Transcription
So, a lot of real estate investors, you know, I don't want to say they don't like you, but they disagree with you in terms of debt. And I was one of those guys, and I lost millions. Do you still think it should just be only cash, or where do you stand today?
Well, Dave Ramsey is a personal finance expert, author, and radio host known for helping people get out of debt and build wealth. His no-nonsense advice has made him a trusted voice in personal finance for millions.
What do you see happening in 2025 for the economy and specifically for the real estate market?
I'm real bullish on 2025. I think we're going to see real estate do really, really well. I'm hoping we don't ever return to some kind of post-pandemic craziness with real estate.
But I'd like to, you know, the old 2017, 2018, 2019 markets—those were great markets. They were steady; you could sell stuff, and things were going up. It was a good time.
Yeah, 100%. I think I would agree as well. You know, the last couple of years since they doubled rates, it got really hard, especially for guys like me who are investors. My primary business is flipping houses. So, I'm excited for 2025 and just where it's all going.
It's already trending. I mean, I saw after the election just the demand already increase on properties that we have and everything else. So, it looks exciting from that front.
But that actually leads me to something I want to talk to you about. A lot of your advice is for, let's just say, the typical W-2 employee who, you know, they're on a fixed income, whatever the case is, and so they got to really learn how to budget what they've got.
My perspective, and a lot of my audience, are entrepreneurs. For me, I've always been like, "Hey, let's figure out how to create, you know, make more," instead of thinking, "How do we budget with what we got?" How do we just think creatively and more? Where do you fit on that spectrum?
You know, are you just focused on, I guess, savings and budgeting? Because that would be, I guess, how people perceive you in a lot of ways. What are your thoughts on just generating new streams of income?
Well, I've always been able to make money; I just wasn't always able to keep it. I mean, I was 12 years old; I had 27 yards to cut and kept a spreadsheet. So, I've always been able to work and be entrepreneurial and find some way to make money.
What I didn't always do was move at a slightly slower pace that gave me more sure footing. I kind of got all over my skis, in other words.
Again, let me say it one more time: I've always been able to make money. I've always made more than my peers my entire life. The problem—so that was not the problem—but what that left me susceptible to, spiritually and psychologically, was I became arrogant enough that I thought I could out-earn my stupidity.
I thought I could out-earn my rashness. I thought I could out-earn and cover the mistakes with sheer activity and sheer lack of systems, lack of processes, lack of proper due diligence, lack of proper risk analysis.
And it doesn't matter; I'll just go make some more money. And those things do matter; they'll take you out. That's how I ended up going broke in my 20s. I got so far over my skis with debt and with this level of arrogance that I could just out-earn it.
You know, that was a problem. But that's not to say that your question is not valid or your point of your question is invalid. It's absolutely valid.
Half the time I'm talking to somebody, even W-2 folks on our Ramsey show, it's, "You got to go make more money, dude." I mean, you know, you got to do something. I don't care what it is—if it's Uber or whatever—but go do something, for God's sake.
To be unemployed in America today is crazy. You can just wake up this morning and go, "I have an idea," and by nightfall, it's already a digital product. Come on! I mean, seriously.
So, the idea that we're somehow trapped or that we need to budget our way out of something—no, no. Sometimes you earn and budget your way out of something.
In business, anytime the lawyers and the bean counters start managing the business, it's the beginning of the death of the business because you're killing the spirit of the entrepreneur inside the culture of the organization.
And so, the lawyers and the, "It's not in the budget," oh crap, let's get some stuff done here, man. You know, we can't be bureaucratic about it, but we also can't be naive enough, immature enough, or whatever, arrogant enough to think that systems and processes don't matter because they do.
100%. No, I agree with that. It's one of my things. It's like, man, budgeting seems like the easier thing to do. It's like, well, yeah, let's just get a budget and stick to it. Let's have some discipline.
But once you set that in place, now what? Like, let's go and figure out how to earn more, right? Because we can see, you know, if we're living in this city, we're not going to get ahead. We're going to have to figure out how to either move or, you know, make more money or whatever the case is.
What are your thoughts about that? A lot of people I see, you know, I'm in Vegas; you're in Nashville—pretty expensive markets. You know, California is expensive—all these things.
I hear people saying, "I can't afford to live in this place." And a lot of times, I'm like, "Well, who's forcing you to live there?"
Yeah, yeah. You know, the weird thing is I've been doing the radio show now for 32 years, and so I've gotten that call from LA 32 years ago. I mean, it's the same; it's not like it's a new issue.
I got that call from San Francisco 32 years ago: "Well, I can't afford to live here." And I'm like, "Well, yeah, you're right. So what has to change? Either your income has to change or your location has to change."
Because you chose to live in freaking Orange County, one of the most expensive real estate markets in the entire world. I mean, Silicon Valley or Manhattan—I mean, we're talking like Tokyo, London, Paris, Shanghai. These are expensive places to live.
And yeah, you have to look up and go, "You know, I can't make it on $30,000 a year there." Well, that's right; you can't.
Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people, maybe they're just attached to so much of lifestyle. And I think you do a great job of helping people like, "No, you don't need the new car; you don't need that type of house."
You know, you got to live within your means. So, one thing you said that I've really actually respected the most about you—you know, I'll say I think maybe five to ten years ago, you know, I started flipping houses ten years ago, to give some background.
And I've taken out a lot of debt to do it, and I built wealth through real estate using debt. And so, a lot of real estate investors, you know, I don't want to say they don't like you, but they disagree with you in terms of debt.
And so, I was one of those guys, and, you know, obviously, I've built my business using debt the last ten years. But I can tell you this: I've started to become more like you the last couple of years when the market turned because interest rates doubled, and I lost millions.
Now, I was able to pay back all my debts, paid off the investors, thankfully, because I had enough money. But it kind of changed my perception of like, "Oh, yeah, definitely, debt's not as great as, you know, it's great when it's good, and then when things turn, it's not so great."
So, my question for you is, for real estate investors today, what is your actual opinion for a guy who's a professional investor—not like a W-2 person who's, you know, trying to buy a primary residence—but somebody who's buying house flips or rental properties?
Do you still think it should just be only cash, or where do you stand today?
Well, my opinion is formed and informed by not only my experience but my faith walk and my academic background. So, my parents were in the real estate business when I was growing up in the 1970s.
I got my real estate license in 1978. You had to wait two years to get a broker's license to be a principal broker. I got my broker's license in 1980 at 20 years old, three weeks after I turned 18. I was in the real estate business.
I sold my first house four weeks after that as an agent. I went to the University of Tennessee to get a degree in real estate and finance. I love real estate, and my goal there was I wanted to be a commercial real estate developer and owner.
I wanted my parents to be in the residential business, and I wanted to own shopping malls and office buildings and warehouses and so forth. I went in and studied the technical, you know, the proper calculation of an internal rate of return.
I took all the classes; I got all the extra certifications, the post-graduate work. I mean, I'm academically steeped in this. It's what I learned to do. It wasn't a weekend seminar with some guy selling tapes. I mean, I studied four years in formal education.
I ran around with guys—in those days, there was a big blowup of a thing called real estate syndication limited partnerships. You'd have up to 33 shares in them without getting into the SEC stuff, and so that stuff was blowing up, and the general partners of those things were raking cash off the table.
Reagan came into office; this is how long ago this was—when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Okay, so when I got out of college, I sold real estate for a new housing firm for just a short period of time.
And then I got impatient; that wasn't good enough. So, I talked—I was 22 years old—and I talked a family friend that was a banker into loaning me $62,000 to buy a HUD foreclosure.
Yep, I bought a bunch of HUDs, and I was—I knew what I was doing, in air quotes—but I didn't, obviously; I'd never done one. And I was so dumb that I thought foreclosure meant bargain. It doesn't necessarily mean bargain, as we all know, those of us that have done a few transactions.
I've done about 2,000 now. And so, I made $800 on that. I got out by the skin of my teeth, and I personally sweated the pipes and put them back that were frozen under the house, and that's the only way I made any actual money.
I should have lost money; I probably made a buck an hour, you know, screwing with the thing, right? So, I learned a lot of lessons on that, and then I did another deal, and did another deal, did another deal, and by the time I was 26, I was flipping houses, and I had $4 million worth of property.
A lot of it, I was pulling them offline off the flips and putting them in line as rentals because I was getting into these things so sweet that the ROI on the cash flow was amazing.
I started doing historic flips and doing these detailed things. I was running seven crews; I was 26 years old, and I was a millionaire making $200,000 a year in 1985, which is a million dollars a year today.
Okay, so I was kicking it. What could go wrong? And I was leveraged at 75%. I had $3 million worth of debt, $4 million worth of real estate. That's a pretty good ratio.
Yeah, it's not bad at all. And so, shouldn't be a problem. The bank got sold; I had a million two out with one bank on 90-day notes for flips. The bank got sold to another bank in another city, and those guys looked down and said, "There's a kid in Nashville, 26 years old, that owes us a million two. This is scary."
I mean, Chip and Joanna weren't even born. Okay? I mean, there was nobody doing this stuff. There was no cable TV; there was no internet; there was no one talking about it. There were no weekend seminars; there was nothing.
I mean, I just went out there and scratched this out with my fingernails, and they called our notes and gave me 90 days to come up with a million two.
But what I had been doing with some of the notes was if I didn't sell the house in 90 days, I'd just re-up the interest; they'd re-up the note; we'd run another 90 days; they'd sell, and I'd roll that off the books.
I was kept—basically, it was like a floor plan for a car dealer. So, that started a crash. It took two and a half years to unfold. The second largest lender that heard I was in trouble 60 days later called another $800,000.
So, I got $2 million I got to come up with in less than six months, and it's all in real estate. And the market had slowed down.
So, short version of the story is I spent two and a half years in hell. One year I made $200,000; the next year my taxable income was $6,000 because I spent the whole year selling stuff trying to keep it from getting foreclosed on.
My marriage was hanging on by a thread. I had met God on the way up; I got to know Him on the way down. And so, I started having to consider, because of that experience, that maybe leverage wasn't all it was sliced up to be.
I started reading in the Bible, and I can't find anything positive there about debt. And I thought, "Okay, I'm broke." My finance professor in college, who told me to borrow—that leverage was the only way and that anybody in the real estate business uses leverage—everybody knows that—was broke.
My finance professor was broke. What's wrong with that picture? It's like a shop teacher with missing fingers.
I mean, so I started considering. Then I started talking to old rich people, and I found them using little or no debt, and they hated debt—old rich people, not young rich people.
I'd been him; I didn't want to talk to him because he was going broke. And I was in this real estate—there was a guy who wrote a book like the ones that are out there today, the TikTok guys and all that crap.
He wrote a book called "Nothing Down." His name was Robert Allen. Yep. And it was a famous thing, and he formed clubs in each of the cities to teach nothing down, and these real estate investor clubs—I was a member of the club; I was one of the officers in the Nothing Down Real Estate Investor Club.
Interesting. Of the 200 people in that club, 100% of them, ten years later, were either had reversed course and gotten completely out of debt or they were broke. Most of them just went broke like me.
I went broke; I lost everything; I filed bankruptcy; I was sued 78 times. And at the bottom of that, I said, "Okay, I love real estate, but I don't like debt."
And God reinstalled my risk meter into my chest, and I now have—and I now know that there is risk. I didn't perceive the risk before. I didn't think there was any risk because I thought, "I'm stinking good at this."
I was good at it. I didn't even lose money on the deals; I made money on almost every single deal. Yep. But it didn't matter because I had built a house of cards that some banker could pull the plug on and destroy my life.
I left myself susceptible to outside variables in business that took my head off. So, all of that long story to say I don't borrow money or anything ever, and I own about $700 million worth of real estate today, and I don't have a single piece of debt.
And I've not had a single piece of debt since I went bankrupt in 1988.
I love that story. And, you know, as a Christian, I have actually been thinking about this a lot lately with, yeah, just all my life experiences too.
I think for me, you know, I've been in real estate now 15 years, and the first eight years, you know, just killed it, did great. And, like I said, experience losing for the first time and dealing with the stress of dealing with that entire situation.
And, you know, at that point, I was—I'm 35 now, so I was 33 when all of that happened, and it sucks. And it's pushed me to do other forms of real estate where it's not debt-heavy, you know, things like wholesaling and, you know, other things like that.
But I would just say for a lot of guys who are listening to this, it's hard because you look at it and you're like, "Well, you'll never own a home if you don't take on debt."
Like, take the fact out of, like, house flippers and, you know, buying rentals and all that stuff. At what point is there any point where debt is acceptable? Because I've heard you talk about, you know, getting a primary residence with debt.
Like, what changes from that aspect?
Well, I just don't yell at people about that one. And then to put it in place where you turn around and pay it off quickly—that doesn't mean that all of a sudden debt became a good thing.
It's just a tolerable thing. And so, here's the simple ratio, and we all know this ratio. All your viewers are smart guys and gals; they're not dumb.
So, the ratio is real simple: more debt equals more risk; less debt equals less risk. And as you manage a portfolio of anything, if you can keep your risk low and play the game a long time, sustainability is the key to wealth building—not being brilliant for ten minutes.
Brilliant for ten minutes will get you freaking killed. I know the guy, and, you know, I had a friend who had $111 million net worth, and it was all in those real estate syndication things.
At 78 years old, he died broke. Wow. Every bit of it went down. I had another one that was 72 years old; he lost his health and lost a $15 million portfolio—all because they were too leveraged.
Now, what is too leveraged? I don't know; you guys got to decide that for yourself, right? But this idea that debt doesn't have implications is horse crap. Of course, it has implications, right?
But, you know, I can argue with you intellectually about it, but it doesn't matter—or spiritually about it. I came to the conclusion for anything: I am never going back. Life's too short, right?
And it's worked out because here's the thing: even though it's harder initially and it's slower, you don't go backward. There's no reset. You know, all I do is just make money every stinking month.
All these properties that I own 100%. You know what cash flow looks like on a dadgum—you know, I got an $8 million strip center down here. You know what the cash flow looks like on that sucker? Oh my God, it's amazing.
You know how much I worry about it if a tenant gets sideways down there? Zero. Yeah, I'm going to lean on that tenant, and we're going to work it through, and I'm going to do the right thing for them.
I'm going to be kind to them, and if they can't make it, we're going to move them on. And I'm not going to sit here and go ring my hands, "Oh, I have to have this tenant because I have to pay the mortgage."
Yeah, and then you take on a stupid tenant or you become co-dependent with your tenant. And anybody who's done enough real estate knows that temptation.
Yeah, 100%. You know what I was thinking about a lot? As a business owner, you know, because, like for me anyways, the idea of debt is that, well, you have this obligation to make every single month regardless of how the business does.
So, let's just say, you know, the business is a rental property. Regardless of a tenant, you have to make that payment, right? And I thought about this a lot as owning a business too, right?
I mean, my business doesn't have any debt on it; I didn't raise capital for it or have investors, but I have a big overhead—multiple six figures a month in marketing and salaries and all of these things.
One thing I've wondered is, like, how do you look at business expenses that are monthly obligations? And in my mind, they're not really that different than debt.
I mean, you can get out of them; I guess you could stop marketing; you could, you know, get rid of the staff. But there's still obligations every month for the business to actually make money.
Well, the difference is the time horizon that you're dealing with. I've got 1,100 team members here; our payroll is well in excess of $150 million.
Yep. And so, what's the time horizon on that? If five of our departments completely go to zero revenue because there's some kind of a weird disease out there—yeah, that could have happened a couple of years ago, I'm just saying that might have happened.
You know, and so, you know, what's the time horizon on that? Well, if I've got a payment on the office complex that has—I mean, our campus—if I've got a payment on $500 million there on that campus, and I've got these payrolls, I can adjust, and I did.
We didn't—I told our team, though, when we start losing money, I'm going to use some of the cash reserves we have to try to keep you. But when those start dwindling, I don't borrow money, so you're going to go home.
I, you know, I'll—I'm not going to take a salary; I'm not going to pull any profit out of this. I'm not trying to make money, but we're also not going to keep, you know, a team when the thing's not profitable.
So, I've got a friend that had a thousand people working for him in the mortgage business, and he's lost over half of them because the mortgage business has been so slow.
Yeah. And he had to—as a matter of mathematics—trim the staff. He didn't have a choice.
If you can't do that with a mortgage, you can't do that with a debt payment. You can't just go, "Oh, it's inconvenient, so I'm not going to do it anymore." You can't do that; the bank doesn't play that.
But with employees, you can do that, or with marketing, you can say, "All right, I'm going to change my marketing direction."
I mean, with the Apple 13 and the wars with Google Ads and the Facebook page, I mean, the ROAS—we're all fighting those digital things right now. We've had to repurpose some of those marketing dollars because they jacked the prices up so far on them.
And I just, I'm backing up; I'm crawfishing on it. But I can decide to step in or out of that market, I mean, on a whim almost. I can instantaneously—I don't have that option from a planning horizon when I've got a 30-year obligation.
Yeah, no, I love that. And I agree. Like, that was the thing for me is just realizing when things aren't going well, you know, the real estate market shifts, the economy shifts, people aren't spending as much, and different things.
You know, you have a choice as a business owner to make, you know, how do you innovate? Or if you know just the market's not allowing it, you know, how do you—where do you trim, right? If things are no longer working?
And it's made me think too, like for a guy like you who's been doing this now 30-plus years, right? You said you had the radio show for 32 years. You guys have been, you know, consulting and doing education, and I mean, you've been doing podcasting essentially for a long time, way before it ever got big.
What are some things you've had to change over the years in order to maintain that level of consistency? Because the products and, you know, like you said, rates are changing with Facebook and all these things.
Like, you got to constantly be adjusting and pivoting. What are some changes that have occurred throughout the years in order to stay where you guys are at now?
You know, we figured out accidentally, and it wasn't because we were geniuses, that you need to not change your principles and always change your processes.
The opposite of that is the person who changes their principles every day but never changes the processes—that's called a bureaucrat.
The second one, an entrepreneur says, "I stand on these principles; this is who we are; it's how we go at it." But the process has changed.
I mean, when we started, there was no internet. When we started, there was no cable TV. When we started, there was no—I mean, you know, there was no—the marketing stuff we have available to us today.
There certainly was no Facebook; there was no anything like that. And so, what we learned in a rapidly evolving marketplace is to be platform agnostic and be agnostic to, okay, you know, maybe we're not going to use personal sales; maybe we're going to use a different approach, or maybe we do need personal salespeople in a market where somebody's not using them.
But, you know, I don't really care how we do it at all as long as it works. Yeah, it's just got to work.
And so, just iterate, iterate, iterate, change, test, and never—I never sell out completely to one methodology because as soon as you do, it'll change, and then you're screwed.
So, we're always in all of them. So, we were on talk radio, AM and FM talk radio, and they put these $150 million satellites in the air—two companies, Sirius and XM, which later merged to become Sirius XM.
And the radio world's like, "Oh, satellite radio is going to put everybody out of business." I'm like, "H, they might; they might put everybody out of business, but I tell you what, I'm going to jump on there; I'm going to have some fun with it."
"Oh, you're leaving radio?" "No, I'm going to be on both." You know, then a few years later, we have—we go past dial-up to right, and we get broadband, and we get, you know, full connect, and we can actually start broadcasting over the internet.
And a guy walks in my office and says, "We need a podcast." And I said, "What the crap is a podcast?"
And we were one of the first— we were the first talk radio show, major one, to put podcasts out, and we didn't put it behind a paywall, which upset everyone.
You know, "You can't do that; you're giving it away for free." And I'm like, "No, yeah, that's right; I'm dead; I'm giving it away for free. If you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money."
That's the principle; the process is Spotify, Apple, Facebook Live—who cares? Let's do it all.
Yeah. What year did you guys start doing the podcast?
Hey, man, we were in the first few hundred. We were the first podcast in major talk radio because it really upset all of them because Rush Limbaugh had come out and said he would never do it, and he never did, by the way.
He would never abandon radio because radio had built his career. Yeah. And I like this wonderful loyalty; that's his principle.
But our principle is radio would slit our throat at any moment, so we were ready to go at any time.
Yeah, so, you know, we come out with—we have best-selling books. Well, then there's e-books, and e-books are going to take over the world. Well, they haven't—not even close.
They're still only 1.1% of the market. But let me tell you what did take off: audiobooks. Yeah, audiobooks are revolutionizing the publishing world right now as we speak.
Malcolm Gladwell is doing audiobooks that sound like podcasts, and they're fabulous, high-production-value stuff, and he's killing it with it. His revenue streams are amazing.
So, you know, you just study all these different things, and you can create an overarching consistency, sustainability, growth curve, whatever you want to look at, by standing on your principles and constantly adding flavor to the gumbo—whatever the next platform is, whatever the next methodology is, whether it's marketing or whether it's broadcasting, whatever the field is, whether it's technology.
We started—we had to have all the servers in the house; now all our servers are in the cloud, right? And so, you know, all these things.
And guess what? In three weeks, they'll probably not be in a cloud anymore—not three weeks, but three years. I don't know. I mean, Amazon may decide they're going to screw up the world with that, and, you know, if they do, then we'll have to figure out something else because we're not going to be shut down by having sold our soul to a singular process.
What do you think about AI right now and what it's doing for business and jobs and everything else?
I'm probably like everybody else. I think it's got—there's two sides to this coin. There's a tremendous amount of evil that's going to come out of it, and I worry, as a person that creates content—millions and millions and millions of hours of content over the last 30 years—I worry that, you know, the piracy aspect of it, the theft of, you know, the theft of your voice, the theft of whatever.
I mean, we're doing stuff internally where my voice sounds—it's better than I am. Oh my gosh, I mean, it's crazy how good this stuff is.
So, the downside is all the negative that can happen with it, and it could reach the point that, you know, I mean, kind of everybody knows most things on the internet aren't true now, but they may start to believe nothing on the internet is true.
Yep. Because you won't be able to detect a fake, and the consumer will have lost trust in the source of the information as being real or reliable. And when you do that, we've got a real problem. That's the downside.
The upside is it's a workhorse; it'll do a lot of wonderful stuff. I mean, I just did an audiobook for a book I've got coming out, and that's 16 hours in the dead gum studio reading, and I hate it.
It's just all—it's like a root canal. But it needs to be in my voice, and I need to do it. I need to do my work and shut up and don't whine, Dave, okay? So, I did it.
But we were real close; we couldn't quite get it to AI reading that book with my voice. Yeah, it was barely detectable, so we didn't do it. I actually did it, but the next one, it'll probably be AI.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll probably be AI because I hate—I'm not going to sit in there for 16 hours when I can, you know, load the dad gum program, and it goes, and all of a sudden, I have an audiobook.
I've recorded two audiobooks; it is brutal. So, you know, it's interesting too. I saw a video from Marcus Zuckerberg yesterday, and he was talking about how AI is going to start dubbing videos in other languages automatically.
Yeah. And I'm like, "Wow, at that point, now it becomes a global content game." And, you know, I played pro baseball, so that was my career before all of this.
And so, I remember, you know, when I got drafted by the Oakland A's, first day in spring training, you know, we're facing against—not just all these guys in the U.S. anymore. I'm facing Dominicans and Mexicans and guys everywhere from Latin America, Asia—all these things.
And you're like, "Wow, this is a global game. These guys are really talented." And it made me think about—there's already a lot of concentration at the top with, like, influence and all those things.
And I'm like, "Wow, now if you have Dave or Mr. Beast or any of these guys who are already big, they're going to be big everywhere now without even trying."
And you already are big everywhere, but, like, to a just crazier degree. And it's like, "Wow, this is about to get really interesting because everyone will be global and have access to the very best content."
Yeah, and again, there's both an upside and a downside to that from a business perspective. But I'm still bullish on the idea that a person of character who can be consistent and be predictable for their customers—customers want a predictable environment.
They don't want you to make it up as you go. Okay? Customers want—they want to know the re—that's the reason franchising has worked with McDonald's and Subway, right?
It's a predictable environment. I go in; Big Mac anywhere in the world is pretty much the same. In the United States, it's 100% the same. You get outside, it's sometimes a little weird, but the—but I mean, Subway, same thing.
I know what I'm going to get. My mouth's watering right now, and I haven't had either one of those sandwiches in a decade, but right this second, I could eat one.
Okay? But you see what I'm saying? The customers like a predictable environment, and people that lack character or talent will not stick with something long enough to build a solid foundation in their audience.
They fall out, and an example of that is I've seen in talk radio—again, we've been in talk radio for 30-plus years. So, the number of people that came into talk radio that were going to be the second coming of Jesus for talk radio—they were going to take over, and they were going to run all the rest of us poor little people out of business—they come and go pretty quick.
Yeah. Because it turns out if you're going to do a talk radio show, you have to sit in front of the microphone three hours every day, every day, whether you got the flu, whether you're tired, whether your wife's sick—it doesn't matter.
You're in front of the microphone three hours every day, and if you don't do that and you don't do it with excellence, the audience feels it, and they abandon you.
And that will happen in the space you're talking about where you take someone that seems to be ubiquitous—they seem to be like they can't—and then AI helps them get even bigger.
Yeah, that's true. But they still will screw it up if they don't have the character to play through, if they can't play long ball.
Yeah, they can do it for years, and they'll fall eventually. So, there's always going to be room for the next star. There's always going to be room for the next person who's just getting going.
And, you know, they take the—they take a new technology, and they say it the right way, and it's always compelling content that lifts people up, gives them dignity, increases their nobility, gives them hope—will always work somewhere.
I love that. So, one thing I've been saying to a lot of people is exactly that, and I use you as an example. I say, "You know, look at a guy like Dave Ramsey where he's been doing the same thing for 30-plus years, day in, day out. His message is the exact same; it hasn't changed."
He's just the picture of consistency and discipline in that regard. And I go, "That's why, you know, he's successful and where he is."
And, like, a lot of you guys just aren't consistent. Almost nobody is consistent. You know, and I guess my question is, where does that drive and consistency come from?
Because, I mean, today, you obviously—you don't need to do a talk show anymore, right? I'm sure you've thought about, like, what does the next stage of your life look like at some point?
What drives you at this point, and do you foresee an end at some point?
Well, this is not a job, and it hasn't been for, you know, 30 of the 32 years. It was not a method to make money; it was not a method to do that; it was a method to help people.
I went broke and lost everything. I almost lost my marriage; I almost lost my mind. And anytime I talk to someone who's scared, I remember that. My throat tightens up; my stomach starts moving up towards my throat.
And so, I'm called to help those people, and I get tremendous satisfaction from helping them. I love the single mom that calls in on my show, and she's scared because I can help her.
I can give her hope; I can show her how she can be a millionaire. I really can. I can give her the techniques, the tactics, the spiritual overlay. I can inject hope into her veins, and that never gets old.
It never gets old. It's just the most fun thing on the planet. It's like eating chocolate ice cream all day long. I mean, it's just the best, you know?
And so, my life is so incredible. If I wasn't me, I'd want to be me. I mean, I've got it made, you know?
And on top of that, I built wealth, and I've had a wonderful family, and my kids—and I got eight grandkids. I mean, God, man, this is just so much fun.
But it has all come from simply serving, right? And the joy that adding value to someone's life brings to any of us—the joy that helping and lifting, giving someone a hand when they're down.
I remember how I felt. I was so scared I couldn't breathe. I was so alone. I felt so ashamed of my stupidity and the dumb thing—I mean, the water got cut off in my house; the electricity got cut off, and I've got a brand new baby.
I'm that guy, you know? And so, I'll always try to find him because he's out there everywhere, and she's out there everywhere.
And look at me now. I mean, so you don't have to stay there. That's a moment in time, right?
And so, you can—you know, I'm the poster child. If people say they can't be a millionaire in America today, I laugh at them. I've done it twice. I'm so dumb it took me two shots, you know?
So, it can be done. So, that's why we do it. As far as endgame goes, you know, we started our succession planning 16 years ago.
It's complicated to do succession on something like we have at Ramsey. And we've transferred the ownership of the company in trust and got now the estate planning issues.
I only own 1% of the company, but I own the only voting stock, so I'm still in control. But, you know, we've moved all the value off so that the estate taxes don't take it out when I'm gone.
And we've built an incredible leadership team that can run the thing without me day in and day out, and largely do. I mean, you can't run 1,100 people by yourself, so you got to have that.
And then we've built the Ramsey personalities. We've had, you know, we have six other people doing the show with me when I'm not on the show, and two of the other ones are on it. The ratings go up, which is, you know, wonderful from a succession planning standpoint.
But from an ego standpoint, it sucks. Dang, dude, what's going on here? Dang, man, come on. I'm a walking dad joke now.
So, there you go. But we're ready for succession now. But my goal is, you know, we started—my son moved into the president role. He and the operating board run the company three years ago.
And I'm the CEO, so he and I ran 50/50 the first year, the second year 60/40, the third year, and now we're at about 80/20. He's running about 80% of the day-to-day operations here and the planning and the vision casting.
And he's a phenomenal president; he's very good at what he does. And I'm running about 20% in a few years. I'll be doing 0% of that, and my long-term goal is to stay broadcasting and speaking and some writing and whatever else from the Ramsey personality perspective as long as I make sense.
I don't want to quit. I'm not going to 100% quit, but if I quit making sense or it's not fun because my health goes or something, then I'll quit.
But my goal is to just keep doing it as long as I can.
Yeah, I have something I tell Christians a lot, and I'm curious your perspective. I always say, you know, you'll never hear me talk about retirement.
And I'm young, so I mean, I haven't gotten, like, worn down yet. But I'm like, "Dude, I just—I don't see anywhere in the Bible where retirement's a thing."
You know, when you just look at Paul, he's talking about running the race to the end. You see these guys; they're just working in something until the very end.
And it's like, I could never see myself being obedient to what God's called me to do on the golf course every day or on the beach and just chilling.
What are your—and it can take different forms, but you're right. But again, I'm a blessed human in that I know exactly why I'm on the planet.
Yeah. And it gives me great rewards, so it's easy to tell if I'm in my lane or not.
I'm not above being on the golf course, and I'm sharing—I am traveling more and more. We've had some wonderful trips in the last 12 months; they're unbelievable.
I got to do the pyramids in Egypt, man. That was pretty cool. And, you know, that kind of stuff. And for a kid from Antioch, Tennessee, little redneck hillbilly, that was an amazing trip.
And so, but you know, you get to do some stuff like that and then come home and turn on the microphone and help somebody.
And so, but there's not a financial pressure to do it. So, I'm huge on having enough wealth that you don't have to work.
But I meet very few people that completely quit work that are joyful.
Got it. So, I have a question as it relates to me, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this. So, I started out in the SEC, so I grew up in the church, to give you some context.
And, you know, I just started out in just secular business doing real estate investing and all these things. And then a couple of years ago, I felt like God was calling me to do more things for the kingdom.
And so, we started a nonprofit, and now we throw, you know, big business events for Christian entrepreneurs. You know, even at my secular business events, we'll have a thousand people there, and, you know, I'll throw a worship service, and I'll bring a pastor.
And it's like, "That's for you." That's cool. Yeah. And so, we've seen, you know, hundreds of people get saved, and, you know, it's awesome.
I don't even tell people at this point that there's going to be a worship service; it's just in the event because it might be the only time they hear the gospel.
And so, you know, for me, that's just been my conviction is to incorporate it not only into my secular things, like at a strong level—not even like in an optional level—it's like you're going to hear about it.
But then also to do things to, I would say, create more disciples, right? Like, a lot of them are already saved, so like, let's build them up as disciples.
So, my question to you is, I've watched different guys like you and maybe like a John Maxwell, and John was actually here at my office two months ago doing an event.
And I've watched you guys—correct me if I'm wrong—but I think, like, most of both of you started in the Christian space with your business and then eventually kind of went into the secular world.
Now, obviously, you both still, you know, unashamed in faith, and it's a part of everything you do. Whereas I'm like, I started in the secular world and now I'm doing more things in the Christian world.
So, I guess I don't know that there's like a real question with it, but I'm just like, what has that experience been like for you?
Like, I guess out in the Christian world going over there, and like, I don't know, what kind of feedback or thoughts do you have on it all?
The material that we teach was sourced in the Bible, but we really didn't start in the Christian world.
Okay. I mean, I just grew up in churches where I always saw you guys. Yeah, we—50,000 churches have taught 10 million people Financial Peace University.
So, Financial Peace University is a Christian product; it's driven by Bible verses and shows you exactly how to do it.
And then we moved that product into corporate America; it's called Smart Dollar. And we paired the level of in-your-face Christianity down from that.
We have a high school curriculum; it's in 48% of the high schools. Six million students have been through it. And obviously, so if you're going to be in a public high school, there are rules and regulations on how you can intersperse religion of any kind into the public school setting.
It is not, by the way, just as an aside, it's not permissible by a Supreme Court ruling for it to have zero. But you cannot proselytize; it has to be instructional.
So, anyway, so our Bible verses in our stuff that's in public schools—but, and six million students have been through it.
So, we've been in a lot of different spaces: talk radio, 680 radio stations; two of them are Christian; the rest of them are regular mainstream talk radio stations.
So, I'm on with, you know, Sean Hannity or, you know, whoever—name whatever talk radio host, right? Rush Limbaugh in the old days and so on, you know, Ben Shapiro, those kinds of things.
So, that's the stations we're on today even. So, we didn't—we had pieces of the business that were aimed particularly into the Christian market and then pieces that were aimed out there.
And then what we did—one of the benefits I had, one of the things that came from going broke is I lost what the Bible calls your fear of man.
But I lost what that means. I lost my need to impress an individual person to keep somebody happy. Instead, I'm just trying to be who I am, and who I am is a follower of Christ.
I run our business as much according to scripture as I can figure out—my marriage, my money, whatever. And I don't rub someone else's nose in it.
If I've got friends that are a couple of guys came through here the other day, and I spent a bunch of time with them that are Muslim, and they're devout, and they're actually trying to figure out a way to take the Quran's teaching on finance and, you know, help the Muslim community like we did with the Christian community.
And I'm going to help them do it, you know? But I don't have to not be who I am to do that, and I don't have to be mean to them to be a Christian, you know?
And so, I've got lots of friends in the Jewish community—lots and lots and lots of them. But there's more of an overlay there probably spiritually.
But the—but if someone demands that I can't be who I am, then I can't be in their space. If you say, "Okay, Dave, you can come speak, but you can't talk about being a Christian," and I'm not up there preaching; I'm not Franklin Graham or Billy Graham; that's not what I'm doing.
But if you tell me I can't do that, then I can't go. It's not an option. And that's not some kind of like bold principled stand or something, but it's like, you know, you can't do that.
And so, I have to be who I am, and if you tell me I can't do that, then you're the one that's being intolerant; I'm not.
But I don't—but we're real careful not to force our faith onto somebody else. We try to present our faith as a solution to the problem that someone has and make it appealing to them.
Yeah. But then they choose. But it's not, you know, I heard one guy in the Christian world, like, he would not help someone—he wouldn't do financial counseling with them and help someone that was in financial trouble unless they would tithe.
And I'm like, "Oh crud, you Pharisee." You know, you're supposed to be helping people give people a cool drink of water in the name of Jesus. Come on, man.
And so, but then, you know, then what happens is that, as you might imagine, I get lots of complaints from both sides.
I'm too Christian for the crazy atheist, and I'm not Christian enough for my brothers and sisters who are oversaved.
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Yeah, oversaved. Yeah, I know there's a lot of people who'd be mad that you're, you know, going to go help Muslims spread, you know, something with the Quran.
So, yeah, that's the thing I've realized too is now being in the limelight and then also knowing a lot of people behind the scenes who are in the limelight who are Christians, whether they're pastors, whether they're guys like you, whoever else.
And it's like, man, you just see all the criticism, especially once your faith is out there from both sides. I'm like, "Damn, dude, I did not think this many Christians would be over, you know, interviewing this guest or whatever the case is."
And I'm like, "Man, dude, there's a lot of work to be done in the faith." But, like, even for me, I've just kind of realized, like, I feel like I have a heart for pastoral ministry, but God has put me in a secular arena to go, you know, evangelize.
And it's like, "All right, well, that's what I got to do."
Yeah, I think all arenas are my arena until somebody tells me I can't go.
Yeah. And so, I quit calling it secular; I started calling it mainstream.
And just because I didn't want to—I didn't want to separate this one's Christian and one's going to hell. That's not what we're talking about here.
This is, you know, and secular also indicates I'm not allowed to talk about my faith; I'm not allowed to be who I am, and that's a problem because I—everything that we teach is steeped in Proverbs or steeped in whatever.
And I might accidentally just quote a scripture just—I mean, without even thinking about it. And I didn't mean to violate the instructions I was given on the show, but I might—I'm probably—it's just who I am.
I'm not—I have trouble filtering and not being the same person over there that I am over here. And that comes from, in a sweet way, I don't care what you think; I'm going to be me.
Yeah, yeah. It's not having the fear of man anymore, right? It's just the fear of God and doing what He's calling you to do.
What do you think, I guess, you know, you obviously you talk about your big failure and what sparked this whole company, but what are some of the failures you've had to deal with, you know, since then, right?
I mean, like you guys have built a massive company. I'm sure a lot of things have flopped and not worked out—just different controversies over the years.
Like, what do you think has been some of the bigger failures that you've had to get through and lean on your faith?
You know, I'm convinced that everything we're known for and all the help we've given comes from about 10% of our ideas. 90% of our ideas have sucked.
Yeah. And nobody really knows that much about those. I need to write a book, but I'm pretty sure the gleaming mountain of success is a pile of failure that you're just standing on instead of laying under it.
And so, all the crap I've learned, all the dumb stuff I've done, all the dumb things our leaders have done—oh God, man, I mean, it's unbelievable.
I look back on some of the stuff that has come out of my mouth on talk radio. I mean, I've done what, 30,000 or 40,000 hours on a microphone? Can you imagine all the dumb butt stuff I have said?
Yeah. Oh, good Lord. And we survived it. I didn't have a career-ending dumb butt line, and some people have said, you know, ridiculously racist things or ridiculously hurtful things or something, and they lost their careers.
But so when cancel culture came along, you know, and everybody's like, "Well, we're just not going to—" Well, you can't cancel me; I own it, so that's going to be a problem.
But, you know, but buckets of things that I could look back on—it's not singular events, but just say the hardest challenges I've had that have broken my heart the most have been around our team.
Where someone on the team misbehaved, and we had to let them go, and it breaks your heart. Or, you know, we do something—we take really good care of our team, and then they leave and go, you know, run a bunch of negative stuff about Dave out there on the internet somewhere, right?
That's basically lies, but you can't stop somebody from doing that. If you stomp out every person that lies on the internet, you wouldn't have anything else to do.
So, you know, but it breaks your heart. And the greatest—I could tell you in business overall, the greatest satisfaction and the most wonderful thing I've ever had is our team, and the most hurtful, sad thing I've ever had has been our team.
Yeah, I agree with that. It's tough whenever you have to let someone go or whatever the case is or, yeah, betrayal, whatever. So, that's definitely a tough thing.
You had mentioned something about, you know, all the things you said over the years—30,000 shows, right? And it got me thinking about, you know, pastors or anything when they take a clip, and they're like, "Oh, see what he said about this," right?
And it could be a misspeak; it could be out of context, whatever the case is, and they base it—and it's like, "Ah, this guy's a false teacher."
And it's like, what do you think have been maybe some things that your belief system has changed over the years? Because clearly, you still believe the same things about debt, you know, 30 years later.
But has there been anything that you were, like, really dead set on, and now, you know, your ideas have shifted?
Yeah, I think in general, I was a much better Pharisee in the early days. I was really, really sure about a whole bunch of stuff that didn't matter.
And, you know, because I came from—and most of us that have a faith walk, you come from a particular church tradition, doctrine, belief, denomination.
Yeah, you know, and so if you grew up that way, but you've not had exposure to different styles of worship and different doctrinal shifts on some of the nuanced things.
And so, you know, you get—but the more exposure you have to folks that are earnest in their faith but believe differently than you, the more it mellows you.
Yeah, so an example would be our friend Pat Lencioni. He's a sold-out, on-fire-for-God Catholic. Yep, yep.
And I'm a sold-out, on-fire-for-God Protestant Evangelical, you know? And he and I and Henry Cloud are friends, and Henry's a sold-out Evangelical charismatic.
And, you know, we have some wonderful dinners where we argue and fuss over a glass of wine and love each other dearly.
And so, but in the old days, I would have been just too mad to have that dinner. Now I do it for sport.
Yeah, that's so funny because Pat and I—I was at his office when we first met, and we talked for like two hours about this, just chilling.
And it wasn't on—it should have been on camera, but it was good because, you know, I came up from a, you know, super conservative background of a Baptist, and then, you know, I would say now I'm very charismatic.
And, you know, he's Catholic, and so we started talking about all these things, and I was like, "Dude, you actually make a lot of really good points about, you know, what Catholics do that Protestants don't."
Like, one of the things he had mentioned was the fact that he could go to church any day and, you know, go worship and go inside and, you know, pray.
It's like, yeah, and most Protestant churches are open Sunday. Yep, you can't do that.
And I was like, "That is actually a really good point." And, you know, he had other points too, and it just kind of like—now too, I used to think, you know, Pentecostals and all these guys were crazy, and I've seen all those things now firsthand and experienced them.
I'm like, "All right, they're not crazy." Like, these things are still happening today.
And some of them are—some of them are crazier than a loon, but some of them—it's so real, it makes the hair stand up on the back of your arm, and you're like, "Oh my Lord, the Holy Spirit just walked right in front of me."
And it's very real, but there's also some fro-loops out there.
Yeah, yeah. That's with all circles of denominations. But, yeah, it made me—as my own faith journey has grown and getting around other people and different denominations and everything else, one thing is clear.
And Pat and I said this together: all the fighting over secondary issues is like the issue, you know, with so many denominations.
And it's just like the more I realize, like, the more I grow, the more I realize, like, each one has just different pieces that—yeah.
And once I left Nashville and went to whatever city and spoke at a different brand of church, we have 50,000 churches teaching this stuff.
Yeah, I mean, every version of anything was teaching it. And even things that people might not even consider faith, you know, which is fine.
But, you know, whatever. A lot of them didn't like each other, but I would go in, and I would go, "Okay, I'm getting ready to speak on in your Sunday morning service, and I don't know where the landmines are."
Because I've never been in a place like in this brand, so you got to tell me because, like, I went to a Nazarene church and told a story about my daughter going to the prom, and the pastor said at the break, he said, "Now, next service, don't use the prom because these people don't dance."
And I went, "Okay." You know? So, right. And it's like, okay, didn't know that.
And I never thought—it never occurred to a boy like me, you know? So, that was—yeah.
So, I—and yet I find all of those people to be earnest, honest, wonderful, good moms and dads, good leaders. They love the Bible; they love God.
And so, I'm not going to argue with them about dancing.
Yeah, you know, life's too short. Let's get the big stuff right and be in agreement on that, and then we'll let the rest of it—y'all do whatever flavor you want.
Yeah, well, I mean, I just look at Acts, and, you know, it's like, man, if it's—if it's sin for that person, don't cause them to stumble, you know?
And that's how we've got to treat it. It's like, whatever, I'm not going to eat meat in front of you; I'm not going to talk about dancing in front of you.
Like, it's all good. So, the irony is that there's plenty of small-time, small-minded Christian people that have done a critique of Dave Ramsey, trashing me, okay?
And they're right; they're on YouTube right beside real estate investors who have done a critique of Dave Ramsey, trashing him for clickbait.
And, you know, it's the same thing; it's the exact same spirit. And it's like, "Hey, go get a life."
Yeah, I'm just over here doing my thing; why don't you go do yours?
Yeah, and I say I used to have that kind of spirit—a critical spirit—and now, yeah, I mean, my eyes have opened up tremendously being in the limelight, talking to the same people that I would criticize, getting to know them.
And it's just like, "Wow." But, you know, I guess that's what Satan wants, right? Is discourse and fighting and everything else.
Like, it makes—yeah, I had the opportunity to interview President Donald Trump before the election.
Oh, yeah, I saw that. Yeah, I saw that. We put—we sent out the same exact message to Vice President Harris and said we'd be happy to interview you.
I aligned politically and value system much more with the ideas that Trump stood for. But I would have lo—I didn't get to interview, or they wouldn't do it, but I would have loved to have interviewed her just out of sheer curiosity.
And would have been very kind to her. I'm not going to do a hit job; it's not what I do. I can disagree with you and still enjoy the intellectual process of being curious with someone.
Yeah. What did you learn from interviewing Trump?
It humanized him for me and really for a lot of our audience. The way the tone he took in the interview was much more normal and not so weird, whack-doodle stuff.
And that's what I was hoping for. I wanted to just have a discussion with a guy about ideas and not all this cartoonish stuff.
And that's what I wanted to do, and we did about 90% of the interview did accomplish that. And so, off-camera, it was the same thing.
It was very likable, very kind. My wife was there, and, you know, had a great discussion with her.
But not over the top and not ego and not narcissistic and not any of that—just very on point and doing what he's doing. He said, "I'm running for president."
You know, and I think I would have found the same thing to a degree with her. Yeah, I really do.
I don't think she's—I mean, obviously, she got beat, and she's probably disappeared from the political scene at this point.
But I still would have enjoyed the process of sitting down with someone that I'm not aligned with as much as sitting down with someone that I am aligned with.
Yeah, yeah. I had the conviction this year to really actually get more involved in politics.
Like, before, I'm like, "Ah, whatever. Like, I'm not going to—it's not even that I didn't want to offend people or anything. I'm just like, you know, it's just not—I'm not, like, super passionate about it."
But I don't know, this year I got a lot more passionate about it with just where the world's going and everything else.
And it's like, "All right, you know, if I have influence, I need to use it in a way to push Christian values."
And if one part's going to, you know, take the guy out of it, right? Because a lot of people want to attack his past and his background and his personality and all these things.
And I'm like, "Yeah, I mean, he's just a man. I mean, if you live to 83 years old, you know how much sin—and if there had been Twitter when I was in college, I would be so screwed."
That's—I'm like, "Dude, he's 83 years old; he's been in the limelight his whole life. What do you think? Like, there's going to be so many dumb stories that he did."
But, you know, I'm looking at the result. If this guy gets elected, what are the results and the values and things that I, you know, value?
What's going to happen, or the probability of it happening, right? That's kind of how I looked at it.
And it's like you see so many even Christians who are like, "I can't believe you had to vote for this guy," and all this stuff.
And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, we got so emotional; it was unbelievable."
Yeah, it's crazy. It was fun.
Yeah. Well, Dave, I want to be respectful of your time. I could go all day, man. But, dude, I just appreciate everything you're doing, especially for the faith, for so many people who are in tough spots.
Even though you don't have to be doing it, you choose to do it and answer the call. So, I just want to, you know, just commend you for that.
And I admire your consistency and discipline to keep going and just maintain the same message and everything else.
And so, I'm just appreciative of everything you're doing. And, yeah, what do you got coming up that people can go to?
You got any events or anything that people can attend coming up?
We'll be doing a free live stream that is free, so just check it out on January 23rd.
And, you know, it's the time that—don't miss out on the jump that the economy is going to take by not getting yourself straightened out and getting in order.
And so, we're going to help folks, you know, make sure you got that foundation laid to take advantage of an upswing instead of be standing on the sidelines watching other people win.
And we'll be doing that on January 23rd. You can check out everything we have at RamseySolutions.com, so you can find everything there.
Thanks, man. It's good to be with you again, my friend.
Yes, it's great to see you, and hopefully, it's the first of many things. Appreciate you.
Absolutely. Anyway, we can help, let us know, brother.
Awesome.