I have some new tour dates to tell you about. I'll be in Boise, Idaho, on June 28th at the Extra Mile Arena, Idaho Falls, Idaho, on June 29th at the Hero Arena, and Salt Lake City, Utah, on June 30th at the Maverick Center. Presale is active now for these dates with code RATKING. General on sale starts Wednesday, May first at 10:00 AM local time. Today's guest is a financial advisor and a radio host. You know him from The Ramsey Show, where he gives advice to callers who have questions about their finances. He has a two-day livestream event coming up later this month, which we'll talk a little bit about. I'm grateful to spend time with him today. Mr. Dave Ramsey.

Shine that light on me.

I'll sit and tell you my stories. Shine on me.

And I will find a song I'll be singing.

I'm on the stage. I can't believe you guys made my studio here, Dave.

We just want you to be home and come back again.

Well, yeah, I'll stay.

Come and go. Anytime. I'll stay. Apparently, we'll be back. Apparently, it's no big deal.

I didn't know you guys had a Air. You guys were running Airbnbs here. Yeah, we totally replicated my studio here in your Ramsey. Is this a campus, pretty much?

Yeah, I guess that's what we call it. Yeah.

Is it You have investment, what's on the campus? Because it's beautiful.

No, thank you. We've got two office buildings and, of course, the main lobby area where we broadcast the shows on the glass. The area for the public to come in and hang out while we're doing the shows. Then we've got a 2,500-seat auditorium up on the hill up there that we do events in, the event center. It's been quite an adventure.

What type of events will you do up there?

Well, we do our Ramsey events. Number one, we got 1100 team members, so we do staff meeting up there and a devotional on Wednesday up there. But we'll do weekend long events. We've got a money and marriage event with Rachel Cruz, my daughter, and Dr. John Deloney, two of our Ramsey personalities in It'll be mammoth. We'll have it sold out here in a couple of weeks for a total money makeover weekend. It's public coming in for public events to learn something that we're doing, usually around the money subject or the leadership subject. We use it for our on trade leadership stuff. It stays pretty busy.

Wow. Yeah, it's remarkable. Dave Ramsey, man. Yeah, thanks so much, man. Just for a lot of our viewers will know you, but some who wouldn't. You started out in finance. How did you get in? What made you care about money out of the gate? Did you Did you guys have allowance issues in the home?

Yeah, we did. You did? Yeah, we were not on allowance. We were on commission. Work, get paid, don't work, don't get paid. I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood, so Daddy believed in work, like real work. I was 12 years old, and I came in and said, I need some money to go to the Quick Sack and get an IC. And he said, No, you need a job. I said, What could you do? I said, Well, I guess I could cut grass. And he took me down here on Nolansville Road and printed up 500 business cards that said Dave's Lawns. Go knock on the closest 50 doors and ask the opportunity to provide their lawn care needs. So at 12, I ended up with 27 yards to cut. I think they call that child abuse now.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I think if you force a kid to get a job nowadays, I think protective services will come and get you.

That's exactly right.

It's pretty sometimes it can be like that. It can be alarming.

There wasn't a protective service that would have protected them from my parents. Anyway, we grew up I did that, and then I started buying and selling real estate in my 20s and got rich starting from nothing, at least where I came from. I had a million dollar net worth, and I was making $20,000 a month in 1983. Oh, yeah.

That's Rich, where were you driving?

A Jag. That's what I always... Because none of my friends could spell Jaguar, so I needed a Jaguar. But I'd done stupid stuff and too much debt. The bank got sold, called our notes, and spent the next three years of our life losing everything. That's what made me care about money, to answer your question.

Wow. Because if you go to a high pretty early, that's wild. So did you think at that point, you thought, Oh, this is it. Life's just going to be a- Yeah, I thought I had it all dialed in, and I had nothing dialed in.

I was stupid on steroids. With a brand new baby and a toddler and a marriage hanging on by a thread, we got the opportunity to start again in 1988, September 23rd.

Well, you remember it like that.

Well, I mean, this day we file bankruptcy. That's like, that's Hell day.

Do you have to go to the bank to file it, or how do you do it?

No, it's a federal court. It's a nice little procedure that you go through that's pretty intimidating.

Was your dad still a mentor at that point for business or anything?

Was that like- No, they had moved away by then. I had guys around here that were family, friends, and stuff that we'd grown up with. But I had started a faith journey. I had met God as an adult because I was pretty much a wild character in my youth. I started finding out that the Bible said something about money, and then I started talking to old rich people, and both of these things said just common sense. Just live on less than you make. Have a plan. Get out of debt. I've got all these degrees and letters and licenses and crap after my name. It says I'm supposed to know something about money, but I was broke, and so I need a new set of information. So I found common sense and started using it. And then people started asking us, Okay, how did you turn your life around after all that garbage? And this is what we did. They went, Can we do it? I'm like, Yeah. We start showing people. Then 35 years later, here we are showing people, millions of them.

Yeah, no, it's unbelievable. I mean, everybody knows Dave Ramsey and everybody has used you for financial guidance and over the years or gone to you with certain questions. I know you guys take so many questions on your show. With that turnaround moment, was there like, did it lead you to be like, I need more than just believing that finances are going to take care of me?

Yeah, I think that's probably part of the journey there. Somebody said, How did you bounce back? I'm like, Dude, when you fall that far, you don't really bounce. It's splat. We sat around, whined and moaned and blamed everybody else for about a year and figured out, finally, it wasn't everybody else's fault. It was my fault. I caused it. I'm the idiot, signed up for the trip and got to take it. I had to course correct and adjust. I think our faith, our new faith at that I went to the point, it was very young and tender, not a lot of knowledge or anything. But anyway, we're just trying to figure out how do you navigate with two little babies sitting here broke. My wife's from the hills of East Tennessee, Frying Pan, throwing there's an Olympic event. It's like a hillbilly woman. Oh, yeah. It was rough. We about killed each other. I think she would have left, but she didn't have a car. That's the stuff that we did. But again, gradually, we just sat down with the yellow pad and said, Okay, here's what we have coming in. We can't spend more than that.

We're always going to give some, we're always going to save some, and we're going to feed ourselves. And then what do we do next? And then the next week, and then the next week. Okay, now we got to get a little bit better. Started gradually Getting our income back up. It was not a bounce back. It was years, it feels like. But then the thing about this stuff, this common sense thing, it's not a microwave, it's crockpot. It cooks up good, but it takes a while.

It takes a long while, yeah. Then sometimes you realize you look in the thing and you're like, I don't even have this thing plugged in either.

There's that, too. Yeah, there's that problem.

You're just sitting there and watching a bowl of cold meat water for eight hours.

Sounds It's like it's from experience, man. It might have just happened.

I've been through some things, yeah. Well, if you don't have a wife, you have a crop pot. This is true. I mean, it's definitely... And it's a sad day for a man when you realize you're like, Oh, damn, this is When you go in to get your crock pot.

That's signing up for it right there. It is, really.

You name, or some people name it after a woman, and I'm like, Well, this is getting a little crazy, I feel like. But when you look When I think back on jobs that I had, I used to sell hamsters outside of raves when I was young. I worked in dairy. I sold Mexican food door to door. I used to clean out wish and wells in our town. We had a plethora of wells in our parish. What else? Collecting cans and taking them over to the scales. I sold Italian or semi-Italian food, just all types of things. I try to offer suggestions to people that were like me growing up. How do you find a job that could start to change if you don't have much? I often go to pressure wash, and that's what I'll tell people. You buy a pressure wash, you can get a pretty good one for about 600 bucks, and then you can start a business. You can make your Dave's lawn care cards. Two weeks later, you're a dang business owner. Are there suggestions you have like that for people that are like... It can be a first job, even like, What do I start?

I mean, lawn care is a great one.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to me what people will pay you to do if you're just willing to go do it and you show up on time. Then I think the piece that goes with that is, okay, you don't want to start pressure washing and go, Hey, I want to be 63 years old, which is what I am, and still be pressure washing. That's not a plan. But to get you through this week, you can do a lot of pressure washing. You're right. That can turn into a car detail company and then turn it into something else and then sell that and do something else. What I figured out was these wealthy people, they don't think, Thank God it's Friday, oh God, it's Monday. They're not living for the weekend, right? Every move they make is a step towards where I want to be in 10 years, who I want to become. Okay, I might be pressure washing so I can get the money to go to code school, pay $10,000 and go to code school. Oh, then you can make $150 a year coding, right? What's the step? What's the method to get there?

What's the path to get there? The problem, I think, sometimes is if you feel like you're taking a job like that. I've done all that, not the exact same thing, but I've done a bunch of crappy jobs, too, and entrepreneurial things. I buy an old car, a repo lot, and come home, fix it up, put it back on the market. Back in those days, there were classified ads in the newspaper. Oh, yeah. We'd turn around, sell the car, or buy a bunch of junk at some auction. I was there, buy the house, but I buy half the estate and then put it in, turn into a garage sale next week. Oh, yeah.

You got a damn Pontiac full of candelabras or something. That's it, man.

You're driving all through. You get some deals on stuff. It was a lot of fun. Horse trading, we called it growing up, but no horses involved. But somebody knew how to buy something and flip it over.

Or go to the police auction. That was always a big thing.

That's a lot of fun. There's some weird stuff there, man. Is there? But yeah. All that stuff. But it needs to be that that's not where you're staying. It's a path of where you're going. That changes everything. It's like even this meteoric, fabulous, famous career that you've done. I mean, you're just, man, amazing. Congratulations. Thanks, man. But I mean, there's a lot of bad comedy clubs in the lineup with wrong people in the audience before you get to be the Theovon of today. There's a price to be paid to win. You don't win. You're an overnight success. Yeah, I worked my butt off for 30 years to be an overnight success. You worked your butt off for a decade plus to be an overnight success. Just because somebody found you on Netflix last week, that doesn't mean you just started on it. I don't know how it happened.

Right. Yeah. I mean, even when I think back, I used to get all these... I would get all the email cards and go before the shows and put them on all the tables so I could get back in touch with people I would buy the CD or DVD burner and burn a DVD and then sell it after the show. I'd burn it. I remember when I got a three-disk burner, so I could burn three at a time, dude.

Wow. What'd those sell for, man?

They were probably 300 bucks, 400 bucks. Wow. You could get that little stack.

I'm not talking about the burner. What were you selling the CDs for?

The CDs for? Probably 10, but I'd take eight.

And volume discount, too. If you want 10 of them to give them for Christmas presents, I'll set you up.

I sold one to a lady one time. This was in Mission Walk, Indiana. She bought one. She drove three hours home. She said it didn't work, and she drove back the next day to come and change it. It's just a dang $8. She spent more in gas But I guess it was just the point of making sure she got what she paid for, which I understand. But yeah, when I think about all the different things or missing certain events in people's lives or something to work, sometimes I wish I had a little bit better I think it's a balance. But also liked working. I think I really liked it. But yeah, I don't think it's as easy as having... Things evolve, though, too. One thing I'm thinking, say, if you start a pressure washing, you're going to start to learn how to do business. That's something you don't realize you're going to learn by starting a business. Sometimes is that you're going to learn how to do business. And next thing, you might have an employee, and then you're like, Oh, wow, now I'm an employer. I've never been an employer. What's that like? And you just learn, you'll do taxes and business that you'll file for LLC.

You'll do all these things, and then you're just building up knowledge. And then part of you, or for me, I notice, will start to bloom a little bit and be like, Well, now what else do I want to do? Because you've seen one thing that you tried and started with, you've seen it work or not work even. You've learned that, Hey, it didn't work out. But yeah, the more steps you take into doing business, the more Or did you become somebody who walks like a business guy in some ways.

You change your identity. You change who you are. I'm not the little red neck hillbilly kid, hell-raising that I was when I was in high school. I got a lot less hair for one thing, but I'm also not that guy anymore. For that matter, I've been married 43 years. My wife's not married the same guy she married 43 years ago. Thank God, because he wasn't much.

What hair do you have? Something good?

Not as good as yours. I never got that. But I had that '70s thing going with the little feathers on the side. You remember those? Yeah. You don't remember them, but you've seen pictures with it. Oh, yeah. Problem with the part down the middle is the part gets wide if you're not careful.

Dude, what would you say to somebody who's going in a business with a friend That's one thing I think about a lot of times. What are things like a partnership with a friend, right? Or starting a partnership with just a new business person. It could even be a spouse. What are pitfalls that people can look out for in advance of that stuff?

Well, I mean, the The biggest thing we run into, we coach about 10,000 businesses with the Entree leadership brand, small businesses, and they're anywhere from 5 to 200 team member size. What I tell those guys, and I'll be speaking to them, we do an event with about 3,000 of them once a year. I'll be speaking to them in the next couple of weeks here. One of the things we tell them is really, you're a beer drinking buddy and you sitting around talking about opening a business is a bad idea. One of you all needs to open it and the other one needs to work there. You can pay him out of the profits if you want. You can be generous, but anything with two heads is a monster, and they only ship on sales is a partnership. So generally speaking, don't do a partnership, generally. Now, if you're going to have friends work on your team, which I got a bunch of them on. A bunch of my team is friends, and they either became friends while they're here or they were friends and then they came here. I've got family in the building. My kids work here in their 30s.

How do you navigate that? Well, we had to learn from a family business perspective, and works for friends as well, to separate the hat that we wear. My hat that I wear with my buddy, it's friend, and we're having a scar together or playing golf or we're doing whatever. It says friend on it, right?

Fantasy football, yeah.

Yeah, whatever. But when we're at work, my hat says CEO. Right. And his says technology or whatever. And so you do your job, I'll do my job, and I'm going to treat you like I would treat the other team members because I treat them all nice and good and with dignity. I don't scream and cuss at people. I mean, we treat them right. You're going to treat me with the same respect that you would if you worked in a place when the CEO walked in the room. Not that you bow or something like that, but you don't roll your eyes and go use friend talk at your CEO. You can't run up and tickle them or whatever. That's strange. But But the idea being that like my kids, my daughter, Rachel Cruz, is a huge personality. Three, four, number one best sellers and speaks all over America, is constantly on the network TV and stuff. We've got eight of those people that are personalities that do different things. She gets paid, not as my daughter, but based on the work that she does there. Then She's got three of my grandkids. So I got Papa Dave hat on when I'm with the grandbabies at Thanksgiving dinner.

But when we're here, I'm dealing with her. Everybody in the room knows she's my daughter, but I treat her the same way I would treat Dr. John Deloney or Ken Coleman, the other personalities as well. So you just got to separate that and wear different hats. So when you're wearing your friend hat, then act that way. When you're at work, you're wearing this hat, and you've got to perform, I got to perform. And so family doesn't get a pass A friend doesn't get a pass for incompetence or just, I'm not going to come to work today. No, that's not how we... We're all coming to work today.

If you are going into business with a friend, what discussions need to be had up front? Say you're going into a partnership with a buddy, so you don't run into lawsuits down the line.

Well, you may. Nothing you do keeps you from... People can file a lawsuit for anything, even if it's not true. They can just make up something about it, and they We've run into that. But what we tell folks, if you're going to do a partnership, make sure you got really good documentation. The best thing you can do is talk through and have in the document all the bad things that can happen. A lot of them are Ds. Divorce, drug use, disinterest, I don't want to work anymore, disability, death. What happens when these things happen? Because you may be just great working with your buddy, and he owns half the company, but his wife's cuckoo and he dies. Now you're partnered with cuckoo. That's a bad plan. You need to have this laid out, what's going to happen in these situations. I had a guy working here that was one of our top leaders many years ago, got MS. He was driving home, 6 miles home, got lost on the way home, brain lesions. He obviously became disabled. What happens to that guy? He was one of my top guys. He paid off the bottom line like he was a partner.

Just a wonderful man. He's passed away now. But how do you treat him? How do you treat his family in the worst case scenario? And how are you going to take care of them? Because you want to take care of your buddy. You don't want your buddy's kids to be homeless because something happened to him if he's your partner. In this case, this guy was one of my right arms. You just got to think that stuff through because it's going to come. Something is going to come at you. If you haven't anticipated it, because everybody goes into this stuff like, Oh, it's all going to work. Nothing works like it's supposed to work ever. It never works. It's never as easy as it sounds when you're sitting and talking about it the first time. Yeah.

Did you find yourself having unrealistic expectations about going into business spaces? That's some things that I've struggled with in my life, especially recently. It's just unrealistic expectations that things are going to work or that they should be a certain way, not leaving space no place for anything, really. Trying to just really have a lot of my own will, I guess. In some ways it is, but also it's just- Observing you from the outside, I think you probably suffer from this intense desire to be excellent.

Yeah. All that means is you're excellent. If you demand that of yourself, it's okay to demand that of the situation of the project, any of the people. I work my tail off, and so I don't hesitate, if somebody's not, to go, Hey, come on, pick it up. It's not like I'm kicking back and asking you to go. No, I'm going. So keep up. And same thing with a project. We get on these projects now. So I do. I still have unrealistic expectations. I do have a reality perception after 30 freaking years of doing stupid stuff. I'm convinced we've survived about 90% of our ideas. Everything that good that's happened, happened on about 10% of them. But when you're starting it, you're going for a walk in the morning and you're sitting on the dock having a cup of coffee at the lake, and you had this idea, they're all good then. But when you're half a million dollars in and you go, Oh, this sucks. This is awful. You come to realization that even though we demanded excellence, even though we drove the lane, put the ball on the hoop, even though we didn't have product market fit, something's off, pricing's off, something's off.

But if you're not trying stuff, you're not growing. You got to try stuff, but you're going to screw up a lot of it, even though you demand excellence. But I don't have a hesitation at all expecting excellence and expecting it. Why would you enter something you didn't think was going to work? Of course, we think it's going to work. Like a stupid reporter the other day is like, Did you ever have any idea it would be this big? I'm like, Well, of course I did. I'm getting people out of debt. There's like, Everybody is my market. Of course, I thought it. But what I didn't know is how much I think it was going to be. I didn't have any idea it was going to have $100 million in payroll. I didn't have any idea that it was going to take that to do it. But I knew there was a lot of need. I knew that it could be big, but I didn't know how bad it was going to be, how hard it was going to be.

Yeah, I think that's the thing that You know what? That's funny when I hear you say that because I started to get busier with stuff that was business. I just wanted to be a comedian, and then got into podcasting, then you have employees, and then they have feelings and you And they have feelings. Yeah, and you have relationships with them. It's all these things. Next thing you know, it's like I spend a lot of my day. Most of your time gets gone because there's another responsibility. Then I'm just like, Man, I didn't expect this much more work to come out of, I think, just having some goals.

Yeah, I thought I was going to be on the radio and sell some books on getting out of debt. Who knew I 400 people in a tech department? It's the same thing. You're exactly right. But the good news is that, like you said earlier, it's an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to grow. That way you don't just stay in the pressure-washing business. I still enjoy the stage. I still enjoy being on the radio, on the podcast, the YouTube every day. We still do that show every day, three hours a day. I still enjoy all that stuff, but I also enjoy running this place. I'm running it with my son. He's the President now. That's awesome. We have breakfast this morning, and we're having a lot of fun working on the problems and looking at the new opportunities and all that. The entrepreneurial side is fun.

Elevate Every morning with Tommy John, Second Skin Underwear. Don't you want more skin on you? Feeling groovy. What you put in your pants can make or break your day. We know that. Elevate every morning with Tommy John second skin underwear. Tommy John's stylish and soft second skin underwear has dozens of comfort innovations, like a supportive contour pouch and breathable, lightweight, moisture-wicking fabric with four times the stretch of competing brands. That's a lot. I've been trying different pairs of boxer briefs for the past few months, and I'll say that Tommy John, they really got my number. That second skin, it's just like, God, it's just like feeling like part of your body is already in heaven. They do it well. Shop Tommy John's Friends & Family sale right now and get 25% off site-wide. Dang. At tomijohn. Com/theo. That's right, save 25% for a limited time at tommyjohn. Com/thio. Tommyjohn. Com/theo. See site for details. When we started selling a T-shirt online, my friend Kevin made it in his basement, and he would ship it out. Then it grew and people wanted a different shirt. We put up something else and then a hoodie, and then We had sometimes to have more, and sometimes we had too much.

All along the way, there to help us was Ship station. That's right. If you run an e-commerce business, you can relate to the amount of work it takes to put it all together. Like us, you want to optimize your workflow. Well, Ship station is the multi-carrier shipping solution that integrates wherever you sell online. The best is as your business scales, whether it's scaling up or down, because they all fluctuate. Ship station is right there to work with you. Ship station is the innovative tool that helps turn your shipping challenges into opportunities for growth. Go to shipstation. Com and use code Theo to sign up for your free 60-day trial. That's shipstation. Com and use code T-H-E-O. What do you say to employees who want to talk to their employer about getting a raise or getting... What is a good way to approach an employer about that stuff?

A lot of stuff in business like that are relationship things. If you'll just switch the moccasins a minute, where are their moccasins? If you were the supervisor or you're the owner of the business, how would you want someone to talk to you about it? I really appreciate when our folks come in and go, Hey, I'm making this, and here's two or three positions in the marketplace that are more for the same position. What I'm curious about is what I can do to be worth what those people are doing, because I want to be worth more to the business. If they say it that way, oh, man, I'm like, Yeah, okay, here. Matter of fact, we probably have overlooked that. We probably just need to give you a raise. But maybe there's three things you need to do to level up to be ready to do that. It's an opportunity for growth and those kinds of things. Because really, if you're an employer, your team has to make you more or save you more than they cost. Or by definition, you go out of business, mathematically. If you look at that as a team member, it's like, how can I add more value than I cost or to save more money and depend on what they're working on, but than I cost, then it's a no-brainer unless the employer is a jerk and greedy or whatever.

But most employers are just trying to figure it out, too. We're just trying to go, especially small business people. We love our people, their family to us, and we want to help them win. We want their kids to go to college. We want to be with them 20 years and watch them grow up. We want all that. We want good stuff for you. But we also don't want to close because we overpaid everybody and didn't make any stinking money. So then everybody loses. So you've got this balance. Employers got that stress they're carrying. So if you'll keep that in mind when you're asking, how can I add value that's more than I cost or save you more than I cost, I've got a lady in logistics. She saved us several hundred thousand dollars with contract negotiations with our logistics people on the shipping more than she cost. Wow. It's easy to say, Yeah, you're worth That's a no brainer. I like sharing with her. We always tell people around here, If you kill it and drag it home, go out there, kill it, drag it to the cave, I'll share it with you. Let's figure it out.

You bring in a million dollars in revenue, we can probably devy that up. We can probably figure out something to do with that. I don't need to take it all home, but also I don't need to give it all to one person either. So we figured this out. You can do that when you're adding value. Just look at it that way. Not like, on the other hand, I had a guy come in years ago, long time ago, and he'd been to school half his life. He had more degrees than a thermometer. He said, Hey, man, at these big companies, people that got this many degrees, they make a certain amount of money. He said, I'm not making that here. We need to adjust my income. I said, Well, dude, I'm sorry. This is a small business. Your raise is effective when you are. We don't pay you for degrees. We pay you for bringing in more than you cost. Right now, you're not. He left and went and worked for Corporate America, where they'll pay him for those degrees, and they can get away with that. But small business can't do that.

What do you say? What is some of the... Or even just to How do you get a little bit more minute with it, what are just... Say somebody's out there listening, Man, I feel like I want to talk to my boss about a razor. Should they tell themselves certain things to prep themselves to go in there? Should it just be comfortable? Because it's just a space where a lot of people get really uncomfortable, I think.

Yeah. Anytime I'm in a situation like that where I'm uncomfortable, where there's conflict or a negotiation, if you want to call it that, I found that the more options I have, the calmer I am. If there's only one thing, if I don't get this, I'm dead. But if you got six people wanting to hire you and you want to go in and go, Hey, I'd like to stay, and I like it here, and I like you, I want it to work, but I got all this other stuff. Your body language changes. You don't have to be cocky about it. You don't have swagger in or something, but you can come in with a lot of confidence if you've got options. But if you've got it all dialed in, it's just one thing If I don't get this one thing, the whole thing's over and you add this drama, then you tighten up.

You can feel that energy in there, too.

It changes the conversation. Your vocal cords change even.

Yeah. There can be things, even if it's not financially, you could get, Well, can Is there a possibility that my car could be paid or insurance? I think there's always different possibilities of things you can ask for, even that.

Depending on how the business is structured and what's going on, there's a lot of different things you can do to help people and do different things. Sometimes we've had situations where someone was just in a financial situation. They got in trouble. They come in, we sit down, we go over their budget, and we go, Okay, number one, we're going to get you in a situation so you're never here again with your budget, how you're handling your money. But then number two, your house is four payments behind, so we're going to catch the house up. That's just a one-time thing. It's not a permanent raise because the raise wasn't the problem. Their mismanagement at home was the problem. That's what you're saying. We helped them fix the mismanagement, and then we catch them up. Now they're at even, now they can run.

Would you buy it? Do you still think it's good to buy a house? I'm a homeowner for the first time, like last year or two years ago. Sometimes I'm like, Is this That's the best thing to do. It's tougher to have freedom to just go where you want. You can't just go. Then sometimes it feels like there's so many expenses with a home. Sometimes it feels like, I'm not saying it's true, but it feels like I'm not really building up any equity or saving money. What do you think about it, Dave?

Well, again, over the scope of time, you're making money without a doubt.

By owning a home?

Absolutely. Again, I'm old, so I've gotten to see How did this thing happen. I got my real estate license three weeks after I turned 18 years old in 1978. The first house I sold was to a buddy of mine from high school, which means he wasn't smart because he let me sell him my house, and I'm stupid.

You're like, Now I'm going to live in one of the rooms, buddy. I just want you to know straight up.

How's this going? Anyway, I sold him that house for 42,500 bucks, and it's on East Ridge, over in Antioch. That house today would be probably 800. Wow. If you bought a house four years ago, you've gotten in Nashville, you made serious money on it in four years in terms of value increase. But yeah, the nickel dime expenses, the messing with the repairs. I mean, crap, the more stuff you own, the more repairman you have to know. I mean, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's got a motor in it or it's cars or houses or boats or all this stuff. Something's always freaking breaking. There's always something screwed up. It does get the feeling of just the hassle and the aggravation. There's no simplicity to it at all. Your life gets more complicated. Be careful what you wish for. But homeownership in general, absolutely. We did the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America. I saw that. The typical millionaire that we found, 89% of them were first-generation, meaning they did not inherit their money. It's not how they became millionaires. So 9 out of 10. That's good news for everybody. We all got a shot.

Then the But the two things that got them there was simply putting money in their 401k and buying a house and paying it off. I'd meet a guy, he's 42 and he had a house of six or $700,000. He had like six or $800,000 in his 401(k), and he's 42 years old. So he's worth over a million dollars, and he paid off his house. Home ownership is a key part of the first one to $10 million in networth that somebody builds. Yeah, I'm a huge believer in homeownership. Don't do it stupid because buying a house you can't afford makes you broker. That's why they call them brokers. But it's a problem.

This is your study right here. How did you come upon these millionaires?

We did a detailed study and sent out not just from us, but we just went to the population and found them. We had a research firm in New York City looking over our shoulder to make sure our research methodology was tight because we knew we'd get a a ton of pushback from people who think that America is dead and there's no chance for anybody to win. You can't get up off the bottom. Little man can't get ahead, that whole thing.

You're saying that's not true?

The problem is little man gets ahead every day in America. We see it right here. I've met them for 30, 40 years doing this. I run into them, and some of them did it because they did our stuff, but some of them just said, I'm going to live on less than I make. It was an interesting result.

Well, so these are the top five careers of the millionaires that you guys looked at? Yes.

Engineer or accountant. What we found was what occurred most often. Engineer was number one. The most often occurring among the people we surveyed that were millionaires was engineer. Number two is accountant. Number three was teacher, which is surprising. Number three, management business. Number five is attorney. Medical doctor didn't even make top five. We always think of doctors and lawyers. They're actually number six, but they're notoriously bad with money. They make a lot of money, but They're like music stars or something. They're notoriously bad with money. That was interesting. We couldn't figure out at first what these things had in common because they don't seem to have anything in common. What we finally figured out is all five of these are process people. You follow a process, a set of rules, and you learn the rules, and you follow the rules. You're an engineer. There's only one way to build that building, and it doesn't fall. If you're an accountant, it's not art. You don't get to make up how you do accounting. There's one way to do it. Teachers have a lesson plan they have to follow. Business has always a set of best practices.

Attorneys, there's the law, and you can only conduct yourself in court a certain way or the judge will smack you backwards. All of these are process people. They discovered because of the way the brain work that led them into these careers, they discovered the process of living on less they make, living on a budget, starting to invest, being generous, paying off their house, that stuff. They followed that process, and that's what got them there. The interesting thing is one-third of them, 33% made less than 100,000 a year. They were not making bank. They were not earning their way into it, really.

Because you would think teachers, you always hear, We got to pay these teachers more.

We do. I mean, that wouldn't be bad at all. But the way the teacher's brains work, they do process, and that's the secret sauce.

All All of those, I guess, you have to have an education for.

Well, that's true.

We have to go to college. Do you have to go to college to be a teacher? I don't know if you have to. You do? Yeah, definitely. Sorry, teachers, I didn't. Some of mine didn't go. Some of mine- Some of yours didn't go to class. Mine didn't either. Some of mine would be in classes with me. I was like, What? It's like Rick Flair came on here one time, and he said he was in a rehab facility for drugs and alcohol, and he looks over one day at lunch, and one of the doctors is in the facility.

That's not good sign.

Yeah, it's like, Well, that's definitely... You're not a hooters, bro. I'm like, You're just not a hooters. Yeah, that's what the people say a lot of times is. It does feel like that now. There's a lot of energy in there. It feels like the American dream isn't possible, that it doesn't exist. Where do you think a lot of that energy comes from? It feels like that's the consensus these days. Would you agree with that? It feels like that?

There's a lot of loud people that have that. I don't know that it's necessarily a consensus among Americans.

Because consensus means that most people agree with it? Right. Okay.

I'm not sure of that, but there's enough people that are making noise in that regard. But there always has been. I mean, if you go back to the '70s with the hippie movement, it was the same thing. There's always been my group, the Baby Boomers. There's always been somebody in the group that felt like the system was rigged. Man, we got to get the system. We can't beat the system. The little man can't get ahead. The neighborhood I grew up in, people say that. They never said it with enthusiasm. It's like, The little man can't get They're dead. Like Eor is their spirit animal. Where's my tail? I'm stuck and life's bad. No, you're not. Get up off your butt and go get a pressure washer. I mean, there's stuff to do. Most of these people, again, these millionaires, and a million dollars is not... That's not a billion dollars. That's a million. There's a lot of difference. Millionaires don't have jets. Millionaires don't have seven cars and four houses. No. They've just got a paid four house and some money in their retirement. That's what it amounts to. People have a different mindset there, and they think, Okay, I can't be like this rock star.

Well, you might not be. There's not as many billionaires as there are millionaires. But anyway, can it be done? Yes, it can be done. There's a lot of loud noises out there. I don't know where that comes from. I think it starts with, and one of the reasons I pushed back and did this study, and then we ended up doing a number one best selling book on it, Baby Steps Millionaires. Push them back in the marketplace against those voices is because it's not true that you can't get ahead. When you convince someone that it's true, you're stealing their hope. You shouldn't steal people's hope, man. That's evil. You got to encourage people to go do stuff. Now, you should not encourage them to go on American Idol if they can't sing. Stop their nightmares, but also encourage their dreams. This hopelessness that goes with that. I feel stuck. I'll never get a house. I'm a Gen Z, I'm a millenn. I can't get ahead in today's world. You boomers bought your house for two baskets of strawberries, and so now I'm stuck and you don't understand. Housing Honey, it's so expensive. Honey, it's always been expensive.

I was doing an interview on NPR the other day, and the lady said, I was riding with the Uber driver, and the Uber driver said his daughter is a dancer and a barista, and she couldn't get a house. I went, That's been true in every generation. If you serve coffee and you're in Nashville and you're a dancer, you can't get a house. Those are not career fields that you're going to make enough to be able to afford a house. That's not a new thing. That doesn't mean the system has failed. Yeah.

Who's buying Java off a stripper either? To be honest, I'm not saying they don't- I didn't say what dancer.

I didn't have any idea there.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I thought. I didn't know. But who also I guess it would be nice, though, if a stripper just shows up as a nice cup of coffee. Actually, that's probably not a bad deal. Don't they have that nude barista drive-through or something? Where's that at?

You know, that is a thing. That's right. I saw that. That's a while back. That's old news.

It's old news, but it definitely still, I think some people pretend like it's new news every day when they roll up there. Let me see the headlines.

Not sure exactly how we got there, but okay.

Well, yeah, but I'm just saying that's a unique business right there. That's wild. You know, it'll be definitely...

But back to your thing. The thing is, hope is a decision, and it's got to be based on you've Have the actual reality in your life of going from collecting cans to sitting here. I've had the reality in my life of going from mowing grass to millionaire in my 20s to losing it all. I'm so dumb, I had to do it twice.

I am.

I've got that reality. When someone says it can't be done, I went, wait a minute. Hello. I'm fairly smart, but I'm not a rocket surgeon. I don't We don't even know how to do stuff. I'm figuring it out as I go. I think anybody can do it.

No, it's good to hear. I think people having a hope like that is important. I think it's just really important to hear that. If you take away somebody's hope, because I guess that's what a lot of these loud voices are doing. I never thought about that that much. They're just trying to take away hope because once they have your hope, they can keep you there.

If they're running If they're running a game and they're manipulating, that's one thing, and that's particularly evil. But the other one is just they really have lost hope, and so they're angry, and they want to loudly proclaim that it's not possible, which makes them feel okay that they're not winning, that they haven't gone and done something yet, because winning is hard, man. It's hard.

Yeah. It takes a lot of work, man. Yeah, I was talking to the head of Kid Rock was on a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about how, yeah, if you want to have success, you're going to have to probably work 60 hours a week, 60 to 80 hours a week, he was saying.

For a period of time, not your whole life. We started this thing, man, I was 16 hours. My wife had... She's like, I was a single mom for two years. You were gone. I was on the road doing book tours. I was out speaking everywhere. I was going crazy, going to cities, trying to get radio stations to carry the show. Back when talk radio was the thing, and that's how we all got started. It was in talk radio.

Oh, yeah. Do you ever meet Paul Harvey?

No, I didn't. No, I didn't. I wish I had. That would be so cool.

I know you all's timeline is off.

I knew all the guys that are current Rush and Sean Hannity and all those guys are all contemporaries, and they're all Friends and people that have been around the business like that, and a lot of the new guys that are doing really good work, too. But anyway, we're just out there hustling, man, and you got to leave the cave kill it, drag it home. My wife grew up on a farm, so she's I'm like, Yeah, hard work, how you do this, so get after it. Now, you can't maintain that. It was two years. It wasn't 20. 20, I would have lost my family. You can't maintain relationships. My kids would have been messed up. And so by the time my kids got on up, I didn't miss a prom, I didn't miss a hockey game, I didn't miss whatever, the big games. I mean, little stuff I'd be gone during the week, but we started putting these dates on the calendar, and we would book our events around them. You couldn't book on top of that. And I still do that.

Yeah. When people talk about... You hear a lot of discussion these days about how inflation is getting so Is growing so fast, I guess, that the minimum wage isn't keeping up with it. It feels detrimental. It feels sometimes impossible. If you look at the minimum wage, you're like, how is this going to It would feel impossible, almost, I feel like, if you were trying to take care of a family or something on that.

Well, truthfully, minimum wage has never, I don't think since even it was formed in the '70s, I don't think any time in history, minimum wage has been enough to take care of a family. You've always had to think beyond minimum wage if you wanted to Excel, if you wanted to have, A, build some wealth, or B, just take care of a family, those kinds of things. Minimum Wage is not designed for the entry-level jobs. That's not designed. What's more disturbing than minimum wage is that wages in general, average household income, have not kept up with inflation.

That's more alarming because that's the whole population.

It's not just this segment that enters entry-level stuff at minimum wage. Because if we go all the way back to minimum wage, I'm cutting grass for $3 a yard in 1972. Okay, a thousand. There were dinosaurs in the yard. We had to get them out of the yard. But I mean, 1972, $3 a yard. But minimum wage was a buck 65. My buddy's working at Burger King, Flopp & Wapper's, and he's making a buck 65. If I can cut that $3 yard in an hour, I'm making double minimum wage at 12 years old. That's how my little math brain was working. I'm running that mower. I'm going.

You can even cut somebody's yard and just go to the door and be like, Hey, just cut your No, I mean, that was my job.

They were one of my clients. I had to go cut their grass.

But some people, I bet if you rolled up to my door and knocked on my door and said, Hey, man, I just cut your yard, will you give me 10 bucks for it or whatever?

Except for that other guy you hired to do it that's coming next week. There's a problem with him. But you've always had the opportunity to beat minimum wage. So you don't want to sit and say, Okay, minimum wage is my gage of whether I can go win because I We can go do something that beats minimum wage.

Right. That's a political football that gets kicked around a lot, I guess, then.

It is. It enters into this discussion falsely. It's a false narrative, where I think the real narrative that is a little bit scary is that wages have not kept up with inflation because we've had this unusual surge in inflation. It's blamed on Biden politically, but some of it's his fault, his policy issues, but most of is just the lingering results of the pandemic. And so the shortages of things always drive prices up on anything. Anything there's a shortage of, prices go up. And there was a shortage of freaking everything. Remember supply chain and all that stuff people are talking about. And so everything shot up. Real estate shot up because people sat around in their houses during the pandemic. And then when the sun came out and the curve was flattened and all, whatever, and we're all back out, Well, these people all wanted new houses. They came out of their house like a Baptist after a casserole. They were going for it, man. They were getting it. And house prices, 20, 21, wow. That was an artificial thing, though, that was created by the market being dormant and people being trapped. And then this idea of looking around at their house going, My house sucks.

I need a new house. Boom, they hit the market hard, and it's still not recovered from that. It's still got the ripple of that. And some of the other things are hit that way, too. But there's some things, again, there are policy issues, but most of it is just the smoothing out of that. And Trump nor Biden should get the credit nor the blame. It was more how the marketplace was functioning.

So you think that inflation will come down? Is that the right term to talk about inflation?

Yeah, I do. I don't think it's permanent. Again, to the extent that the politicians leave their hands off of stuff, but both parties. But there's a marketplace will smooth Again, demand, prices go up, number of people want to pay that, no. So now demand goes down, which brings prices down. So the thing smooths out eventually. You find this equilibrium, this balance. And the problem is the shortage drove the prices up and the shortage remained. Then people's appetite, they just kept coming, man, like freaking piranha. The marketplace surges is what drove the pricing as much as anything. Now, that's not true in oil and gas at the pump. That's a whole different subject. That's not true on a few other things. But housing, for sure, bread, grocery store car, yeah, all that for sure.

You always hear about the national debt, right? People talk about that all the time, and it just keeps going up, apparently. Is that a real thing that effect... It almost seems so fictional now that it's like, is it a real thing that could cause something to happen in lives? What is it? You know what I'm saying? Because everybody's like, it's just zillions. They're making up amounts of money now. Some kid told me yesterday it was 65 zegillion gerjillion. And I'm like, That's how much it is? I mean, right now it's 34. It's a number that I don't even know. How can you teach kids numbers in school, but you can't even teach them a number that would let them explain the national debt?

I went through a period of time in my 20s when I was first starting to do this stuff, late 20s, that I was worried that the hockey stick of this thing, the growth of the debt was going to cripple the economy and even cause a complete collapse. I've observed people in my world write books on the end of the world. Here's the economic end of the world coming, the economic the world. They keep being wrong, so I don't want to write that book. So is it concerning? Yeah, it's concerning because any time a group of people, us, keep spending more than we make and we keep electing people that don't have any ability to curb their appetite for our money, it's... Man, that philosophically, spiritually is scary, mathematically is scary. Is it going to cause a crash? Apparently not. I've been doing this a long... I've been watching this thinking, When? But it's not. And obviously, Mostly what the national debt, what it does do factually is it robs money from the economy that could be producing something. Because what happens is the government issues a bond. That's how they finance the debt, it's treasury bonds, T-bills and T-bonds.

And so they issue that bond, and then an investor goes and buys that government bond because they're going to pay them interest on it. If that investor had done something else in the marketplace with that money to produce something rather than sit on this bunch of fat in DC, it would have gend up the economy. I see. So it's stealing money from the economy in that sense, and it's becoming a large... The interest only on it is becoming a larger and larger portion of the budget, as if they've got a budget.

I put money in the T bills. I'm a say. Oh, it's you. Okay. It was you.

I know it was. It was you.

Okay. Because there's a lot of me, I don't trust the stock market that much. I feel like it's so manipulated these days. I feel like there's darker forces that can use the media to control roll it and can create articles to affect how the market goes. I prefer something like a T-bill or something like that that's just a safe know what it's going to be, pretty much.

Well, there's always been a falsehood and manipulation in the market. There's always been to a degree.

Do you think it's still a safe place for people to invest?

I do. I've got millions of millions of dollars in mutual funds. The way to I set that is, number one, if you don't, I believe it's there. I believe it's a very small percentage, and I don't know where it is exactly. I can't point and say that guy, that one, that girl, that thing right there. I don't know exactly where it is. But I mean, is there people that fluff the thing? Absolutely. They fluff it. Absolutely. These are people that right before the news article goes out, they sell their stuff inside of trading? It happens all the time. Sometimes they get caught, go to jail. It's illegal. But does it happen? It's common practice. Is it so widespread that it makes the investment improper or imprudent? No, I don't believe that. Otherwise, I wouldn't be investing. So I invest. If I'm in a mutual I'm in fun. I'm in 90 to 200 different stocks, and it's stuff that you drive by every day. It's McDonald's or Home Depot or Dell Computer or Apple or Exxon or whatever. That's in the 90 to 200. Rooms to go or whatever. All that. In those 90 to 200, is there some percentage of that problem going on?

Yeah, there is some percentage, but not enough that in general, those 90 to 200 companies, I'm spread out wide enough, diversified. I'm spread out enough that I'm catching all the good, and it's more than offsetting the falsehood that's out there, and it's more than offsetting that. As Home Depot makes more money, money, then I'm participating. As whoever, Apple makes more money, then I'm participating because I'm one of the owners of the company. Tiny, tiny little bit when I own in that 90 to 200 stocks. That's how I don't buy single stocks, mainly because they're higher risk and much more volatile, and you're much more prey to what if that was the company that was screwing around? Then boom, you bet the whole dadgum farm on that one horse race and that guy fell. No, we're not doing that. I don't like that much risk. I like the diversification of mutual funds. That's where all my retirement is. It's what we recommend, what we teach. I only do two kinds of investing. I buy real estate that I pay cash for, and I buy mutual funds.

Call them what you want, baby. Them knee knockers, them little baby jugglers, them thigh slappers, them nuggets, whatever. Our friends at Manscaped call them the boys. Not every man has children, but every man is responsible for their two boys below the waist. When your little guys have more hair than they need, trust manscaped for all your grooming dreams. And the boys need love, too. So join the 10 million men worldwide who trust manscaped by going to manscaped. Com and use code Theo for 20% off plus free shipping. That's right, manscaped. They help mow it down, baby, with the Lawn Mower 3.0, the 4.0 Pro, and the 5.0 Ultra. Yep, three ball tremors. Isn't it awesome? Get 20% off in free shipping with the code, theo@manscaped. Com. Take care of your body, fine-tune the hair on your body and balls. That's 20% off in free shipping with the code, theo@manscaped. Com. For the best your boys have ever looked, Trust manscaped. This episode is sponsored by Better Help. Better help for when you don't know where to turn or the places you've been turning haven't been helpful. There's another option. I was stuck in a moment one day where I just was dang caught up, and I said, I need some help, and I need it now.

I reached out to better help. Next thing you know, I'm on the line. I'm talking to a therapist. It's just the idea of saying, Hey, I'm going to try something. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge. That's one thing I always encourage. Too many times, I was with a therapist that I didn't really think it just wasn't the best connection, and I stayed with them just because I didn't want to... I was too afraid to try someone else or didn't know if I could. Don't think about it. Just try. Find your social sweet spot with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp. Com/theo today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, betterhelp. Com/theo. If someone had some money, they're thinking about putting it into the market or they're thinking about buying maybe a small apartment building or something like that, do you feel like that's a good choice for people?

I don't get in partnerships on them, like we discussed earlier. I just buy them. But real estate makes more. If it's good income-producing real estate, you'll make more on it than you will in mutual funds. Mutual funds average 10, 12%. Real estate, you ought to make 17 to 20, including the tax benefits, the appreciations going up in value, and the cash flow. Those three things do it. The problem with real estate is it's a pain in the butt because you got to deal with it. The roof leaks, whether it's commercial office building, whether it's a house, it doesn't matter. I've got a lot of both. But there's a tenant that doesn't pay or does pay, or it's empty and I can't get a tenant. There's a hassle. It's a lot of stress. There's a hassle factor to dealing with. Even if you hired management, I mean, My son-in-law runs all the Ramsey real estate stuff, and he and I grew up in real estate, so I love working with him on it. But he handles the day-to-day today. I don't screw with all that today, but it's a pain. So this idea, I hear this stuff on social media and stuff.

It was real estate's passive income. Bull crap. Nothing passive about it, dude. Your butt's active. I mean, you're right in the middle of it, or you're getting a screwed one of the two.

Yeah, I got into some real estate, and it was so much extra work that I didn't realize. Complaints, somebody's Airbn in the building, somebody started a fire or something because they didn't want to use the heat in their unit or whatever. It's like, you can't just do a fire.

You got to-need a fireplace.

Yeah. It's crazy. People just doing fires. Yeah, just stuff like that. I think a lot of alarming stuff. But yeah, there's no easy easy way to it.

Well, I mean, the T-bill, what you're talking about, you buy it and you forget it. They send you a check. It's not as big a check, but there's no hassle. Mutual funds, a little more risk because you're in there with all these companies. There could be something going on. Even if you're in 90 to 200 and limited the risk by spreading it out, you still got more risk than you would in a T-bill, but you're going to make a little more. You want a little more hustle? Go in the real estate. You're going to make a little more. You don't want to be... I try to just say it's a risk-return ratio. If I'm going to take some risk and have some hassle, I want some extra money for that.

Yeah, because it's the stress it causes. It's like, do I want to be... Because I'll notice, yeah, some stocks is too much stress for me because I'll check them too much and I don't like it. Then it's like, I spent 30 minutes of my day, dang, checking stocks, and that's the time I could have just had of doing my work.

I buy mutual funds, set it and forget it. I don't even know what the market has done this year. I do this for a living. I don't keep up with it. Because I'm not betting on this week. I'm saying, okay, look at what the stock market has done since 1980, since 1990, since 2012. Look at what I would have made if I'd have put $10,000 That's what it would have made. That's how I'm playing it, is the long haul, the long play. Wow. God. Well, there it is. 1992, $1,000 would have turned into $5,000.

Was there ever a stock that you bought, Dave, where you were like, Man, I wish I would have held on to that. That you just remember, even when you were younger, was it one?

No, I never bought single stocks ever. The only dumb thing I did is I bought gold one time. This buddy of mine, again, these buddies in my 20s, he was making money, and he had He got gold guy that we could buy options on gold, which we don't even buy in the gold, just buy in the right to buy the gold. He said he put in 5,000 bucks, and if it goes up, the option goes from 5,000 to 50,000. I'm on 10X my money. 14 times in a row, this guy had hit. You put it in, and he had predicted, and he said, Okay, we need to go in right now and put 5,000. I dropped 5,000 bucks in there. Fifteenth time, he didn't hit. It's all or nothing. So I lost the whole 5,000 and no sign of 50, right? No. So I'm done.

You think it was a pyramid scheme or not?

No, it's an option. That's how options work. It's an Uber high-risk situation. It's super crazy. It was just gambling. I mean, it's just gambling.

You ever been in a pyramid scheme?

No.

I've been in a couple.

Are you talking about multi-level or pyramid?

I mean, I don't know what it was. Whatever level it was, I lost on it. I know that.

You didn't get off the ride fast enough.

Oh, yeah. No, we had... Oh, yeah. One, I was a child. I got involved. I'd saved up, I mean, probably most of the money I had. I got into this thing and it was a scam. That was horrible. God, that killed me. Then another time, they had a dude, somebody was selling like, Glitter mining or something in our area, and they sold a bunch of shares of that shit and screwed everybody.

I remember in the '80s, everybody decided that emus were going to be the new meat. What? Really? Why? All these rednecks are buying- Pulling up.

This is unbelievable.

All these rednecks are making emu farms. It's like ostrage meat, right? They were-Oh, come on, brother. It was a big deal. A lot of people decided they were going to sell everything and open an emu farm. Really? Because for the meat, it's like ostrage meat. It's like, I don't know, it's a big bird meat, big white meat.

Bring them a picture of an emu, brother. I can't find a dang. You can't find one now, I guess. You got the commercial right there. There is. Let's scroll down a little bit. Let me see what we got.

See, he's got a little meat on. Oh, gosh. Yeah. It's hilarious, though, these rednecks Around Tennessee, they were having emu farms.

Damn. Have you ever had any of it?

No, I managed to stay out of that scam. That was one of those fad things that didn't work. Yeah, that's a damn tall. It's like beanie babies. Everybody's collecting beanie babies.

Dude, I remember beanie babies.

They were going to get rich on beanie babies.

Oh, yeah. And now they have two garbage bags.

Women fighting, like cage match, fighting in the airport gift shop to get the beanie baby.

Remember the Princess Diana beanie baby?

There it is. Yeah. It's supposed to go for $10,000 Never happened, never once. Nope, sorry. My dog plays with them now. But we had the whole freaking collection, not because it was an investment, but because my wife was freaking obsessed and I was traveling. She's at every airport, she's been in there. See, $49,000 on eBay for the princess. Never sold, though. No, that's the thing. Never sold. Never sold. Never sold. Never sold.

Never sold. Yeah, they had my buddy won his family's football pool. It was like their NCA, their college football pool they did every He won us $600, dude. He was so excited. He could have changed his life. Instead, his mom convinced him to buy a Christmas village of rare Christmas village houses.

Oh, yeah.

They're back They're back.

They're happening right now.

My buddy, to this day is-He's big into Christmas houses.

No rent, rent in much. The tenants don't make much noise.

The streetlights are always on.

Electric bills low. Running into a lot of issues.

But God, that just broke him, man. He never recovered from that. Dude, I met a dude yesterday in Tennessee. He said he took out an $800 life insurance policy on his wife. I'm like, $800?

That's pretty insulting.

Well, yeah, that's what I felt like. I'm like, Dude, do not tell her that. I was like, She's going to be pissed off. This is like, He's like, Well, my truck payment's 799 a month.

That solves it.

Yeah, speaking of traps, I guess. A lot of things you've spoken out against crypto, I know. I'm not a crypto fan. I lost $2,000 in crypto, just like every one of my friends did when it first came out. Like NFTs, things like that, that pop up that really they're almost... To me, some of them seem like the modern day pyramid scheme in a way.

They eat me for them.

Yeah, it's a lot of emu farms, baby. Why are more people falling susceptible to these types of things, do you think?

We always have. It's human nature. We're wired by God to look for the shortest path, to look for optimum, to look for the best, the quickest, the easiest. There's nothing wrong with that. That makes our lives better because we create inventions and things that make our lives better. That very wiring Wiring created the automobile or created the iPhone or created things that make our lives better. And so that's a good wiring. But where it gets off track is where we think we can short circuit a proven process. And it causes you to jump from investor to speculator. And investor is always the crockpot. They're always the long play. They're always saying, okay, I'm going to invest in mutual funds. I don't care what stock market did this year. I'm thinking, what's it going to be in 20 years? What's it going to be in 15 years? How am I going to be doing? I'm thinking long term. The speculator needs a quick flip. And so Bitcoin has never really been about investing. It's a speculation. It's a short term play. No one bought that and said, in 20 years, this is going to look brilliant.

No one did. They all thought, quick money, easy money. No one flips houses with nothing down that they saw on TikTok. Quick flip, quick flip. When When a builder even builds a home that they're not custom building, they call it a spec house. It means speculation. They're speculating that they're going to sell that house. It's a short term play. They're not building that house in that subdivision hoping to sit on it 10 years. They're building a hope to sit on 10 days. It's speculation. Where you mess up is where you can fall into scams and get rich quick and violate basic investing principles is when move from investing, which is long term mentality, to speculation, which is quick hit. I want quick money, easy money, quick money, easy money. And that's that wiring, that's positive wiring gone astray, become toxic. In a sense, that's what happened to me when I went broke in real estate because I was buying houses. I was doing flip this house before Chip and Joanna were born. We were getting it. I've owned like 2,000 houses in my life. So I was churning them, man. But I was doing it 90-day notes, short-term notes, because I was not buying them as a long-term play.

I was buying them, fix them, and flip them. And the bank got sold to another bank. They look up and they can call my notes in 90 days. So they called a million, too, in 90 days, and it crashed me. Because I was a speculator, I wasn't an investor. Now, I would have told you I was a real estate investor. But the actual definition of the term investor means longer term horizon, long window. And so if it's, thank God it's Friday, oh God, it's money. If I got to move it this calendar year or in the next two calendar years to make money on it, then you're playing the roulette wheel, you're playing Texas Hold'em. That's speculation. You're gambling then. And that's a different thing. It's okay if you want to do some of that, but quit calling it investing because then it causes you to put two You got much money in it because you lose your butt then. And that's where you get scammed. Is you're looking for something for nothing quick, a quick turn, double my money fast, because I don't think I can get there long term. So I'm so desperate and so scared, so fearful, so greedy I got to get it right now.

That's what I was doing. It worked. I got a million dollars worth of stuff, but I didn't keep it because I built a house of cards.

Obviously, when you work, sometimes it's weird. People ask me, What hobbies do I have and stuff? But the weird thing is, A lot of my hobbies became my jobs. Is that what happened for you, or do you still have things that you'd like to do outside of?

As I got further down in the business in the last For several decades, I actually do have things I do outside of here. But in the first few decades, it was just, you're right. I get great joy out of the stuff we do. We help people. A lot of people are scared. They're broken. They're about to lose their house. They've been through bankruptcy. Their marriage is on the rocks, whatever. We're able to help them, and that's wonderful. I have a lot of fun doing the show still. Again, once you've been on stage with an audience, our gig is a different gig, but it's fun to be with people. Yeah. It's fun to be people that want to be there, and it's addicting in that regard. I enjoy that whole thing. I enjoy that scene. I enjoy running the business, but also have picked up a few things away from here, so that I... Distractions, and I don't know if they're hobbies, I guess, but I end up collecting stuff or whatever, doing that stuff. But there's nothing wrong with, especially in the first couple of decades, with almost all your energy doing that other than family stuff.

What are some... Obviously, Because you've learned a lot of financial lessons over the years. What were some personal lessons that you had to learn along the way, too, that helped you? Was there some things that have stood out to you, you feel like?

I didn't know how to lead. Like you said earlier, we're talking about hiring an employee. I was so dumb that I thought if you hired people, that they would work.

They knew what to do.

Well, no, that they would actually work. I thought they would just show up. I thought they'd be on time. I didn't think they'd steal. I was so dumb that I thought all that. I just like, If you could fog up a mirror, let's go do this together, man. Come on, get in here. I'll put you on payroll. Let's go. Then I got all this crazy and all this drama and all this other stuff. I was horrible. I was pretty much a boss. Bosses push, leaders pull. When I was 32 years old, I didn't get that. When we hired our first person, I was 32. And so over the years, I've had to learn to not be behind. Because if you're a boss, you're just at the back of the cattle and cracking the whip. It's like you're moving at the speed of the slowest cow, slowest common denominator in the room. It's like, get on. If you're a leader, you're standing at the train going, We're leaving. Anybody want to get on? Because this thing's going. You better keep up because we're going hard and you better get it. And so I had to get around in front of that and say, All right, I'm going to lead.

And then I went to this Christian conference with a guy named John Maxwell, who's become a great friend. He's one of the top leadership speakers in the world. Is he really? And he said, You I'm going to be a servant leader. And I went, Say what? I'm the one writing the check. I ain't the servant. I'm confused here. And I thought he meant subservient. And what he meant was you got to love your people. And you got to care what's best for them. Sometimes that means telling them hard truth that they don't want to hear. Sometimes it means they can't work anymore because they can't behave, that stuff. I realized I had been serving my kids by making them brush their teeth against their will. So they have some teeth later that's serving them. So it's a servant leader, right? Yeah, I'm good with servant leadership. I had to learn that. Again, I sucked. I was a horrible boss because I was going so hard. I thought everybody else was going hard, and I was pissed off because they weren't keeping up. I'm like, well, you hired a bunch of donkeys and expect to win the dead gum Kentucky Derby.

And no donkey ever won, man. So we had to look for thoroughbreds and have a donkeyectomy. And it was a problem, man. I sucked. I'm a world-class leader today. It's one of the things I'm best at. I love our people. I love our team. The way this place functions and operates, it's one of the best places in Nashville to work, probably one of the best places in the world to It's not perfect. We screw up, but we treat people right. We care about them, and we expect high things out of them. We expect them to get it, and they do. We got a great team.

Wow. I think that's something that I did have solely had to... Yeah, that's been a tough journey for me. Even just having a few employees, it's like you're suddenly a boss. You didn't even want to be a boss. Some of that, too. I think just a realization like, Oh, I'm the boss, I guess. They're like, Well, yeah, you are.

I'm like, Well, why? I was just trying to get crap done. Who knew? I needed somebody to do that thing, and you brought you in to do that thing, and then you brought all your crap with you when you did that. Now I got to deal with your crap. That's been a 30-year journey.

That's huge. Boss versus leader. It's such a good way to look at it. Would you go to conference and stuff to learn about that stuff, too? Because I'm sure you had to evolve in that space. I did.

I I read like a maniac. I'm going to read leadership books, business books. I still read like crazy. I love to get new information. In this digital age, a whole guy like me, I'm sitting in these meetings with these studs, and I don't even know what they're saying. And they work for me. What did you just say? I have to keep up. I got to work hard. I got to pedal hard just to stay on the bike. And so, yeah, I still do that stuff, and I still hang out. The good news is some of the guys that are the best and thinkers in the world have become friends over the years now. And so they're my running buddies. So we hang out. I get to talk offline with them, and they still teach me stuff. It's cool.

What about fiction? You read anything like that ever?

Oh, yeah, always. All the Jack Carr stuff, you read Jack? Yeah. I read all that stuff. Brad Thor is a friend. I read all his stuff, all those spy novels and stuff. Fiction makes airplanes fly fast.

Yeah, it does, huh? Yeah, Jack Carr, that's wild, dude. I was a big John Grisham fan when I was growing up.

Yeah, I read all of his, every one of his.

Daniel Silva is the guy.

The guy he writes, the character, the prognost is an Israeli Mossad. Spy versus Jack Cars as a former SEAL team. Brad Thor's is the same stuff. They're all former Delta, former SEAL or whatever, that stuff. It's in the same genre, and I've read all of his stuff, too. But again, I just thought Yeah, I do read fiction. Something you like, yeah.

When people look at like, there's an election this year, it's an election year. When people look at the election, do you feel like who they vote for could have an effect on their future finances?

Sure. Not as much as the candidates would like you to believe. It turns out that I've done stupid stuff under every single White House, I have done smart stuff under every single White House, and I've increased the size of our business under every single White House. None of them have been dumb enough to destroy my life, and none of them have ever sent me any money. Most of them don't even send me my money back. What happens at your house is way more important than what happens at the White House. But yeah, policy does matter. It changes whether we've got $3 gas or $5 gas. That matters because if you're running a heat and air company and you got 30 trucks out there and you're trying to feed your family and trying to feed that guy who's on that truck's family, and the gas price doubles on that, run that truck down the road to fix somebody's heat and air, it changes the whole PnL on that company. And then that guy wants a raise and it ain't there because some duber at the White House turned the faucet on or off on the oil.

And that stuff matters. That shows up. And so policy does matter in that regard because it affects things. And policy during stressful times matters because whether people feel People, Ronald Reagan didn't do anything special, but he made people feel like it was going to be prosperous. Whether you agree with him or not, he was a motivator. He was aspirational.

That's a good point.

He didn't really have any magic wands that he waved at the Reaganomics. An Art Laffer that wrote the Reaganomics stuff lives here in town. He's a friend of mine. He was on Reagan's cabinet at the time. He's in his '80s. Wonderful man, brilliant man. But Art Laffer did not turn America around, Ronald Reagan. But Ronald made people believe again. When you can believe, instead of believe everything's bad, it's horrible, it's divisive, we're not going to do anything. People sit at home and they don't do things, and then the economy starts to... That stuff does have an effect. But you can win in any situation. So vote for who you want to vote for, but don't vote for them because they're going to fix your life because they're not.

That's a great statement. In the end, it really comes down to you, doesn't it? You still believe that it really seems like that.

Yeah, I really do. John Stossel wanted to interview me many years ago, went back when he did 2020 and all that stuff. He was a scary dude because you know if he's going to come into your throat or whether he's going to be a friend in an interview. We went down there and we were sitting off stage, on stage, I guess, doing the interview. He said, I've read all your stuff. He goes, I don't think you're as much of a conservative as you think you are. He said, I think you're a social conservative and an economic libertarian. Okay, I'll go with that. Yeah, the economic libertarian would say, If it's to be, it's up to me. Get up, go mow some grass, get you a pressure washer, get your butt in gear. The government is just something you got to overcome. They're in the way. They're not going to lift me. If I'm waiting on the government to lift me, all I can think about is the DMV line. I mean, come on. I'm that guy. But it comes out of my Scotch-Irish red neck history. I mean, the Scotch-Irish have always been fighting everything.

They've always been independent. I think a brave heart is independent. A hot blood pressure, too. Yeah. Always looking for a fight. Always looking to stir something up. If there's no drama, just make some. I made a good living doing it, though.

Where did you meet your wife at, Dave?

College. Oh, you did? Yeah, marketing class.

Nice. You went to college in Tennessee or not?

I did University of Tennessee. You did? We both graduated from UT.

Nice, Is there a better place to see a football game than Neyland? Wow.

It's a religion. Yeah, it really is. It's wild.

It's so sweet over there.

When they're winning, especially.

Yeah.

It's nice lately.

Yeah, it helps. The past years has been definitely a good time to get on board.

Not good being with 110,000 people When you're losing because they are angry rednecks. But yeah, I'm one of them. I'm like, I'm pissed.

Do you go to some games ever?

We had suite seats for years when our kids were down there. We'd go down almost every game. But the kids are grown and got grandkids and we're traveling doing other stuff, so we gave those up. But I'm not mad about it. It just that phase went away. I'm watching it on the TV now, but a better experience anyway.

Where did you meet your wife at At school, do you remember?

We're at school? Yeah. Yeah, in marketing class.

Oh, in class. You saw her, huh?

Yeah, she was cheating off my paper.

Was she really?

But she was cute, so I thought it was a good idea. I let her look over.

It was a good idea, yeah. It's your paper. It's your paper, honey. Have you ever been approached by... I know you've had different, obviously, books and programs for people to achieve wealth and to save their money. Have you ever had a package or something you've taken to a shark tank or to something like that where they've tried to...

No, because we bootstrapped every bit of this. It was just like, we make a little money, we We try something new with that money. We make a little more money, we try something new with that money. Again, we've lost a lot of money, done a lot of stupid stuff doing that, but we've also done some things right that have worked. We're the second largest talk radio show in America, 680 stations, about 10 million listeners on talk radio alone. Hannity is number one. Rush was number one. Hannity was two. We were three. Rush passed away. Not a good way to get to be number two, but it happened. I mean, he's Elvis. He invented rock and roll. He invented talk radio. It was- Both of them did pills, too, I think, to be honest. I have no idea.

I've done them. But I'm just saying, yeah.

I have no idea. Anyway, we started in that world when it grew and grew and grew and grew. I remember the day a guy walked in my office and said, Hey, we need a podcast. I'm like, What the flip is a podcast? I said, Why do I need one? He goes, It's the thing. Man, it was a long time ago. We were one of the first podcasts on Apple way back. Because a lot of people on talk radio didn't want to put it on podcast because it competed with their radio stations. Right.

So you're competing with your own numbers.

Yeah, and you're messing up everything. Now, Spotify, Apple, we're number one, two, three on Apple right in there, hovering me and Rogan and some NPR murder mystery stuff or something. Always. Always hanging out in the top 10 there. So we're bouncing around in there, and we've had a billion and a half downloads now. Wow. I'm like, what's a podcast? So, yeah, You start new stuff. And then YouTube. Good God, the numbers on YouTube are just crazy. And so gone up into the right hockey stick. And so now those two have now eclipsed the talk radio business. And so now I'm a podcaster, apparently.

At least you evolved with it, though.

Yeah, because we're platform agnostic. I mean, wherever the action is, that's where we're going to be. And we didn't abandon. We're still dancing with the girl that brought us. We're still with talk radio. Still got 680 stations. Still love talk radio. We're on SiriusXM. Siriusxm came on. It was two companies, Sirius and XM. We went on both of them, and everybody's mad. You can't be on both and be on talk radio. I'm like, Yeah, I'm on everything. I'm on podcast, and then we put on YouTube, and then Facebook, Live. I mean, crap, we'll try anything. Tiktok. God help us. We're on TikTok. We're all are.

We're working for the Chinese, they say.

That's it, man. Tiktok. Here we go. But hey, because you never know which one of these things is going to become the next in place and just disappear, and you don't know which one of these other things. I don't want to bet this whole thing and all these 1,100 people are counting on me on one single platform. We're always innovating, always changing and moving.

Yeah, it's because you don't know what the next thing can be that's really going to go well. There was something you said a second ago where you made some money and then you put it back into the company, right? Or you tried something new with it. That, I think, is a big... One of the craziest things that ever happened to me was I was podcasting in my apartment, and a guy came along and he said, Hey, man, I'm going to give you some money. You can get you a studio. He bought some ads from me. He said, I'm going to pay some ads for a pizza place. It was in my neighborhood. He said, Let me give you some money. You should use it to get a studio. My first thought was, I want to keep that money. I never had any money. I'm keeping this money. I'm not getting a studio. I'll just do it in my apartment till it fades out, and then I'll have the money I made from the ads. But he was right. He just saw that thing that I couldn't see of putting the money back into I get on myself a studio, which then now I have a studio.

It's a little bit of a different place when people come. It's more of a business. It was so hard for me to see that, though.

Well, and we get to see... I mean, those of us that are fan boys of your work, we get to see a whole other of you. There's stand up. And then these long form interviews that you're doing. Here I said, who knew that was going to happen? But I mean, I've seen a bunch of these long forms that you've done. And so it's a whole different thing. And it's where people start to recognize what those of us in the business of being on stage or in front of a microphone have known. We know, for those of you out there, you don't know this necessarily, but most of the top flight comedians are very bright. Comedy is hard. It's one of the more hard art forms to do. Acting, you can be dumb as a rock and be an actor because you just try to be somebody else. That's all you're doing. It's a process. Sorry, you actors that are friends of me. Yeah, sorry. But I mean, comedy is you You're messing with people's lives. You're messing with every part of things that mean something to them, and you're twisting it at just the right way with the right hesitation, the right move of the sentence structure and everything.

It's very difficult. We Doing motivational speaking or teaching, I teach our guys, if our audiences, if we got 2,000, 3,000 people in the audience, if they don't laugh every seven minutes, we're going to lose them. And we're not comedians, but we have to study what you guys do. Getting to see you do this is brilliant. It's a smart thing to do. It's the same thing, broken did the same thing. He moved from comedy into those long forms. What everybody loves about Joe is the fabulous interviews. I'm a fan boy of his. I watch a lot of his stuff. Oh, yeah.

He's so good at learning information. He's so good at retaining information.

He knows a lot about a lot of stuff.

Oh, if you stop. I had dinner with him the other night after the UFC fights, and yeah, you're just ready to learn, brother. If you're going to sit down with Joe Brogan, you better be ready to learn something. It doesn't matter if it's over a bowl of soup, a microphone. Yeah, he just loves learning, sharing information. He really is like a library. But what is the mentality that people... It's more of the mentality of investing back in yourself because there's that fear that I want to just save this.

If you realize that no matter what you try, some of it's not going to work. Give yourself permission fail, then you say, Okay, we're going to put this money and we're going to take some home and enjoy it and be generous with it in the community and invest some of it. But we're also going to invest some of it in the best investment, which is the freaking goose that's laying the golden eggs. Let's have lots of these gees. Let's get to figure out different things we can do, different ways we can move this business around. Do we move to podcasting? Do we move to YouTube? Do we build a studio? Do we build an event center? Do we to create an environment That is a whole different thing than when I rent a theater somewhere else, which we do both. We'll always go to these other cities and always be on tour, always do these things. But the events on this campus feel way different to the customer when they come in here because we can control all the freaking variables. We're nick Saban playing home game. We know who cuts the grass. We know who dialed the microphone in.

I got a 2Db drop from the front of the stage to the back of that auditorium. Wow. 2,500 seats. It's tight. It's dialed in. You know how that sound crap is. Sounds even worse in our world because we're voice. Music, you can just turn it up if the sound's bad. But man, you get in these auditoriums, you got bounce back, stinking hockey arena, stinking, hitting a concrete wall, coming back at you. You can hear yourself three times and can't even tell what your timing is on stuff. Yeah, that's the worst thing. We're talking about. We've got all that dialed in. That's a reinvestment back into something we know is going to work.

Yeah, that's a good point, man. I think that was a tough thing. It was tough for me to realize that one of my greatest assets can be myself and be like, What if I really want to invest in something to invest in myself? How does generosity play? There's a lot of fear around generosity sometimes about I have to have made this, I have to keep it all for me. What has your journey been like with that in life, or what have you learned about it?

You're exactly right. There's fear around that. And fear, the motivator is, if I give it away, I'm going to have less. Which mathematically, if I take a thousand bucks, I give away a hundred, I got a 900. So yeah, I get less. But that's a short term mentality. What I finally figured out after studying this all these years and watching people who are generous, there's a real There's a correlation between people that build wealth and people that are generous. Very few wealthy people are really super greedy and don't give. Most of them are very big givers. They're big tippers. They're not tight. They're not mean about money. They're very open-handed because they know they can get some more. What happens is, generosity is not an action. It's a character quality, like integrity. Integrity is not an action. There are actions that come out when you have integrity. There are actions that come out when you are generous. Generous people are the one to hold the door open for Generous people help you pick up the groceries when the stupid bag, they fall out and they're rolling all over the parking lot in the grocery store and you're embarrassed.

But the generous person runs over and joins the party and helps you pick up the canned goods and all that. That's the generous person. The generous person is other centered instead of self-centered. Here's what's weird. Think about who you want to work with. Think about who you want to work for. Think about who you want on your team. Think about the vendor that you want to do business with, the next deal you want to do on an advertiser. You want to deal with a selfish person or a self-less other-centered person, self-centered or other-centered. Well, generosity makes people highly attractive. We want to be around generous people, not because they're going to give us money, just because of who they are. They're just open-handed. They're thinking about other people. There's this huge correlation between generosity and prosperity. You tend to prosper because people want you around. They want you in the deal because you're You're not there for what you can get. You're there for what you can give. We're all going to win together. We don't have to kill each other to win. That's how like, Rush or Sean and I in the old days or other people in the talk radio business, Laura Ingram was doing a talk radio show in those days.

She's on Fox personality now. We're all friends, even though we were competitors, we were head to head. If I knock Hannity off a station, I get that station. So we're head to head. But we also know I don't have to kill him to win. I don't have to completely I never talk bad about my competitors in that world because I want to be a generous person. I want to be a... And I'll help them. I've actually helped every one of those people do different things over the time. It's just interesting that... And then the giving of money is a natural result for someone who has the character quality of generosity. I watch people, Okay, here's this stupid thing. This guy, I was watching them. They pulled up in front of me at the restaurant, the valet parking right here in Nashville. We have valet parkers everywhere. Yeah.

Churches even have them.

Yeah. I mean, who's working valet? The Lord is my valet, dude. I'm telling you, man. Well, there's that. But the guy that's working valet, he's out there in the sun, he's out there in the rain. He's putting up people's garbage. They're not nice. This is who's working the valet. This guy pulls up in a Mercedes, and I know the car is a great car. It's about $120, $130 car. And he hands the valet $5. I'm like, Dude, that's just stupid. So I pull up in my truck. It's a nice truck, but I pulled in my truck, I hand a guy $20. I'm like, Man, please take care of my baby. You know where it was when I came out? It was sitting right there. So who prospered here? Everybody won. But you didn't give Farris Buhler's day off the keys to your Mercedes for five bucks. What moron? I mean, seriously, that's just short-sighted. That lack of generosity is short-sighted, where it sounds like I'm some big guy because I gave 20 bucks or whatever to park my stupid truck. But I'm not. But there's a payoff there. My truck didn't... There's another on my truck.

It's sitting right there. I don't have to wait on it when I come out. The kid had a good night, at least partly because of me. I think everybody came out on this transaction. That's how generosity works.

Yeah, that's interesting. It's been slow to learn for me. Not slow, but I think it's just been... Yeah, it just came from such a fear mentality. We just didn't have any money. So it was like, I remember I'd keep my money in a day. I'd hide it. God, I would hide that money. I would spend half my day hiding my damn money, boy. I met this guy. Jigging up dirt and hiding it.

I understand. I met this guy as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, and we become good friends, rabbi Daniel Lappin. He wrote a book.

Oh, he's hiding some.

He wrote a book now. No, he wrote a book called Thou Shal Prosper. And he said, The problem is when you have that fear is you think money is like cake. If I get a slice away, I got less cake. He said, Money is not like cake. Money is like candles. When you light it, you still got your candle. When you light another one, you still got your candle. You light another one, you still got your candle. That's how money works. Money will grow around you when you're doing the right stuff that you're supposed to be doing. That's a beautiful picture.

What What has faith played in your life? You mentioned it a little bit. What's that been like for you?

It's central because I- I know you said other-centered earlier, which I thought was a term you hear a lot of times. Yeah, I guess that's maybe a faith phrase. I don't know. But honestly, it's taught me how to be a better human being because I really wasn't a good one. I grew up the crap we did, man, in the The way I behaved in my early years of my life- Were you just a dang anarchist or whatever? Yeah, apparently. I did all kinds of just red-neck stupid stuff. But I needed to be a better person, and It turns out, again, better people have better lives. The whole character shift through the faith walk of meeting Jesus and changing that, it cleaned up my view of things. It cleaned up my actions and how I react and those kinds of things. Because, again, I grew up where it was a Scotch-Irish thing. It's like a temper thing going on. So you can't do that and win out there. You can't be a jerk everywhere. And so they don't want you back on the show if you're a butt in the green room. It turns out that all worked out for me.

The retransformation confirmation that be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, what Romans says in the Bible. The renewing of my mind over 45 years. I'm not arrived, don't misunderstand, but like I said earlier, I'm a lot better husband than I was. I mean, even with my grandbabies, I'm playing my grandbabies. My kids are like, who are you? I'm like, well, I can hand this one back. This one smells bad. It's broke. You can take that one home. But who are you? Papa I believe. I mean, come on, man, you wouldn't let us get by with that crap. I'm like, yeah, I know, but I had to make you behave or whatever. You can take this one home. You can teach it. But yeah, it's central to everything. I know who I am. I know where I'm going. It affects how I deal with kids, marriage affects my money, affects how I lead in the business, affects our decisions in the marketplace. So yeah, I guess it's central to everything if you want to look at it that way. It's changed my life.

Yeah?

Really? Yeah, absolutely. Completely.

Wow, that's amazing, man. It's nice to hear. When you look at your future now, what are things that you still want to do? You've had so much success and so it's the opportunity to lead people, to make financial choices. You helped my stepdad paid off our house because of knowledge he learned from you. Wow. I remember that. Very cool. It took him a little bit, but I remember one day he told me he'd heard it, and then probably 11 years later, eight years later, something he said, house has paid off.

It's pretty cool. I love it.

What are things that still excite you?

Things that move the needle, and I get to see something move with a little bit of scale out there where we can affect someone's life. Then I run into them. This YouTube thing with a billion and a half downloads on that thing now, it's a whole new market. That talk radio was old white guys, right? Yeah. But YouTube's Youngsters. And so Sharon and I were in Best Buy, and these two kids are 17 years old, run up like I'm some freaking rock star or something. Like, Man, I love your YouTube stuff. It's like, Man, I just paid cash for my first car because I'm watching you. There's tons of stuff on TikTok, so funny. And man, thank you. And it was like, Sharon's like, Golly, they're 17 years old, man. It's great. Yeah, it's how to make you feel good. That stuff makes it worth coming down here every Every day and flipping on the switch on the microphone, coming up with something, figuring out a way to connect and be authentic. You got to be real about it. You can't manipulate these platforms. They're too nuanced and there's People can see a fake a mile away.

Yeah, I think it's true. Well, it's interesting. Yeah, I think especially now there's so much stuff out there. It's like, you want to try and be as authentic as you can to your own experience. You've had a lot of great experiences, and so you be able to share those in a way that feels comfortable to people. Obviously, you guys have been doing that and doing it really well. What do you say to somebody right now? What is some of your just basic advice, David? If there's somebody who's They feel like maybe they don't have a chance or something, what would you give them? What's your pep talk, your financial guidance for somebody like that? Somebody who's just like, they don't know if they can figure it out. They don't know if they have a ton of hope for themselves. Yourselves. You can't change everything about them, but what are some things you remind them of?

Dr. John Deloney, that's one of our Ramsey personalities on our team, has done a lot of trauma studies. He's got a PhD in counseling. He says, When you're in the middle of trauma, like he's been on police calls when they go in and there's a murder or a suicide or something in the home, extreme trauma. And your body physically reacts to trauma. And he says The way to walk through those things is facts are your friends. Your feelings are not true. And so when you feel stuck and hopeless, you got to back out and start looking about, Okay, here's what's Really, here's the numbers, and here's the reality of the marketplace. Facts are your friends. And so oftentimes when someone calls on the Ramsey show, that's all we're doing. They call up and they're overwhelmed, they're frozen, they're paralyzed, they don't know what to do. We're going, wait a minute. How much you make a year? We make 100,000. We're stuck. We can't move. We can't figure out what to do. I'm like, okay, how much you own your car? 56,000. Okay. All right. And how much do you have in retirement? Nothing. Okay. How old are you?

I'm 26. Okay. The facts are that you really have plenty of money coming in and you bought a car you can't afford. Sell a stupid car.

Yeah.

He goes, Oh, man, you're like a genius. It's like sixth-grade math. But all we did was peel back the drama that all of us, our bodies just freeze up. We just get in free hopelessness.

Yeah, freeze in the response to trauma, I'm freezing up.

We're stuck, and we don't know what to do. All we do is cut the dadgum trees down so you can see the forest, and can't see the forest for the trees. Okay, here's your reality. It's like A lady called not long ago, and she said, They're foreclosing on my house Friday. What am I going to do? I said, I don't know. It was Monday. We have five days. What are we going to do? I don't know. I said, One thing you can do is just go get another house. She went, You can do that? I went, Yeah, just go get something to rent. People to rent to you? Yeah, people to rent to you. So you're not going to be homeless. She made $120,000 a year. I was like, What I'd just go get you another house. But let's learn about the details of the foreclosure and see if we can stop it. We were able to actually figure out how to stop the foreclosure. But the reality was her whole life was coming to an end on Friday, and it's a house. There's one on every corner. Just go get another one. But we get just hammered.

We had another one that was really sad. A lady was being foreclosed on a different one, and her husband, 36 years old, was a roofer. He fell through the roof and got killed. She got I have two little kids, and the workers comp didn't pay out. They waited forever. So the house got behind, and she's getting ready to be foreclosed on. We're like, She had 60,000 bucks on a $300,000 house. I'm like, No, you are not getting foreclosed on. We are stopping this. This is not happening. You're a widow. Somebody's going to take care of you. Another roofing guy called our office while we're on the air and caught the house up. I mean, we're going to take care. Other people stepped in and heard the story start taking care of us. You're not getting foreclosed on. I'm 100% sure it's not going to happen. We're not losing a $300,000 house for 60K. But she was completely overwhelmed. Other people had taken her power. The situation, the variables had taken her power. She could not see. She was frozen up. All we did was we weren't there, and so we weren't frozen up, and we could see what everybody listening, everybody watching could see the same thing.

Of course, we're not going to let that house get sold. Nothing else. You sell it for 200,000 before Friday. You're not going to give it away for 60, so we're going to do something.

The fear people get stuck.

Yeah. That's all we do.

Is unlock them. Help unlock them.

With facts.

With facts. To somebody that's starting out right now, they're just starting out in the world. They got their first couple of jobs. They just got out of college. How much money do they need to save if they want to have some freedom in the future? What do you tell them, Dave?

Well, the first thing we tell them is get out of debt, everything but the house, and then have an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses. We call it the baby steps. There they are. Once you're at Baby Step 3, and you have 3-6 months of expenses, you don't have any payments, but a house payment.

You save 3-6 months. You have savings to pay off for 3-6 months in case something happens.

Exactly. It's a rainy day fund. I want a bass boat. It's a rainy day fund. It's not, I need a new couch. It's a rainy day fund. You don't touch that. If you're going to buy something else, you save up and pay for it. But to answer your question, Baby Step 4 is invest 15% of your income. When you don't have any payments except a house payment, you can save 15% of your income. The average household income in America right now is $72,000 a year. If you save 15% of $72,000 from $30,000 to $65,000, you're going to have about $5 million in mutual funds. Say that again. If I'm like five X wrong, you're still a millionaire. Shut up. You really can't screw this up. But you can screw it up because you live in America and you can get a $1,200 car payment for a freaking car you can't afford to impress people to stop light who don't even care about you. That's what we do instead. Or I need another truck, or I need another whatever. I'm the same guy. Then we say for kids' college, six is what your stepdad did. We pay off the house early in 11 years.

By the way, broadly enough, 11 years is the average millionaire that paid off their houses in 11 years, 11.2 years in the study that we were talking about earlier.

That's one of the things that people did to become millionaires.

They called them Baby Steps Millionaires. They walked right up this, they get their house paid off in an average of 11 years. Some of them seven years, some of them 14, but an average of 11. Then when you don't have a house payment, dude, that's 2,000, 3,000 bucks a month. Oh, yeah, dude. You got bank to be generous with, bank to be investing.

Yeah, you can take a bath.

You can stack in cash.

You can relax at your house and get in the I can cash.

That's it. That's the one.

God, man, that's what I want. I'll buy a dang bird bath and sit in that thing. If I'm debt-free, I'll sit in the front yard in there and dang use some dang soap up. Dave Ramsey, anything else that you want to share with us that you think? We've covered a lot of neat stuff, I think. I feel like we've been through a lot of avenues.

It was an honor to be with you. Yeah, you too, man. I'm impressed with what you're doing. It's so good.

Well, thanks, man. You're doing good work. I just feel like- You're watching your career and watching you clean up and get right and doing stuff.

I watched your content shift. You're doing great. I'm proud to know you. Thanks, man.

Yeah, it's so crazy. I remember my stepdad said that, and then two years ago, I'll be like, Man, wouldn't it be crazy if we got to have Dave Ramsey on? And then here we get to-And then you could tell him you were underwhelmed.

But we didn't lose hope, man. Anyway, that's true.

We didn't lose hope. That's true. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for the guidance. You guys can check out the Ramsey show. And then there's just so many YouTube clips. There's probably a clip for almost everything these days. For everything you want to find out about finances, how to take care of yourself, how to move forward. They can call into the show daily. No. Every day. They can call You can call into his show every day if you have a question. There's some great videos of some of the best questions that they've had online as well. Dave Ramsey, thanks so much, man.Thank you, brother.Yeah, appreciate it. Best of luck, and I hope to see you around town sometime.

Well, hang.

Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

I must be cornerstone.

Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones.

But it's going to take.