different times in the 30 years that um Financial Peace University was bringing in the lion's share of the money. And then publishing would come up and pass

12:21it. Mhm. Uh live events has pretty much always been a slightly profitable, but really good secondary lead source. Okay. So, if you come to a live event, um because you heard us on the radio, it's going down the funnel, the marketing funnel, so to speak. And then they might buy Financial Peace University, which is, you know, a 9-week commitment, and a high, you know, instead of a $20 event ticket, it's a

12:44$80 to go through it, or whatever like. So, we were working that that and there were always books on the back table, too. So, uh and so, once those things worked and the book and we had a New York Times, you know, the book eventually evolved and was purchased by publisher and became our first New York Times bestseller. Um once that happened, and then we start doing a bunch of we start getting more and more radio stations and doing more and more media. So, instead of just doing the little local news guy, we actually, with the book tour for the first time, got on the Today show. And

13:15uh and then that opened up something, then that opened up something, and then pretty much been doing New York media for 25 years. Um obviously, all that's free, but it's lead generation. And so, if I were to say this back to you, the radio station served as the big megaphone to gather attention and then point it in a direction. And one of the places you'd point it in the earlier days was the live events, which functioned a little bit as a conversion event for you guys from a business perspective. And then those people would get funneled into whatever was appropriate for their budget, uh you know, either they'd buy some books or

13:48they'd buy the curriculum or they'd buy the curriculum and some one-on-one counsel or one-on-one financial coaching. Um and then that machine has been what you've continued to spin the wheel on and then gather more and more and more media and then and we've got more and more product mix now. I mean, we've got uh you know, we ended up uh I advertised for a stock brokerage firm. Um and then when I sent the leads, the people would go over there, the local broker that they went to would tell them to do stuff that I had just

14:18told them on the air not to do. And so, that didn't work. And um people are pissed off. And uh yeah, and so, we said, "Well, guys, y'all can't do that with the leads we send you." "Well, you can't tell us what to do." And I said, "I can tell you you can't advertise, so we're not going to be on the air." So,

14:35we dropped those folk. And um so, the product suite from there, that was the core initial product mix. And then what we did was uh we would hear about some need that was a a similar thing, but a finger off of that. So, for instance, a local coach at a Catholic high school was took my Financial Peace book and started teaching his seniors cuz they needed to

14:59know about personal finance. With and then called me up and goes, "Hey, I hope you don't mind." I'm like, "Well, I don't mind and I'm kind of complicated, but let's work together on this. Let me help." So, I went over and spoke to him a couple times. They're sweet kids and he's a great guy, too. Greg Carson, he's a friend of this day. That was And we ended up out of that developing a high school curriculum. This has now been taught in 48% of the high schools. 6 and 1/2 a kids have been through it. And so, um, you know, that was again another product line and that Ed Solutions is

15:26another department, if you will, inside of Ramsey today and pretty substantial revenues for high school, college, and even middle school, uh, curriculum. And and then, uh, you know, corporate America says, "Okay, we'd like for our employees to get this stuff." So, we take a modified version of the Financial Peace University that doesn't have as

15:44much of the Bible stuff in it. Yeah. Um, and we have to not violate, um, some HR rules and stuff. So, we had to change some of them, make it a little more of an L on different things. And, uh, it's called Smart Dollar. And, gosh, man, lots hun- I don't know, 10,000 companies have now taught it including big ones like U-Haul and, uh, uh, Costco. All of their employees have gone through it. So, that's a whole 'nother product line, but it's, you know, there So, there's the brand suite or the product suite continues to evolve, uh, as we look at different things where we can serve. Uh, we took

16:17over all the publishing and so, we do all our books now. Uh, self-published have for about a decade. How do you think about spinning out new products? Like what to do versus not like because there's obviously focus in a business, right? You have limited time and resources. Like how do you say this is going to be something we're going to just partner with someone on or this is something you something we're going to bring in house and actually own entirely or just not do it all and ignore and just let somebody make some extra cash

16:39on it and we just don't worry about it. Yeah, um, well, one thing we don't do is we don't, um, we have made a conscious philosophical decision to not sell financial products. So, we don't sell insurance, we don't sell investments, um, we don't sell real estate. We endorse people that do. Mhm. But, they don't work for us. They're advertisers of sorts, endorse- you know, our, uh, Ramsey trusted is what it falls under that brand. So, some of them are have ads on the podcast, some of them we say, "Go to the website and fill out a form and find the realtor we recommend

17:13in your area that's Ramsey trusted." That kind of thing. And so, that way, when I'm giving real estate advice, someone doesn't say, "Oh, he's just trying to get us to do that." Now, they still say, "He's trying to just get us to be a real estate lead." But, that's a different than he's trying to sell me a house, or he's trying to sell me a mutual fund. We

17:30don't endorse particular mutual funds. Uh and we don't um sell investments like that. So, you can't say the reason Dave does insurance is because or says term by term insurance is because he owns a term insurance firm, cuz I don't. And you know, one of the lies out there floating around is I own half of Churchill Mortgage, which I don't own a dime of. It'd have been nice if I had, and I'd have done really well. And I don't and I don't own half or some of uh Zander Insurance. They're both advertisers, been with me 26, 27 years consecutively. And um but, I don't own any of those. They're just They're

18:03They're They're friends of mine, but I've been doing business with them for three decades, and they do really well. And they do a great job for our listener. And so, those are media partnerships. So, they're sponsors, and that's how you contact them. That's all they are. I mean, they're just advertisers on the on the original talk radio show, which is now like you guys. I mean, you know, podcasting, YouTubes, and TikToks, and

18:22the whole thing. Everything. Yeah. What have been some of the major beliefs that you had to break along the journey from And if So, what's what's top line revenue today across all of the portfolio? I'm I'm calling it portfolio, I'm using my own language, but across Ramsey Solutions. Ramsey Solutions uh revs will be a

18:39little over 300 million this year. Okay. So, for context in terms of size here for my audience, 300, a lot. So, what what What were some of the cuz, you know, a lot of businesses grow, at least in my observation of businesses, is they're they're stepwise. It's they'll they'll grow, they'll grow, and they'll hit something, and then they stay there until they figure out whatever that thing was, and then they go super fast again, and then they hit another wall, and they keep going. What have been some of the, you know, two or three major pivot points in the business in terms of your lessons or beliefs that

19:10you had to reshape that allowed you to break through to new levels of growth. You know, I think because the product line was so diverse, um the different ones of those were stepping at different times Mhm. and it caused our actual revenue growth to not stair-step, but to be fairly smooth Interesting. on a curve.

19:34Got it. Um but like, you know, if it we went for instance to Financial Peace University, it went through different seasons where it would go wee and then it would stop and it would just sit, you know, and and we're kind of in one of those stop and sit modes now cuz we're making this transition uh from being primarily church distributed

19:49Okay. uh cuz churches aren't teaching classes like that in this current environment as much as they used to. Yeah. And so we've got to have a more direct-to-consumer uh digital uh distribution methodology and we're we're discovering that right now. So it's plateaued right now. Got it. Financial Peace University is awesome. It's excellent. But it's but from a business revenue perspective, business model, it's, you know, it's big spike

20:09would have been in the mid-2000s. Okay. I mean, it made woo, it went crazy up. And it was kind of like the 800-lb gorilla revenue-wise inside the building. And then it moved over to the other thing. So uh what are your question was not the stair-step question, your question was uh what are some milestones along the

20:26way? Like lessons, beliefs that you had to shift that allowed you to be an entrepreneur that could get to, I mean, 10 I mean, do you remember when you hit your first $10 million year, your first 30, and your first 100, and your first, you know, any any big changes that happened in you as a person that that you can denote and say, "I learned this and this is why we were able to

20:42break through that." Yeah, I I figured out um fairly early that um that organizations are not going to outgrow the character and uh intellectual capacity of their leadership. Uh primarily me. And so if I'm if I remain dumb in some of the areas I'm dumb in, then we're we're not going to be at 600 million, you know, I've got to or somebody else will be doing it and if they remain dumb, they can't you just can't do it. I mean, there's stuff you don't know and so I was a I grew up in a real estate household. Mom and daddy were in the real estate and real estate

21:23business and so I've been selling my whole life straight commission for me but self-employment is a I isn't my DNA. I don't I don't know how to think about working for someone. Uh and so I'm and when you would grow up in that world, you know, you learn to kill it and drag it home cuz you ain't got anything to eat if you don't kill something and drag it home and so

21:41um very tactical. Mhm. And so I couldn't spell strategic when we started. And we got large enough that we started hiring these things called MBAs and these people that actually had and now over the years I got a ton of MBAs on the team and I love the MBA programs, most of them that are out there. They do a really good job of teaching but one of the things I learn almost universally about MBAs, they are

22:04heavily steeped in strategic thought. Mhm. And so um the MBAs on our team and me about 20 years ago made a really good trade. Um they taught me how to think strategically cuz I didn't know how and I taught them how to work. So it was a good trade. And so would you say that basically them coming in and talking strategy was like

22:27a big unlock in terms of growth? critical thinking skills. I the way you solve a business problem. How do you you know, I would just go in there and go, "Okay, the answer is activity. Just go run into the wall enough times and the wall will fall down." Meanwhile, the MBA's standing over the side going, "Hey Dave, over here there's a tour. If you just walk around, you really I mean, you

22:45don't have to run into the stupid wall. This is dumb." And so cuz they're they're looking down on the maze, the labyrinth and can see the way through and I'm just going just get after it. Just get in there and hustle, you know, and you need to have both. You got to have the energy of the hustle and grind and the cuz when in doubt activity is the answer, but unfocused, unplanned activity is not always fun. It causes pain sometimes, too. So, we're much better at uh what my friend Jim Collins calls calibrated cannonballs now than just

23:20firing cannonballs. Would you From a branding perspective, because I think you've developed a really strong brand, what are what are some of the deliberate decisions you've had to make to associate with versus not associating with in order to continue to strengthen the brand, expand the media, because I would imagine like in the flywheel that is Ramsey Solutions, the media is a huge part of that. And so like what has been one of the big things that kept that wheel spinning and expanding compared to the many other people who try to to top you. I mean, even the people who try and

23:50get more audience, more eyeballs. Yeah. I uh I don't know. We discovered I don't know how we figured it out. It was accidental. I guess it was people getting pissed at us in the early days. We you know, like we would endorse something on the radio. Mhm. Just local te- local radio station and

24:08you know, go to such and such a car lot. Well, somebody go over there and think, "Oh, the guy tried to screw me, Dave." He'd call me up on the air or call me up at my house, you know, find me in the mall. You know, "You The guy you sent me to is a dadgum crook, Ramsey. And so now

24:19I can't trust you." Yeah. And um and I would lose the advertiser cuz I would have to cancel them cuz I was ashamed Yeah. of them. And so, somewhere along the doing stupid stuff like not vetting who we're going to associate our brand with, instead just buying it just Oh, we were so happy we had an ad sold, you know, we made a little revenue, my God. And then you figure out, "Hey, that that doesn't play well cuz you're destroying your credibility with the market." We figured

24:46out we were a trust brand. And uh radio endorsement taught us to be trustworthy. Worthy of trust. And uh so, we're very careful. Uh as a matter of fact, just a few minutes ago I came out of a meeting where I turned down two potential advertisers and sales team said, "We think we need to turn these down, but before we do it, it's a lot of money. We need to ask you." And I said, "Yeah, that that guy, if we put that guy on, he's going to that's going to cause our audience is not No, that's not okay. So, would you send your sister there? Would

25:15you send your mom there? Would you send your friend that you play softball with? You know, would you send them over there? And if they don't pass that acid test, we don't put them on the air. So, if I won't really buy it or I don't really believe someone should buy it for their own good, um I mean, like 100% of the things we advertise, I don't necessarily buy personally at my stage of life, but I'm not the market for them either. So, um uh but but I do believe in them and I believe they're good for you. And um sometimes we mess that up. We've

25:49endorsed things we shouldn't have endorsed in the early days. Even I mean, it's it's uh in in the last few years, I've had a really disastrous one that was a mess and it's caused me all kinds of problems. But, um you know, initially started out good and then turned bad and we didn't we didn't cut them off fast enough. Uh and it's our fault for not cutting them off, but we weren't doing it for money. We were we're trying to help people. And so, it's a trust brand. And so, no single relationship, advertiser, endorsement is uh it could not possibly give you enough revenue in our world

26:24Yeah. to offset the damage it will do if they don't take care of the customer. Yeah. Because people all we've got is trust. And if they don't trust us for that, they also aren't going to trust us when we tell them to get out of debt. They also not going to trust us when we tell them, "Hey, this is going to affect your marriage." You know, the the advice we give is no longer trustworthy if the endorsement is not trustworthy. So, the whole stinking thing ends up revolving around this word. And so, we spend a lot of time discussing and vetting and

26:52cheesecloth in the whole it's a mess. But yeah, it's it's okay. It's worth the effort. I agree. I'm with you on that. And I mean, I think that you know, at Equity Mates Network we've tried to do the the same kind of approach which is like how can we be as trustworthy as humanly possible because you know, we we do equity deals and so we have a huge vetting process and you know, 99.999% of the the audience I have will never do

27:14business with me. Um but I still need to treat you know, everyone so that the reputation which compounds is based on trust so that we can do deals over the long term. and just to be very transparent, it um it's emotional for me and most people in this building when that doesn't go right. When we mess that up somehow because we our intent is to never mess that up. And when it gets messed up, it hurts our feelings more

27:44than it does anybody's. My mentor of mine gave me this quote, you might like it. He said never risk the empire for a pot of gold. There it is. That's a great one. I love it. So speaking of pots of gold. So 300 million is where you're at right now. What do you see as the as the next thing to get you know, Ramsey Solutions to 600

28:02million? Like you were saying earlier. Like what's the what's the path forward there? Like what do you see as the strategic opportunity? What are you investing in right now? Um well we're seeing an explosion with our EveryDollar app for one thing. It's um it uh with minimal effort honestly has caught fire. So we're going to pour a little

28:25more gas on that while we're at it. We're going to put some effort into it since it's working. And we do think that Financial Peace University is going to stair step again. We've got to finish we've got to find that um methodology for delivering those age-old principles in a new in a new way. We are platform and delivery agnostic. I don't care how we get it to you, but we got to get it to you. And it's not inefficiently with the least friction possible so people actually do the stuff. And so, that that's there. Um Uh some things are going are logistically have um in the last, say, 20 of the 30 years

29:03have be not They didn't shrink, they grew, but they don't have the logistical ability to grow uh revenue-wise as much. An An example of that would be live events. Mhm. There's only so much of that you can do. And it doesn't it doesn't hockey stick. Right. You you cuz you you have a bottleneck of actual bodies on a stage. Yeah. And bodies to set the stage up and that kind of stuff. And number of cities you can actually draw a crowd in and that kind of thing. So, um the only way you could hockey stick that thing would be to run the prices where they were just not for

29:35the average guy. And our whole thing we do is for the average guy. So, um so, that's going to if they if it stays the same or grows at 5% and something else grew at 50%, it's going to get to be a smaller and smaller piece of the pie Right. mathematically. Yeah. Uh but not still not be something we're ashamed of. We love live events and I'm we're one of the biggest event companies

29:53in America. We do a great live events. But, um but it's going to end up that one's not probably going to be the answer. Um unless not streaming, yeah, could. Um It would have to monetize for the first time. Mhm. They suck on monetization. But, uh but it's good at getting information out there. Uh so, I uh um I we don't see hardcover books as being something that's going to hockey stick in the coming years. But, I do think they're going to continue to be a a

30:25valid part of the mix. Um so, it's probably more digital application and delivery because it's the easiest to scale and lowest cost of goods. And um and it uh more easily iterates than anything analog. And uh the rate of change uh exponentially increased in 30 years. Mhm. It used What What used to would take us 5 years to see unfold in the marketplace

30:51is unfolding in 5 or 10 weeks right now. Yeah. And um how fast entire social media platforms become irrelevant Mhm. is is kind of amazing. And so, you know, betting the whole thing on one delivery mechanism, woo, dumb. And so, um uh in my mind anyway. But, yeah, so so I think it whatever it is is going to like an app, like a budgeting app, or a delivery digitally of FPU, or delivery digitally of our Entre Leadership, which is our small business teaching and coaching, you can only have so many physical coaches for small business

31:31guys. Right. And that's got a limiting factor. Do I want 3,000 of those people in a building? No, I really don't. Yeah. I'd lot rather figure out another way to help you folk out there and that that is um not as manpower hungry. So, when you said the Every Dollar app just kind of like took off, is that like a micro example of how product iteration works for you? It's like, let's throw something together, let's see how it works, and then if it starts taking off disproportionately to like the effort, you say, "Okay, now we're going to

31:59invest more resources in it." Yeah, we put a huge amount of effort into building it and launching the initial. It was a major initiative and a push. And then it kind of you know, it it was had a good growth rate, but it really wasn't But, something shifted in the marketplace, I mean literally in the last 4 or 5 months.

32:18Okay. And the way the consumer is viscerally responding to the word budget Mhm. differently than they were certainly 10 years ago, but probably even 10 months ago. And so, when we developed things, so we're going to you know, we've always iterated it, we've always updated it, we've always made it better every time and all that kind of stuff, but um there just seems to be a some

32:41attention that we didn't cause. So, why not join the parade? Yeah, right. I think probably some of that's the the macroeconomic environment has changed a little bit in the last, you know, in that period of time. People are probably feeling the need for a budget. And it might be that I mean I think the product the the original launch on it was uh it's probably coming up on 10 years, you know, so

33:02Okay. and the um you know, the the number of people that are walking around adults that have have uh never lived in a world that wasn't a smartphone world Mhm. is much larger than it was 10 years ago. Yeah. And so the marketplace has shifted in that regard with the the the iPhone, the uh um whatever whatever smartphone is native to a much larger percentage of population than it was uh when it was launched. So, we may just be seeing that demographic shift and that um

33:35They're aging into it. Yeah, that because they you know, that age group, I mean, if you're 28, you you wouldn't ever think of doing a budget on paper. Right. It would not occur to you that that no more than you would handwrite a letter in cursive. You know, I mean, it's just absurd. So, but you know, when I started all this, that wasn't neither one of

33:55those was that unusual. Right. So, speaking of of of the app in particular as as a an increasingly large part of the pie. Mhm. Um how does it measure compared to the other pieces? Like just by percentage, you've got the events, you've got the education, you've got entreleadership, uh you've got the app, you've got the live events. Um like how how do how do how do those divide up in terms of

34:18uh like size for Ramsey Solutions? The Ramsey trusted items which includes national advertisers and uh the whole uh SmartVestor Pros, all the endorse all the people we endorse for um investing, all the real estate agents, all those there's about 8,000, 9,000 different people that we endorse for in different areas, tax, all that tax and real estate and investing through Ramsey trusted. And then you've got a singular national advertiser like a Churchill Mortgage for mortgages. That kind of thing. All that falls under Ramsey trusted. So that's a lot under there, but the the the national associations plus the strategic alliances we call them the the what used

34:59to be called the ELP program, probably amounts to 40% of the revenue. Really? And so not let it not putting on back to our earlier conversation, not putting on one that's bad Yeah. is a big deal there because you're going to mess up the whole thing, you know, you're going to mess up the empire with that singular bad pot of gold. And so we have to, you know, to be a real estate agent in Ramsey trusted, you really are really going to do the stuff we tell you to do or we're really not going to let you in there. I mean, it's a big deal, you know, and so cuz we love you and we

35:33love our customers and we want everybody to have a little love fest. We don't need anybody pissed off. So you're really going to do this stuff. So that's probably I think it's probably sitting at about 40% of the revs right now. But that's half that I've gone building too in terms of the 1,100 people that work

35:49here. Entre Leadership is probably 15% uh you know, something like that. Financial Peace University is probably 15% Every Dollar is 10% maybe or less. It's less than 10%. Um but they you know, they just kind of fall out like that. Publishing and live events together not that huge of revenue, but again, they're almost They're like middle of the funnel almost. Yeah, they're almost lead gathering things. So um I'm trying to think what else falls in

36:24that P&L, but just something like that. Those are the big ones. Yeah, those big rocks. How do you think about reallocating or reinvesting capital within the business versus taking it out of the business as an owner? Mhm. Well, we we uh don't randomly if we have something we can I can get more ROI here on something that we have a high belief

36:48in than I could anywhere else. Mhm. I mean, certainly on mutual funds or real estate. Right. I mean, I love mutual funds or real estate, but I mean, I get a thousand percent ROI on launching a product. Yeah. And I can't even approach that on this other stuff. So, uh I would rather deploy the capital here, uh but I don't need to deploy it stupidly. So,

37:07Mhm. um when in doubt, uh we take it home. And When in doubt, take it out. Yeah, yeah, that's it. And and plug it into the you know, plug it into generosity and plug it into some more real estate or mutual funds. So, um I'm going to I'm going to pivot a little bit on the on the investing side because I wanted to give you a something that you might not know, but you did a um a podcast with Graham Stephan, and he was

37:32fun. He's a great guy. Yeah. Graham's Graham's a nice guy. He's done He's done a great job, too, on his stuff, man. Yeah. He's following in your footsteps in a lot of ways. He's Well, he he's he's different, but I mean, he's doing He's good. He's We like him. Yeah. Graham's a good dude. And he showed you his investment

37:49uh portfolio. Oh, yeah. That's like a thing he does when he has people on. I'm like, I don't know, Graham. I don't know if I'm qualified to help you with that, but yeah. You said something to him that massively changed the direction of how we invested, just so you know. Yeah. So, I I just wanted to share that with you. So, I think you had said loosely, "Well, before I look at this, if this were your brain or your knowledge or your experiences, what percentage of this pie would you say is real estate versus stocks versus anything else?" And he said, "Well, I mean, cuz he'd asked you, "Do you

38:19think I'm over indexed on real estate?" But when you asked him the question, he said, "Well, I mean, I guess probably 85% of my knowledge is around real estate." And I think his portfolio kind of reflected that. You're like, "Well, then that's a perfect mix for you." And for me, as we were coming out of the of our liquidity event, we'd probably

38:34taken about 40 million home before that. Wow. Good for you. That's awesome. Not 300. It was 300 gross, dude. I know. You know the difference in gross and net? Um but anyways, we and so I had during while I was growing the business, I I basically just didn't really invest at all. I mean, I just put it in indexes and was like, "I'll deal with it later." Um and then we had the liquidity event and I had I talked to probably every guy that I know was who was richer than me and was like, "What should I do with all

39:04this?" And the answers that I got were as different as there are people under the sun. Yep. Which left me more confused than anything. And so, the reason that that little piece of advice that you gave to Graham was so meaningful for me was that it was personalized. Because everybody told me what they did.

39:21Mhm. And what had worked for them. But, you know, the one of the guys I asked was like, "Oh, take all that and buy one huge building." And I was like, "I don't know anything about I was like I really I don't want to risk everything on one building." He's like, "Well, I've been doing this 30 years. Like, that's what you should do." I was like, "But,

39:35I'm going to mess this up." That scares the crap out of me. Yeah, it's all Yeah, I have no idea I have tenants and termites and toilets and all that stuff. I have no idea how any of that stuff works, right? And so, when I thought back on when I looked at that pie and thought, "Okay, well, what's my knowledge space?" It was like, it's all business. Everything I've done has been business and all the money

39:53I've made has been business. And so, um I showed that clip to Layla, my wife, and I was like, "I think I think this is what we should do. I think we should just stick to business and just buy businesses and grow them." Ooh, I love it. I love it. That's what we did with acquisition.com is that we're

40:09Ah, good for you. That's a great Wow. But, that little piece of advice changed the direction of how I mean, how we allocate all of our assets and what we do because it's funny cuz what if I was going to write a $5 million check into a building, I I did I got like, you know, three or four deals that were around that size in terms of check size. And um I'd get all the way to the end and I was

40:29like, I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm just trusting that this is a good deal. Like I I had the Excel sheet and the, you know, projected returns and all that stuff and I was like, I don't feel good about this cuz I don't know. When on the flip side, if I'm going to write a $5 million check into a business, I feel fine about it because I'm like, oh, I know how like I know I

40:46I don't know everything obviously. No, but I mean, it's your it's your sandbox. Right. And so um anyways, That's beautiful. I love that. That's What what happened was we had a product that we called wealth coach for a little while. And uh we ended up doing these very small, but I don't know, we charged more than we ever charged, like a thousand bucks or something. We always charged 20 bucks so to come to this little seminars. And we would end up talking to these people that were millionaires or 5 million or 10 million. And I I kept asking them, okay, what do you put money

41:16into? Cuz they're they've actually done it. They had money. Like you've actually done it. You had money. And so it's not someone with a theory on TikTok, you know? And so um what I kept hearing from them was this array of all kinds of different things. So I couldn't It wasn't The answer to the question wasn't a certain investment made them rich. What it was was they put

41:37money in stuff they knew. Yeah. And I mean, one guy was a car dealer and he had a massive classic car collection, which for ego-driven person is a horrible idea. Right. But because because you can lose your butt in in any kind of collectible. But for somebody that is in the car business and his his grandfather had a dealership and he his father had a dealership and he had a he he knows that, loves it. He goes out in the garage and pets the cars. I mean, you know, so you guess what? He's making that portfolio seriously gave him a great return. Now, do I recommend to the general public go get a

42:13car? No. No, put money in stuff you understand and you love. And don't put money in stuff because it sounds fancy. Or somebody, you know, it sounds sophisticated cuz there's something happens when you get money. You think that everybody that has money is sophisticated about their investing. And what I figured out was almost no one is.

42:37Yeah. They're very primitive. I mean, a lot of people I talked to were farmers and you know what they got? Lots of land. They got dirt, man. That's it. Just dirt. And it don't even I mean, they don't even necessarily plant it, but they just buy dirt. And one guy had 8,000 acres of dirt, you know, and I'm like, God, in Kansas, you know, and I'm like, golly. I wouldn't even cuz I don't know anything about that kind of dirt. I like real estate, but that would scare me to death. Yeah. But it for him, it was the most comfortable natural thing in the world to your point. And so, I just

43:05learned that put money in stuff you love and you understand. Don't put money in stuff because it sounds sophisticated cuz you're getting ready to lose your butt cuz you're trusting some guy who doesn't have any money who's trying to sell you something. And driving a well, a bad car. And so, yeah. I won't name the bad car, but anyway, I mean, that's that's where that came from. It was just anecdotally hanging out with those folks and researching it and it gave me peace because I was starting to make bank for the first time and I'm like, I need to be like doing double backflip limited family partnerships or some kind of

43:39crap. I don't even know what they are, but I probably ought to be doing one if I'm making this kind of money and and then I and you talk to a guy and he's like, yeah, you ought to do a double backflip with a twist. And I'm like, yeah, but get right up to it and I'm going, you know, I don't half under No, I think I'd rather just bury it in the backyard than that cuz at least I know

43:54where it is, you know? It's funny though because even with the dirt example, there was a guy who his entire investment strategy explained in an interview. He's like, you guys are going to be bored about what we're going to do for the next 55 minutes cuz I can explain it in five. And we're like and I you know I'm listening I'm like okay here it you know here's it he said okay so what I do is I find a city and I find the main street cuz usually there's a a main street that goes through the middle of the state the oldest street whatever. He's like and

44:18then I take a ruler and I go out 30 miles. He's like and then I buy all that land. He's like and then I wait 20 YEARS.

44:32I LOVE THIS GUY. AND WHAT ARE THE WHAT ARE THE big He's like so what do you want to do with the rest of our time together? They're like so how do you hedge He's like oh I buy it in cash cuz you can't you know can't take loans on land and yeah that's that's what I do and we've been doing that for many many many many I had dinner with a guy the other night that had two billion dollar net worth and he's second gen but his dad was dirt doing dirt

44:57Mhm. not unlike what your friend was doing and um then he couldn't get the bank to do the deal he was borrowing money to do the dirt and so he bought the bank. It was a little hometown bank and they screwed with him and so he bought it. And he's like okay now they'll behave and um then he started making money on the bank and got in and got to figure out how bank and and now they own like 15 or 20,000 acres three wineries around the

45:26world and a whole bunch of banks. Bunch of community banks and they and they're billion multi-billionaires and so yeah but it started from that and they don't really do anything else is the wineries are more of a fun project I don't I think they know what they're doing with those probably the way he was

45:42talking. He knew wine and the uh but the but he knows banks and he knows dirt. And that's where all their money is. Yeah. And they're not diversified for having as much billions with an S you know I mean it's it's interesting. Those kind of people are enthralling to me. And it's interesting cuz most of of the billionaires that I have looked at, they usually make their money in one or two vehicles that they know exceedingly well where they feel like they have an unfair advantage and like they they they get there not because there's a marketplace advantage, but because they have an information advantage. They know it

46:15better. Exactly. Exactly. And if you go through the Forbes 400, I think it's 67% last time I looked are first gen. Mhm. They're all billionaires now. You don't qualify if you don't have a B. And um they're first gen and I think I looked at them uh of the first gens uh it was 90-something percent were

46:38business driven. Mhm. So, it was Michael Dell, you know, Bill Gates, Mhm. um Hobby Lobby, David Green, um Chick-fil-A, Truett Cathy, um you know, and so they started a business and it led to either they took it public or they just monetized the crap out of it and it just has a value marketplace valuation. Oprah,

46:58Yeah. you know, um but you know, the the secret of Oprah's wealth is not her celebrity status. It's the empire she built under the celebrity status. And so, um you know, you go down those things like that and you go, "Okay, you can get to 1 to 5 million dollar net worth with your 401k and your paid off

47:16home. Yeah. Um but you you know, mathematically impossible to get to a billion in your 401k. It's not possible to do it. Yeah. So, you got to do there's other strategies to be involved if you're going to do that. So, I wanted to take a quick second because uh it would it'd be hard for me to to to talk to Dave Ramsey without talking about debt. And um a lot of people So, in my audience, um I'm kind of debt agnostic. I don't talk much about it. Um but a lot of people don't know that I actually have no debt either. And so, everything I've bought

47:44to this point in my life has been cash. Now, I'm not against debt. I just kind of like talk about uh you know, when I get right at the edge of something, I just I end up not doing it. Um it's been that way with most kind of loan things in general. And I read uh financial or Total Money Makeover um years ago. And you had this line in there about debt that was I'm going to try and say it back to you as I understood it because there's there's obviously the big biblical component, but for everyone who might not believe in that um I wanted to give at least my rat my

48:17rational understanding of how you see it, which is that debt introduces risk. Mhm. And risk when it when compounded over a long enough time horizon, no matter how big a number you acquire, any number multiplied by zero is still zero. And so if you know that you're going to be playing this game for a very long time, even a small amount of risk when you're going 200 miles an hour can flip

48:36the car. Mhm. That was my understanding of how you saw debt. Mhm. Is that accurate? That's That's how I I saw it or at least I interpreted your view on debt. No, that line is actually from Warren Buffett. Um he in one of his his famous annual reports, they're they're very cheeky and fun to read and especially the opening paragraphs or so. In one of those, he was talking about in a down year like '08, um you know, we soon discover that leverage is not always your friend. And those of us that could do math realize that any number multiplied by zero is

49:08going to equal zero. Yeah. And that does that for you. So yeah, it's um again, having grown up in the real estate business, one thing you're going to do in the real estate business when I was growing up, if you said I'm going to be a real estate investor, they took you to the hospital, they took out your risk meter, and they broke it with

49:24a hammer. And they put it back in. You're not allowed to perceive risk if you're going to be a real estate guy cuz cuz it's every it's glass half full. We're eternal optimists. Everything's going to work out cuz real estate's always awesome. It's just awesomeness on parade. You can't mess this up. The renters will pay your rent. Oh god, that I'll pay your mortgage. You how can you mess this up? And you know, so if if a little bit of leverage is is good, then a lot of leverage is amazing. And uh

49:51that's how I went broke. Yeah. You know, I I leveraged up to my eyeballs on had a bunch of short-term notes and the bank called did the unthinkable and called my notes when they got sold to another bank and they saw a 26-year-old kid owed him a million two on a 90-day notes doing flips. This was before Chip and Joanna told us how to do it. And so and do a flip. Oh my god. And we didn't have HGTV channel to tell us how to fix up a house. I without cable TV I did this stuff. And so um Yeah, so that's where it came from. And

50:20then what happened to me because I lost everything following the borrow all you can because it works plan um I had to stop and go I think I've got a bad set of rules. The playbook I've got sucks. I keep losing. And and my kids are getting skinny. I mean, this is not working. So when I did that, the first as you said, the first door I went through was I was uh just become a Christian and so I started studying the Bible. And so from as a matter of faith, I started reading scriptures. And all the scriptures say negative things about that. It doesn't say it's a sin. It

51:00doesn't say you're going to hell, but it's stuff like the borrower's slave to the lender, you're a fool if you cosign. I mean, it says these things in scripture. And then you talk to old rich people and they go, "Well, you stay out of that, boy." You know, and okay, that's kind of grandma God's and grandma's ways of doing it. So, what did I miss in academia when I fell in love

51:19with leverage? Mhm. From an academic viewpoint, because how is it it's incongruent to me that if this book of wisdom and these people that are long in the tooth with gray hair that have proof, social proof, they've got money and they kept it are all saying avoid debt. What is it that we're missing in academic land with my intellect? So, spiritual, social proof Now I got to solve it intellectually. And what I ended up doing, I ended up speaking at uh Vanderbilt to a group of MBAs early in my career and it it it forced me to cuz I knew I was going to go in there and

51:55get tackled, right? You're primitive You believe the Bible. You know, you don't know anything and you don't know how to how to do math. And I know I know how to do math. As a matter of fact, it's about all I know how to do. I'm a math guy. So, what I figured out was was that in business debt or real estate debt, uh business is not

52:15publicly traded. Mhm. Um no one includes all the math. Mhm. They leave out a risk factor associated with that mathematically. And so, we look at a very inaccurate and primitive measure of leverage. And so, if I can borrow this money at 2% and I can invest it at 8 uh why am I not making six? Well, A, you left out inflation. B, you left out taxes. But aside from that, um and that's pretty basic cuz this is the argument. It's that it is that the

52:50argument is that primitive. Right. But you did not adjust for the risk you took on. Cuz I think we can all agree if you have a business that's doing $10 million top line and you've got uh $12 million in debt, you have a lot more risk than if you had $2 million in debt. And even $2 million is more risk than if you had zero debt. We can agree that

53:09debt is equal to risk. Mhm. And if we can agree to that, then we ought to be able to assign if we're going to really get down in the analytical jungle uh we can assign a mathematical formula to that. Well, ta-da, there is one. It already exists. We just never applied it in that. In the investment world, they teach us to adjust. You don't compare an aggressive growth stock mutual fund that has a high peaks and valleys on the graph volatile

53:35Mhm. with a growth and income fund which has almost no peaks and valleys. So, a growth and income fund may have a beta of a point eight, meaning it is only 80% as risky as the S&P. When you're comparing it to an aggressive growth stock mutual fund that might have a 2.0, meaning it's

53:58twice as volatile, risky. And so, in that world we're taught I mean, one of the first things you learn doing financial analysis in that world is the bet you use the beta as an inverse in the math and you and you flip it on its head and you multiply it through and you adjust for risk mathematically so that you can then say after you adjust for the volatility, the point eight versus the 2.0 versus the S&P as a 1.0 which is your baseline, when you adjust for that risk uh the perceived return of the aggressive growth stock mutual fund at 20% rate of return where the other one's making 11.2

54:34it goes away. It neutralizes it. And you might end up with with risk adjusted, that 11.2 will come up and the 20% will come down risk adjusted and then you can actually compare apples to apples, but you've risk adjusted for the volatility and mathematically. We don't do that in business. Right. We just go, "Oh, I want to buy a bulldozer. Let's go get 50,000 at the bank and I think I can do it. I think we can push some dirt and that that is your risk analysis. Well, kiss my butt. That is dumb, okay? And and people do that all the time and so, what I determined

55:09was is that I'm going to go if you want to compare two dry cleaners you know, one has debt, one doesn't, I've got to risk adjust for that mathematically and you have to apply a beta formula to that. I presented that to this group of MBAs and they're all sitting there with their jaws on their lap going, uh no one ever said that and I said it's cuz it's never been said. No one no one does it in the world. No one

55:30does No, you're not trained this way. You're trained that way in only one bucket of finance. All the other buckets of finance, zero real estate people do this. Zero. None. They do not analyze risk. And so, if you take risk out, then unlimited leverage right is logical. But if you say unlimited leverage, they go, "Oh, oh, not quite. Maybe 80%. Maybe a 70%. Maybe a LTV, right?" And uh you know, we But if you push them up to the edge, they can actually feel it a little bit cuz they there's a remnant of a risk meter in there, but it just doesn't function

56:05anymore. That's where that came from. Oh, I love it. Probably more than you wanted, but yeah. No, no, I I wanted to to kind of hear your take on it. And uh cuz obviously, you know, in the in the business acquisition world, there's also debt that's that's factored in. Now, we've done all all cash deals um up to this point. Um but I wanted to just kind of hear your take on it. Uh and I I quote Warren Buffett a lot. He's a big Yeah. But even even in the public traded realm, you know, if you we were taught and and still taught

56:33bonds are debt. Mhm. And so, if you're looking at a com- company with publicly traded stock, it has a heavy bond weight, Yeah. you discount the P to E. You you don't compare that stock apples to apples with a company has no bond rate. Zero bonds. They have zero debt. They don't have bank debt. They don't have short-term debt. They're sitting over there debt

56:51free. You you would give them some benefit on their stock analysis mathematically. We're taught to do that. But again, it does not transfer from the mutual fund world or the publicly traded world to the real estate world or the small business world. Small business uh privately held business. These guys don't even I mean, I know people that do you know, do have billion-dollar top line. And honestly, they don't even look at They just they just some of them a lot of them just don't borrow money. They don't even know why they don't borrow money. They just don't borrow money cuz somebody told them to one time and they go, "I like

57:24not being in debt. I can sleep better." And that's their entire analysis. You know? Uh me, I've got analysis and I can do the country boy thing, too, and say, "I just sleep Me, I've got analysis and I can do the country boy thing, too, and say I just sleep better. Bring on a pandemic. I got

57:44cash. Yeah. I I'll I'll I'll I'll bring us home cuz I had a and I could talk to you all day. Um and I appreciate you taking the time to to, you know, talk to me and the audience to game up you guys. It's fun. Fun conversation. If you had advice that you could and I'll I'll keep it specific to business advice um that you could give 40-year-old Dave, what would you tell him then that like you know now that you

58:09didn't know then?

58:15Play incremental long ball. Don't look for the home run. Um I keep waiting for somebody to call me and for this to get easy. One phone call and it's all over. And it's like, "Oh, now I don't have to think about it anymore. Someone else is going to do it for me. It's all automatic." It's never going to be

58:33automatic. It's never going to be easy. It's um It's a hustle and grind. It's a claw. You're going to make a bazillion mistakes. Make mistakes that are experiments that you survive. You put out a hypothesis. You survive the experiment to live another day to have another experiment. Put out another hypothesis, another product that fails, another idea that fails. And our failures at Ramsey are in new in number and in money are way greater than our successes. The only thing is we survive them. A, we didn't have debt and B, we never bet the farm on one horse. And so, from a diversification standpoint, we never pushed all the chips to the middle of

59:09the table on one hand. And so, we're not looking for the singular home run. Uh we're looking to survive and fight another day and keep iterating. And the the culmination of that uh the accumulated value of those iterations are what we call the gleaming mountain of success, which turns out as a pile of our community is a 100 gold 100 golden

59:31BBs, no silver bullets. There you go. That's the one. That's exactly you You know, you beat me to you That's much better than mine. I would have would have just gone with that, you know. It's the same thing. I keep waiting on the phone call, but I mean, it's never I had a couple of my thought was it, and then I was um found out they were just

59:46people, and they weren't magic. What's funny cuz I joke with our community cuz a lot of my community is small business owners, you know, probably, you know, from $100,000 a year to $100 million a year is probably like the the broad brushstroke of the people who are listening to this. Um and the biggest thing a lot of them suffer from is, you know, shiny object syndrome. Is that as soon as something starts to get hard, something new looks easy. And so, they jump from the hard thing to the easy thing, and really it's just uninformed optimism. And then they get into it, and

1:00:14then they have informed pessimism. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah, I mean, by the time it shines, you're late. You're late. It's too late. I mean, if you think TikTok is new, you're late. Yeah. It's already not new. It may have already turned down and we while we were talking right now. Well, I I mean, if if if we have a second, let me know. Um in terms of how cuz you've survived A survived is a strong word. Uh you've thrived uh platform agnostic. You know, you have you I mean, you were in radio, you've done live stuff, but then I see YouTube clips

1:00:53uh of your show pumping out every day. You guys crush it on YouTube, and you do it kind of your way. Um how have you thought about navigating platforms as they come and go, and how you kind of like reinvest in what Where Where are we going to make a bet and say, "Okay, we're going to start expending resources here." Or is it just

1:01:12if there's attention, we'll go there. Like how how do you think through that? Uh we try to go there, and then we expend resources based on um results. And so um the YouTube shorts that we've been pumping out is only about a year and a half old. And uh we're getting incredible results. Yeah. Uh but we're getting results on those as an example. Um we don't view those as life

1:01:37transformation items. Okay. We view them as lead magnets. Mhm. To lead you to the long-form show to Financial Peace University to a book which are life transformation items. So um they're um free advertisements that cause people to get a get a little sample. You you get a little little old lady standing at Costco with a sample biscuit, right?

1:01:58Okay. And so you get a little sample. And um uh you get a little sample biscuit and then you may go buy the whole thing in the freezer. Uh and but so we I would not do In other words, our philosophy on like changing lives is why we're here. We would not only do YouTube

1:02:15shorts because they don't change lives. Mhm. Okay. We would not only do uh the new long-form TikTok, 6 minutes, 7 minutes. We would not only do that. Uh cuz it won't change life. Um and so it's got to lead us somewhere and based on its response on doing that or just general activity around whatever the item is, whether it's a long-form or short-form. Uh it it is we're going to we're going to pour gas on where we're seeing stuff work. And you know, so we don't you know, for the last 2 years we put uh

1:02:48little to no effort in growing Twitter. Mhm. Um Tucker Carlson might change that. It may become a broadcast medium. Mhm. And um so we'll probably be on Twitter next week. Well, Elon's definitely pushing it. and he's going to but I mean, they're if it's not going to just be a uh a cauldron for trolls uh then um and it's actually going to put out some positive information uh in a way that is consumable and could grow and talk if if Elon proves that with Tucker, I mean we'll jump in there and try it right now. And all that is we're not going to put a ton of money on it or

1:03:23uh resources or bandwidth on it, but we're I this week we were discussing we're probably going to try it and talk what Tucker's doing and what Elon's doing with Tucker and with that whole idea of broadcasting there. Um because Facebook live is didn't work. I mean it's not working. No, not even on Um not from our perspective anyway. But we're still there. We're not we didn't abandon it, but we're not putting effort on it. Where YouTube shorts, yeah, we have a lot of people in this building

1:03:45working on that every day, yeah. You guys crank those. Yeah, they do. They put out a bunch of them. When you think about content for you, are you cuz you're recording 12 hours a week, correct? 4 days, 3 hours a day. Oh, 15 hours, okay. Well, counting commercials, yeah. We do we do 3-hour talk radio show every day. And is that the entirety of your kind of content creation and then the teams take all of that and disseminate it through

1:04:07all the the the channels? Uh I do a podcast that I just took over that's caller driven on leadership and small business called Entre Leadership. Took that over in January. That and the Ramsey show are the only two things I'm on. Mhm. But Ramsey Network has about 10 shows Mhm. that are YouTube and or radio and or I mean we put them on everything, but um I mean the Ken Coleman show is the only one that's on talk radio, 75 stations plus podcast plus YouTube. Um Delony at John Dr. John Delony has a huge show on podcast and YouTube only. Uh the Rachel Cruze with George Kamel, the Smart Money

1:04:46Happy Hour. And but we sawdust every one of those. Every one of those can say sawdust? Uh we're going to take uh pieces and clips and do all kinds of things with them. Instead of we don't go create uh well, I say very seldom do we go create a YouTube short of anyone in the building or anything in the building. It is clipped from something we were already doing. Mhm. So, it's repurposed uh content that was already developed

1:05:11for something else. You know, highly edited. Yeah. I I mean cuz I've I've observed what you're doing and thinking like how can how can we do even more of that kind of stuff? Lots of payroll. Payroll. Yeah. We're Our media is Um all right. Well, uh this has been phenomenal and uh I'm honestly just so grateful that uh they they had me and my team out here um to

1:05:36uh this is considered Ramsey Solutions? Is that what this would Yeah, they're we'd call it that. Ramsey Solutions studios, yeah. Um and uh just also so grateful for that one tiny tidbit that Wow, wow. I'm honored I had a tiny bit to do with all that you do, man. You're amazing. I'm proud proud of you. Well done. Means a lot. I appreciate it. Well, thanks so much for having coming on the game. And hopefully we'll do something in the

1:05:59You can count on it.