Following contains material from the book, EntreLeadership (Dave Ramsey).
Many musicians are unaware of the many benefits to studying the subject of leadership. We encourage students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to explore the multifaceted benefits to becoming an entrepreneur.
This is a book written, by the author’s own admission, from his experience in the marketplace. He purposely tries to stay away from ‘high-minded’ platitudes and theories, focusing on what has been proven in his own business.
“When you have a clear sense of ethics you can make decisions more easily and quickly. A simple principle we use is to ask if, when making this decision, the move causes you to lie or hide the truth (which is a type of lying).”
“When you force your thought process through another layer and verbalize your thoughts, you reach a higher level of understanding. This escalation of your thought process happens yet again when you write out your problem. Thoughts are one level, verbalization is another level, and by writing out a problem you have processed it once more.”
“What we discovered is that momentum is not a random lightning strike, but on the contrary it is actually created. The Momentum Theorem: focused intensity over time multiplied by God equals unstoppable momentum. Fi/T (G) = M.”
“Focused intensity at some level can be achieved by most people if and when they care enough about a certain outcome. However, few people can add the next element of the formula for very long- time…When you can find an individual who can stay focused with intensity on a certain task or subject for a whole year, you have a very unusual person and they will create such synergy in their lives that they likely can coast off the momentum for a while…If you can find someone who can stay on mission, on task, with focused intensity for an entire decade, I will show you someone who is world-class in their chosen area of endeavor. They are likely a national brand, or will be.”
We encourage students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to develop focused intensity in developing their craft, which always produces extraordinary results. It takes great patience, however, to achieve mastery.
“Slow and steady wins the race.”
“Timing is largely common sense, but it does require some research and understanding of the mind-set of your customer.”
“Your first version, and maybe even your fourth version may not be where you find success. Allow your idea to die and be reborn repeatedly; it will get better each time.”
“You can draw a huge crowd to your business, but if they have a bad experience they’ll spread the negative word about you. So make really sure your very best is ready before you go to market.”
“There is always a price paid in energy, time, money, and pain to succeed. You will only sacrifice when you passionately believe in the outcome.”
“Marketing dreams that come true equal an absolute explosion in the marketplace. Your sales and success soar. This kind of explosion almost never occurs randomly; it requires tremendous amounts of activity: lots of promotion, advertising, sales teams, and whatever else it takes to inject an energy into your market to create the potential for an explosion.”
Intentionality is always a key factor in achieving success, and we hope to inspire students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to be intentional in every stage of their development.
“The bottom line for businesses, according to Sinek, is that ‘people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have (the what). The goal is to do business with the people who believe what you believe (the why).”
“A pyramid scheme is illegal and is where no product or service is sold…The last-man rule is, if you were to extend the company’s success until the last man on earth joined the business, would it be over because they only make money from recruiting and never the sale of a product or service? If it would, this is illegal.”
“The most frustration type of incompetence I have dealt with is the person who gets their work done but never quite rings the excellence bell, and you come to realize they never will…ask yourself this about a problem team member: if you hadn’t hired them yet, would you hire them again?
“If you discover a character flaw like an integrity problem or stealing, the team member has to leave immediately, that day…I have zero tolerance for the mistreatment of ladies…I also won’t let a team member stay if they decide to have an affair. If their spouse can’t trust them, neither can I.”
“My friend John Maxwell, a great leadership author, says, ‘Sanctioned incompetence demoralizes.’ If you as a leader allow people to halfway do their jobs and don’t demand excellence as a prerequisite to keeping their job, you will create a culture of mediocrity.”
“We don’t keep jerks; life is too short to work with them and really way too short to pay them and work with them too.”
“My friend the great Zig Ziglar says, ‘Sales is nothing more than a transference of feeling. If you can make the customer feel the way you do about your product, then your customer will buy your product.’”
To make a sale, there are four steps: 1) Qualification, 2) Rapport, 3) Education/Information, 4) Close.
“Look at problem areas in your business or business model to see if you are trying to make a sale to an unqualified person…The packaging of your product and your graphics are what builds rapport…In addition to building rapport you can and should attempt to find common ground in two other ways. One is networking. You have instant rapport and common ground if a trusted person sent you….Just like real leaders aren’t pushy- they instead pull- a great salesperson pulls someone, serves someone through the process rather than pushes. There is a gentleness, while being proactive, in this approach.”
“Make very sure you love and believe in your product and your company. Please don’t’ sell Chevys when you drive a Honda. You have to believe, with great integrity, that the best possible thing from the customer’s perspective is for them to do business with you. This is called integrity. Never sell something to someone that you don’t believe they should buy.”
“In order to serve your customer with passion you have to know so much about the competitor that you know why you are better…our job as a believer in our product, who knows more about it than anyone, is to load the ‘value’ end of the scale so heavily with education and information that the value outweighs the ‘time and money’ end of the scale for the customer and the purchase naturally occurs…Sell and serve by describing the benefits, not the product. What the product does is what matters to the customer.”
“The pause, the moment of silence, literally gives birth to the sale. Be quiet, a baby sale is coming into the world.”
Ramsey advises that businesses should operate debt-free.
“Warren Buffett also says, ‘Be cautious when others are greedy and greedy (in a good way) when others are cautious.’ Buy stuff when it is on sale. But remember you can’t buy things on sale if you are one of the broke ones selling stuff.”
Regarding first steps in setting up your small business, Ramsey advises:
“Your first accounting step should be to open a separate checking account for the business. You don’t have to incorporate or get a tax ID number to do this. You can open a simple sole proprietorship account in the DBA (doing business as) form using your Social Security number. Your little checking account can read ‘Sally Jones DBA [doing business as] Sally’s Crafts.’ You don’t even need to purchase those big expensive business checks; you can use a simple little checkbook, like what’s used for a personal checking account…Then you should deposit every single dime of business income into that account. Never pay any business expenses except from this account, and only pay business expenses from this account. In other words, don’t use your personal finances to pay business expenses, and don’t use your business account to pay personal expenses. Income in, and expenses out, makes your checkbook register a simple profit and loss statement for cash-basis accounting.”
Ramsey identifies a key relationship between great companies and great communication.
“One of the great hallmarks of winning companies is they are very intentional and effective at communication…Communication is the grease in the gears…When the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, great frustration and distrust sets in…Lack of communication is caused by many things, but there are two main reasons for it: one, companies don’t make communication a priority, and two, leadership is so arrogant or fearful that they intentionally under-communicate. In either case the lack of communication starts to sow the seeds of discontent and distrust within the team….When the team doesn’t know what is going on in the company they are by definition not a team, so you end up with employees, not team members…Hiring the right team and then trusting them with information and trusting they have the emotional maturity to hear the whole story is one of the hallmarks of an EntreLeader.”
“People only allow themselves to be led when they feel valued and when they are treated with dignity.”
Regarding the power of recognition:
- Recognition is important.
- Recognition has no power if diluted by everyone getting the same recognition the same way.
- When people aren’t recognized and noticed they become inanimate.
- Where there is no recognition it is very difficult to have passionate, creative, motivated team members.
“Look for opportunities to brag on and give honor to people. Giving one-on-one praise is effective, but giving recognition in front of others is even more powerful. The most effective recognition is given in front of people who the person cares about.”
We do our best to show honor to each student in our music school in Odessa, Texas, stiving to let each student know how valuable they really are.
“Explosive, erratic behavior by leadership does not inspire; on the contrary, not knowing what to expect is one of the greatest causes of organization paralysis. When people can’t predict how you will react, they freeze and do nothing…Being predictable in matters of principle is a sign of deep integrity.”
“Trust is the basis for any relationship. The depth of the relationship, whether business or personal, is limited to the depth of trust.”
We extend trust to each student in our music school in Odessa, Texas, letting them know we believe they can and will succeed if they put in the effort.
“I want everyone to have a self-employed mentality, a sense of ownership, so they fight for the win. I am very happy to have commissioned people getting rich, and I am just as comfortable if they starve out due to their lack of work or effectiveness.”
“Delegating to broken people in a broken culture simply won’t work, no matter how talented they are.”
“For real delegation to grow you must have first prepared the field, and it still takes time and sweat to grow and harvest the crop…In order for an EntreLeader to successfully delegate, they must come to trust the team members’ integrity and competency. Wise people trust other people with big important things only to the extent they have spent time with them. The more important the delegation, the more time you will need to spend making sure the person gets it. ‘Important’ can be relative.”
“A number that has no fraction is a whole number. A life that has no fraction to it is a whole life. Integrity… is truly a life lived in wholeness, completeness…It is a pleasant experience to find confident people so comfortable in their own skin that no matter how much time you spend with them they are always the same.”
We endeavor to help students in our music school develop a sense of wholeness and completeness in their self-awareness, knowing that they are valued and that they have a great future.
“Don’t think because you hired talent that they are competent. Competency is more than just the simple ability to accomplish the task. Competency involves how the task was accomplished. How did all the people involved feel? Were all the problems handled right? Were all the downsides considered?”
This is a practical book about leadership and business, based on common sense principles. Most leadership principles in the book echoed things I already knew, but it is helpful to see them acted out in the business environment with successful results.