How to Get Rich [Full Interview with Dave Ramsey]

Bring on a PMIC. I got cash, that's how I went, bro. 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?

I 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, 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, on, in the marketplace of attention right now, I actually 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. Um, 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, you know, I'll use the term fake gurus, but a lot of people who haven't achieved, you know, a hundredth of the level of success that you have, that take a lot of shots and at you. And, you know, a lot specifically re your views 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 it's 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 decades. Yeah, a little over, yeah, three decades. Uh, and your overnight, uh, three-decade success. Yeah, for real, just in time to get old.

And 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 everything. Um, but because our audience is predominately business owners, I want to focus on how 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. Um, and even as you've kind of scaled the brand. So that's kind of the direction. Okay, that works. Sure. Okay.

So, um, can you give a little bit of background in terms of how, uh, 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 model at that time, and like, what has it evolved into?

Well, um, all of it started, uh, extremely primitive. I mean, like, one plus one equals two, barely, you know, kind of thing. And, uh, so, like, for instance, we started, I, I went down there as a talk radio show or talk radio station in Nashville at the time 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, um, he said, "Hey, I hear you're helping people with your for with foreclosures and helping them stop getting their car repoed, or if they're having financial trouble over at your church, are you doing that?" And I said, "I'm just kind of doing that for fun, just to help folks as a ministry at the church." And he goes, "Well, if you got any questions about that, call up." And the phone rang, and he never got any phone calls. He didn't know what to do, didn't even know how to put the guy on the air. And so, um, he said, "Hey, come back, let's do that again because the phone never rings." And so I went, I did it like two times, and then he quit. And we went down and talked that guy, that that was running that station 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, uh, in a really heavy hillbilly twang. WWTN, you're talking Nashville, y'all call in. I mean, it was, it was nasty, buddy. I'm telling you, it was nasty. And, uh, but the information was good, and the phone rang, yeah, from the very first day.

At at 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 I self-published it. Carry it home in the trunk of my car. Got, uh, copies. And I went on the radio and said, "Hey, y'all get my book." And, um, some people did. And, uh, and 18 months later, Ed, 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-square-foot month-to-month rent. And me and another guy, the other 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 actually 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 things. And the 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 name 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 here's how investments work lesson, compound interest. Whoa. And which is, you know, still for the general public, causes their, uh, brains to just go melt down in in a wonderful way the first time you see compound interest, right? Yeah. 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% conversion rate. Cut 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 called it Financial Peace University, the five months later, in September, six months later. And now Financial Peace University's had 10 million people go through it in 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 the the marketplace has changed a lot. You have an education business, 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 perceived 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 I'm a nerd by nature, and got a degree in finance, for God's sakes. And so I, in other words, I thought the way to fix 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 times 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 the 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, right? 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, way, we're going to be there in your grill, uh, saying, "We love you so much that you need to change." If you do this stuff and you actually make the changes due to the accountability, that that that because if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're 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, but they didn't, maybe they didn't have the, uh, the, this, the life wasn't actually changed. 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, yeah, it feels like the gym is illegitimate. I don't think the gym is 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? And it absolutely does not work unless you're working. Yeah. Like I guarantee that I can make you that personal guarantee.

Shifting back to the business, um, explain to me how, how the actual product suite 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? And, and, like, walk me through how you ended up scaling that. Was that all through media?

We had the, okay, the radio show didn't make money for a decade. Mhm. Because they 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 radio was lost dollars. Um, but it was the megaphone. It was the, uh, 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. But 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 three hours or five hours or whatever it was and listen to me yammer in my hillbilly twang about getting out of debt. And so we had live events started to develop. We had the little book, so we had a little bit of a publishing thing going. And we had the class itself, uh, which is a long-form, uh, it's a combination of 12-episode curriculum, so to speak. Um, a, and, and so radio, publishing, live events, those were the first. And what becomes Financial Peace University. We're the first, uh, oh, and one-on-one coaching, one-on-one counseling, we called it in those days. We now call it financial coaching. Um, so there's no confusion that we're not licensed therapists. 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 it. Uh, live events is pretty much always been a slightly profitable but really good second 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 nine-week commitment and a high, you know, instead of a $20 event ticket, it's $80 to go through it or whatever that. 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, then we had a New York Times, you know, the book eventually evolved and was purchased by a publisher and became our first New York Times bestseller. Um, once that happened, and then we started doing a bunch of, we started 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, the first time got on the Today Show. And, uh, 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 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 they'd buy the curriculum, or they'd buy the curriculum and some one-on-one counsel, um, one-on-one financial coaching. Um, and then that machine has been what you've continued to spin the wheel on and gathering more and more and more media.

Yeah, we, 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 told them on the air not to do. And so that didn't work. And, um, people are pissed off. And, uh, 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 we dropped those folks. And, um, so the product suite from there, that was the core initial product mix. And then what we did was, 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 because they need to know 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. There, sweet kids, and he's a great guy, Greg Carson. He's a friend of this day. That was, and we ended up out of that developing a high school curriculum that's now been taught in 48% of the high schools. Six and a half million kids have been through it. And so, um, you know, that was again, another product line that Ed Solutions is another 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 much of the Bible stuff in it. Um, and we have to not violate, um, some HR rules and stuff. So we had to change some of, make it a little more of an, uh, on different things. And, uh, it's called SmartDollar. And gosh, man, lots. 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 another product line, but it's, you know, there it, so the the brand suite or the product suite continues to evolve, uh, as we look at different things where we can serve. Uh, we took over all the publishing. And so we do all our books now, self-published, have for about a decade.

How do you think about spinning out new products? Like, what to do versus like, because there's obviously focus in a business, right? You have limited time, resources. Like, how do you say, "This is going to be something we're going to just partner with someone on, or this is going to be something we're going to bring in-house and actually own entirely, or just not do it at all and ignore and just let somebody make some extra cash on 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 our Ramsey Trusted, is what it falls under that brand. So some of them have ads on the podcast, some of them we say, "Go to the website and fill out a form, you find the realtor we recommend in 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, "Yeah, he's trying to just get us to be a real estate lead." But that's different than he's trying to sell me a house, or he's trying to sell me a mutual fund. We don'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, because 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. It'd have been nice if I had, they've done really well, and I don't. And I own half or some of Xander Insurance, or both advertisers have been with me 26, 27 years consecutively. Um, but I don't own any of those. They're just, they'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 a listener. And so those are media partnerships. They're sponsors. And that's how you, sponsors, 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, podcast and YouTubes and TikToks and everything. Yeah.

What have been some of the major beliefs that you had to break along on the journey from? And if so, what's, what's topline revenue today across all of the portfolio? I'm calling portfolio, I'm using my own language, but across Ramsey Solutions.

Ramsey Solutions, uh, revs will be a little over 300 million this year. Okay.

So for context, in terms of size here for my audience, 300 is a lot. Uh, so what, what, what were some of the, because, 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 then they'll hit something and they'll 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 would have been some of the, you know, two or three major pivot points in the business in terms of your lessons or beliefs that you had to reshape that allowed you to break through to new levels of growth?

You know, I think because the product line was so, uh, diverse, uh, 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 on a curve. Interesting. On a curve. Got it. But like, you know, if we went, for instance, to Financial Peace University, it went through different seasons where it would go, and then it would stop, and it would just sit. You know, and we're kind of in one of those stop and sit modes now because we're making this transition, uh, from being primarily church distributed, okay, uh, because churches aren't teaching classes like that in this current environment as much as they used to. And so we've got to have a more direct consumer, uh, digital, uh, distribution methodology. And we're, we're discovering that right now. So it's plateaued right now. Got it. Financial University is awesome. It's excellent. But it's, but from a business revenue perspective, business model, it's, you know, its big spike would have been the mid-2000s. Okay. I mean, it made, woo, it went crazy up. And it was kind of like the 800-pound gorilla revenue-wise inside the building. And then it moved over to the other thing. So, uh, what are your question is not the stair-step question. Your question was, uh, uh, what are some milestones along the way, like lessons, belief shifts 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 break 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, um, 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 a, 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 a residential real estate business. And so I've been selling my whole life, straight commission. For me, self-employment is my DNA. I don't, I don't know how to think about working for someone. Uh, so, and when you grow up in that world, you know, you learn to kill it and drag it home because you ain't got anything to eat if you don't kill something and drag it home. And so, um, 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, uh, now over the years, I've 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 learned almost universally about MBAs, they are heavily steeped in strategic thought. And so, the MBA on our team and me, about, uh, 20 years ago, made a really good trade. Um, they taught me how to think strategically because I didn't know how, and I taught them how to work. So it was a good trade.

And would you say that basically them coming in and talking strategy was a, like a big unlock in terms of growth, critical thinking skills? 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 standing over the side going, "Hey, Dave, over here, there's a door if you just walk around. I mean, you don't have to run into the stupid wall. This is dumb." And so, uh, because 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, uh, because when in doubt, activity is the answer. But, uh, unfocused, unplanned activity is, um, 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 firing 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 trying to get more audience, more earballs.

Yeah, I, 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, just local T local radio station, and, you know, go to such and such a car lot. Well, somebody would go over there and they'd go, "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 and go, "You, the guy you sent me to is a d-gum crook, Ramsey." And so now I can't trust you. Yeah. And, um, and I would lose the advertiser because I would have to cancel them because I was ashamed, yeah, of the. And, uh, so somewhere along the doing stupid stuff like not vetting who we're going to associate our brand with, uh, instead of just buying, 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 that doesn't play well because you're destroying your credibility with the market. We figured out 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 the sales team said, "We think we need to turn these down, but before we do, it's a lot of money. We need to, uh, ask you." And I said, "Yeah, that, that guy, if we put that guy on, he's going to, it's going to cause our audience, no, that's not so." Would you send your sister there? Would you send your mom there? Would you send your friend that you play softball with? Uh, 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, Mhm, 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, but, but I do believe in them, and I believe they're good for you. And, um, sometimes we've messed that up. We've endorsed things we shouldn't have endorsed in the early days. Even, I mean, it's, uh, uh, in the last few years, I've had a really disastrous one that was mess, 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 that'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 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're 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, uh, so we spend a lot of time discussing and vetting and, uh, sheesh, closing the holy, 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 acquisition.com, we tried to do the the same kind of approach, which is like, how can we be as trustworthy as possible? Because, you know, we do equity deals. And so, yeah, we have a huge vetting process. And, you know, 99.999% of the the audience I have will never do business with me. 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, uh, transparent, it, um, it's emotional for me and most people in this building when that doesn't go right. Yeah. 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 than it does anybody's. A mentor of mine gave me this quote, you might like it. He said, uh, "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 million? 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, uh, 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 more gas on that while we're at it. We're going to put some effort into it since it's working. And, um, we do think that Financial Peace University is going to stair-step again. And we've got to finish, we got to find that, um, methodology for delivering those age-old principles in a new way, in a new way. We are a platform and delivery agnostic. Mhm. I don't care how we get it to you, but we got to get it to you. And it's not, and efficiently, 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, uh, in the last say, 20 of the 30 years have, not they didn't shrink, they grew, but they don't have the logistical ability to grow, revenue-wise, as much. An example that would be live events. There's only so much of that you can do. And it doesn't, it doesn't hockey stick, right? You, you, because you, you have a bottleneck, 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 the average guy. And our whole thing we do is for the average guy. So, um, so that's going to, if the, if it stays the same or grows at 5%, and something else grows at 50%, it's going to get to be a smaller and smaller piece of the pie, right, mathematically. 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 in America. We do great live events. But, uh, but it's going to end up that that one's not probably going to be the answer, um, unless, now, streaming could, um, it would have to monetize for the first time, but they suck on monetization. But, uh, uh, but it's good at getting information out there. Uh, so I, uh, um, I, we don't see hard cover books as being something that's going to hockey stick, uh, in the coming years, but I do think they're going to continue to be a a valid part of the mix. Um, so it's probably more, uh, 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, has exponentially increased in 30 years. Mhm. It used, what used to would take us five years to see unfold in the marketplace is unfolding in five or 10 weeks right now. Yeah. And, um, how fast, uh, entire social media platforms become irrelevant, m, is is kind of amazing. And, uh, so, you know, betting the whole thing on one delivery mechanism, uh, woo, dumb. And so, uh, in my mind, anyway. But, yeah, so, so I think whatever it is, is going to be 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, uh, teaching and coaching. You know, only have so many physical coaches for small business guys, right? And that's got a limiting factor. Do I want 3,000 of those people on a building? No, I really don't. Uh, I'd lot rather figure out another way to help you folks out there. And, uh, that that is, um, not as manpower hungry.

So when you said the EveryDollar app just kind of like took off, is that like a micro example of how product iteration works for you? 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 invest more resources in it?"

Yeah, we put a huge amount of effort into building it and launching the initial. Yeah. Um, it was a major initiative and a push, and then it kind of, you know, it, it's had a good growth rate, but it really wasn't. But something shifted in the marketplace. I mean, literally last four or five months, right? Uh, and the way the consumer, uh, is viscerally responding to the word "budget." Mhm. Differently than they were, certainly, uh, 10 years ago, but probably even 10 months ago. And so when we develop 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, uh, some attention that we didn't cause. So why not join the parade, 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 original launch on it was, uh, it's probably coming up on 10 years, you know, so. Okay. 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 is much larger than it was 10 years ago. Yeah. And so the marketplace has shifted in that regard. But the the the iPhone, the, uh, um, whatever, whatever smartphone is native to a much larger percentage of the population than it was, uh, when it was launched. So we may just be seeing that demographic shift and that, um, they aging into it. Yeah, 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 could no more than you would handwrite a letter in cursive, you know, I mean, it's just absurd. But, you know, when I started all this, that wasn't, neither one of those was that unusual, right?

So speaking of of the app in particular, as as an increasingly large part of the pie, 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 Entre Leadership, uh, you've got the app, you've got the live events. Like, how, how do, how do those divide up in terms of, uh, like size for Ramsey Solutions?

The Ramsey Trusted items, which includes national advertisers and the whole, uh, SmartVestor Pro, all the endorsed, all the people we endorse for, investing, all the real estate agents, all the, there's about 8,000, 9,000 different, uh, people that we endorse for in different areas, tax, all that tax and, uh, real estate and investing, uh, through Ramsey Trusted. And then you've got a singular national advertiser like a church on mortgage for mortgages. All that falls under Ramsey Trusted. So that's a lot under there. But the, the, uh, the national, uh, associations plus the strategic alliances, as we call them, the, what used to be called the ELP program, probably amounts to 40% of the revenue. Really. Um, and so, not let, 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 and Ramsey Trusted, you really are, we're 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 love 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, uh, uh, probably, uh, I think it's probably sitting at about 40% of the revs right now, but that's half the ad gun building too, in terms of the 1100 people that work here. Entre Leadership is probably, uh, 15%, uh, you know, something like that. Uh, Financial Peace University is probably 15%. Uh, you know, uh, EveryDollar is 10% maybe, or less. It's less than 10%. Um, but they know they just kind of fall out like that. Publishing and live events together, not that huge revenue, but again, they're almost middle, yeah, they're almost lead gathering things. So, um, I'm trying to think what else falling in that P&L, but just something like that. Those are the big ones. That's rocks.

How do you think about reallocating or reinvesting capital within the business versus taking it out of the business as an owner?

Well, 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 in than I could anywhere else. I mean, certainly on mutual funds or real estate. I mean, I love mutual funds or real estate, but I mean, I can get a thousand percent ROI on launching a, and I can't even approach that on this other stuff. So I would rather deploy the capital here. But I don't need to deploy it stupidly. So, um, when in doubt, uh, we take it home. And, uh, when in doubt, take it out. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And, and plug it into the, you know, plug it into the 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 something that you might not know. But you did a, um, a podcast with Graham Stephan, and he was fun. 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. He's followed in your footsteps in a lot of ways. Well, 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, uh, 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." 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, because he had asked you, 'Do you think 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 were 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 had probably taken about $40 million home before that. Wow. Good for you. That's awesome. It's not 300. That 300's gross, dude. I know. You know the difference in gross and net. And, um, but anyways, 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 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 this?" 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. Mhm. And what had worked for them. But, you know, 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 like, "But I'm gonna mess this up. That scares the crap out of me." Yeah. Yeah. I have no tenants and termites and toilets and all that. I have no idea 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 base?" It was like, it's all business. Everything I've done has been business, and all the money I've made has been business. And so, um, I showed that clip to Lila, my wife. 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." I love it. I love it. That's what we did with acquisition.com. Is that 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. Because if I was going to write a $5 million check into a building, I, I, 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 like, I don't know what I'm doing and I'm just trusting that this is a good deal. Like I had the Excel sheet and the, you know, projector returns and all this stuff. And I was like, I don't feel good about this because I don't know.

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 don't know everything, obviously. Millions of things. It's, 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 kept asking them, okay, what do you put money into? 'Cause 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 money in stuff they knew.

Yeah. And I mean, one guy was a car dealer and he had a massive classic car collection, which for an ego-driven person is a horrible idea, right? But because, because you can lose your butt in any kind of collectible. Yeah. 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 guess what? He's making that portfolio seriously gave him a great return. Now, do I recommend to the general public, go get a car? No. No. Put money in stuff you understand and you love. And, uh, don't put money in stuff because it sounds fancy. Um, or somebody, you know, it sounds sophisticated. 'Cause 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 is almost no one is. Yeah. They're very primitive. I mean, a lot of people I talked to were farmers. And you know what they about? 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? I'm like, God, in Kansas, you know? I'm like, golly, I wouldn't need more. Good. I don't know anything about that kind of dirt. I like real estate, but that would scare me to death. But for him, it was the most comfortable, natural thing in the world. To your point. And so I just learned that put money in stuff you love and you understand. Don't put money in stuff because it sounds sophisticated. Because you're getting ready to lose your butt. Because you're trusting some guy who doesn't have any money who's trying to sell you something. And, um, driving a well, a bad car. And, um, so yeah. Uh, we won't name the bad car. But anyway. Yeah. I mean, that, that's, that's where that came from 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 crap 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, n-yeah. But get right up to it. And I'm going, you know, I don't half. No, I think I'd rather just bury it in the backyard than that. Because at least I know where it is, you know?

It's funny though, because even with the dirt example, um, 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 because I can explain it in five. And we're like, and you know, I'm listening. I'm like, okay, here, you know, here's it. He's like, okay, so what I do is I find a city and I find the main street because usually there's a, a main street that goes through the middle of the state, the oldest street, whatever it's like. And 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. [Laughter] I love this guy. And what are, what are the big, any questions? Yeah. He's like, so what do you want to do with the rest of our time together? They're like, so how do you head? He's like, oh, buy in cash because you can't, you know, can't take loans on land. And, uh, yeah, that's, that's what I do. And we've been doing that for many, many, many.

I did with a guy the other night that had $2 billion net worth. And he's second gen, but his dad was dirt doing dirt. Mhm. 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, got in, got to figure out how banking. And, and now they own like 15 or 20,000 acres, three wineries around the world, 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. It's 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 talking, he knew wine. And, um, the, uh, but the, uh, but he knows banks. He knows dirt. And that's where all their money is. Yeah. And they're, 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 because most of, of the, 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 better. 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, their first gen. And I think I looked at them, of the first gens, uh, it was 90-something percent were business-driven. MH. So it was Michael Dell, you know, Bill Gates, 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 crud out of it and it just has a value, marketplace valuation. Oprah, you know, um, but, you know, 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 one to 5 million net worth with your 401k and your paid-off home. Yeah. Uh, but you, you know, mathematically impossible to get to a billion in your 401k. It's not possible to do it. 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 bought to this point in my life has been cash. Now, I'm not against that. 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 biblical component. But for everyone who might not believe in that, um, I wanted to give at least my ra, my rational understanding of how you see it. Which is that debt introduces risk. MH. And risk, when it, when compounded over a long enough time horizon, no matter how big a number, you require 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 the car. MH. That was my understanding of how you saw debt. MH. Is that accurate?

That's, that's how I, I saw it or at least I interpreted your view on debt. Yeah. That line is actually from Warren Buffett. He, uh, and one of his his famous annual reports. They're very cheeky and fun to read. And especially the opening paragraph. 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. Those of us that could do math realize that any number multiplied by zero is going to equal zero. 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 a 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, and 'cause it's every, it's a glass half full. We're eternal optimists. Everything's going to work out. 'Cause 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 or pay your mortgage. You, how can you mess this up? And, you know, so if a little bit of leverage is good, then a lot of leverage is amazing. And, uh, and that's how I went broke. Yeah. You know, I leveraged up to my eyeballs on, had a bunch of short-term notes in 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 them a million two on a 90-day notes doing flips. This was before Chip and Joanna told us how to do it. And so do a flip. Oh my God. And we didn't have HGTV to 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 then 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, uh, I think I've got a bad set of rules. The playbook I've got sucks. I keep losing. And my kids are getting skinny. I mean, this is not working. So when I did that, the first, as you said, the first, uh, door I went through was I was had 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. Doesn't say you're going to hell. But it's stuff like the borrower slave to the lender. You're a fool if you co-sign. I mean, it says these things in scripture. And then you talk to old rich people and they go, well, you stay out of debt, 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 with leverage from an academic viewpoint? Because how is it, it's incongruent to me that if this book of wisdom and these people, M, 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 forced me to, because I knew I was going to go in there and get tackled, right? Because they're going to go, you're primitive. You believe the Bible. You know, you don't know anything. And you don't know 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 publicly traded. Um, no one includes all the math. Mhm. They leave out a risk factor associated with debt 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 eight, uh, why am I not making six? Well, A, you left out inflation. B, you left out taxes. But aside from that, um, and, and that's pretty basic. Because this is the argument, it's that, it is that the argument is that primitive, right? But you did not adjust for the risk you took on. Because think, we can all agree, if you have a business that's doing $10 million topline 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 debt is equal to risk. And if we can agree to that, then we ought to be able to assign, if we're going to get down in the analytical jungle, uh, we can assign a mathematical formula to that. Well, tada, there is one. It already exists. We just never applied it in that. In the investment world, they teach us, M, to adjust. You don't compare an aggressive growth stock mutual fund that has a high peaks and valleys on the graph, volatile, 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 0.8, meaning it is only 80% as risky as the S&P. When you're comparing it to, uh, an aggressive growth stock mutual fund that might have a 2.0, meaning it's twice as volatile, risky. MH. 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, 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 0.8 versus the 2.0 versus the S&P is a 1.0, it's 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, it goes away. It neutralizes it. And you might end up with, with, uh, 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. Yeah. 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 was is that I'm going to go, I, 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. That I presented that to this group of MBAs and they're all sitting there with their jaws on the lap going, uh, no one ever said that. I said, it's because it's never been said. No one, no one does it in the world. No one, no, you're not trained this way. You're trained that way. And 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 an LTV, right? And, you know, but if you push them up to the edge, they can actually feel it a little bit. 'Cause they, there's a remnant of a risk meter in there. But it just doesn't function anymore. That's where that came from. Oh, I love it. Probably more than you wanted. But yeah.

No, no. I wanted to, uh, to kind of hear your take on it. And, uh, because obviously, you know, in the business acquisition world, there's also debt that's factored in. Now, we've done all, all cash deals, um, up to this point, 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 publicly traded realm, you know, if you, we were taught and still taught bonds are debt. Mhm. And so if you're looking at a company with publicly traded stock, it has a heavy bond weight, yeah. You discount the P/E. You, you don't compare that stock apples to apples with a company that 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-free. 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, don't even, I mean, I know people that do, you know, have a billion dollar topline and honestly, they don't even look at it. They just, some of 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 'cause somebody told them to one time. And they go, I like not 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 better. Bring on a pandemic. I got cash. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll bring this home. Because 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. The game's been honored. It's fun. Fun conversation. If you had advice that you could, and I, I'll keep it specific to business advice, that you could give for a 40-year-old Dave, what would you tell him then that, like, you know, now that you didn't know then?

Play 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 automatic. 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, in number and in money, are way greater than our successes. The only thing is we survived 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 the 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 garbage and mistakes that you're just standing on rather than laying under it.

I love that. Uh, one of the say that we have in our community is 100 golden, 100 golden, no silver bullets. There you go. That's one. That's exact. You know, you beat me to that. That's much better than mine. I 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 them, I thought was it. And then I was, um, found out they were just people and they weren't magic.

What's funny because I joke with our community because a lot of my community is small business owners, you know, probably, you know, from $100,000 a year to $1 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 then they have informed pessimism.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, by the time it shines, you're light, you're, 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 mean, if, if we have a second, let me know, um, in terms of how, because you've survived, survived a strong word, you've thrived, platform agnostic, you know, you have, I mean, you were in radio, you've done live stuff, but then I see YouTube clips, uh, of your show pumping out every day. You guys crush it on YouTube. And you do it kind of your way. How have you thought about navigating platforms as they come and go? And how you kind of like reinvest in where, where are we going to make a bet and say, okay, we're going to start expending resources here? Or is it just, if 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 been pumping out is only about a year and a half old. And, uh, we're getting incredible results. Uh, but we're getting results on those as an example. Um, we don't view those as life transformation items, okay? We view them as lead magnets. MH. 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. Get little, little old ladies stand in Costco with a sample biscuit. Right? And so get a little sample. And, um, uh, get a little sample biscuit. And then you may go buy the whole thing in the freezer. Uh, but so we, I would not do, in other words, our philosophy on changing lives is, while we're here, we would not only do YouTube Shorts because they don't change lives. MH. Okay? We would not only do, uh, the new long-form TikTok, six minutes, seven minutes, we would not only do that, because 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 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 two years, we put, uh, little to no effort in growing Twitter. MH. Uh, Tucker Carlson might change that. It may become a broadcast medium. MH. And, so we'll probably be on Twitter next week.

Well, Elon's definitely pushing. Elon and he's going to. But I mean, if it's not going to just be a, uh, a cauldron for trolls, um, and it's actually going to put out some positive information, uh, in a way that is consumable and could grow. And Tuck, 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, uh, resources or bandwidth on it. But we're, I, this week, we were discussing, we're probably going to try it. And, uh, Tuck, what Tucker's doing and what Elon's doing with Tucker and with that whole idea of broadcasting there, um, because Facebook Live didn't work. I mean, it's not working. No, not anymore. 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. We, YouTube Shorts, yeah, we got a lot of people in this building working 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, 'cause you're recording 12 hours a week? Correct. Four days, three hours a day. 15 hours. Okay. Well, accounting commercials. We do, we do a three-hour talk radio show every day. Days. Is that the entirety of your kind of content creation? And then the teams take all of that and disseminate it through all the, the channels?

Uh, I do a podcast that I just took over that's call-driven on leadership in small business called On The Trade Leadership. Took that over in January. That and the Ramsey Show are the only two things I'm on. But Ramsey Network has about 10 shows. Uh, our 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 on talk radio, 75 stations, plus podcast, plus YouTube. Uh, Deloney, John, Dr. John Deloney has a huge show on, uh, podcast and YouTube only. Uh, the Rachel Cruz with George Camel, the H Smart Money Happy Hour. But we sawdust every one of those. Every one of those can say, uh, we're going to take, uh, pieces and clips and do all kinds of things with them instead of 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. So it's repurposed, uh, content that was already developed for something else. You know, highly edited. Yeah.

I, I mean, because 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. Yeah. Where 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, uh, is this considered Ramsey Studios? Is that what this would, yeah, we call it that. Ramsey Solution 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 of you. Well done. Means a lot. I appreciate it. Well, thanks so much for having coming on the game. Thank you, brother. Hope the something in the future. Absolutely. You can count on it.