Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studio. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. It's where America hangs out. Have a conversation about your life. Your money. I'm Ken Coleman, host of the Ken Coleman Show on the Ramsey Solutions Network, joined by my colleague, Dr. John Delaney, host of the Dr. John Boloney Show on the Ramsey Solutions Network as well. And we're here together today. We're taking your calls, as we always do, but we're going to add in our specialties.

John is obviously working with folks on mental and emotional health and relationships and just being whole as a person on the doctor. Dr. John Delaney, show that I'm going to help you with answering that age old question. Why am I here? What should I do with my life? We're going to look at the work context. You were created to fill a unique role. You were needed. You must do it. And if you're sick and tired of being miserable on Monday mornings, life is too short to live for the weekends.

We're going to take those questions. Well, John, I both love to take on all of these things together. There's such a collaboration between us when we do shows together. And so we've taken calls about toxicity at work, politics and family politics. Are the family unhealthy leaders above us? What do we do there as well as our specialty as well? And we'll take your money questions, too. So come on, let's go. We're having a blast.

Eight eight two five five two two five. I got to tell the YouTube audience, because they're out there watching and looking at us, the producers and the engineers, we're making fun of us during the last breaks. And they were going to have a picnic on us after the show today because of the flannel. We did not plan this. This was not in it's time, to be honest. Ken texted me this morning, said, hey, brother, wear your checkered flannel, do it together.

Let's wear flannel today. You're wearing a blanket. Yeah, no, never happened. That is fake news hashtag fake news, triple eight, eight to five. Very conservative. You can all stop it. Stop it. All right. Let's see here. Oh, boy. Now I'm hooked on phonics, doc, but I'm going to take a shot at this one. Sean is joining us in Mississauga, Ontario. Let's see if I'm right, Sean.

How can we help? Hey, how are you guys doing? Good. Did I say that correctly? Well, yeah, that's that's my nickname. My real name is a lot longer. So I decided I was going to use my nickname.

Oh, OK. We'll go with that. I don't know what any of that means. How can we help those?

So let me tell you guys, I'm 16 years old. I've been an entrepreneur since I've been 12. I run two successful e-commerce companies and I also do stock trading kind of on the site and to get my social skills before I am 18. I also work at McDonald's, so I like to take in. But I really have a question for you guys.

OK, go for it. So my parents have kind of, you know, done a path for me to go to university right after I graduate, whether I'm a millionaire or billionaire or lost nothing. So what do you guys recommend in this sense? I feel like not going to get a post-secondary education and continuing the path that I'm continuing and doing what I love. Yeah, I want to know. Play that out.

And you're a young man who has got a lot on the ball, but dream with me a little bit as a 16 year old today. What's that dream to be 25, 30 years down the road? What's it look like?

I'm a tell you use me and I'm used to living in Fresno, California, and we used to do house flipping there and it was pretty successful until our immigration status changed and we have to move to Canada. So I think I think based on what I've seen from my dad doing and the business skills and the business strategies he's used, I think real estate would be would be good for me in that pathway if I've saved up enough money.

OK, so let me answer your question by giving you a framework to take to your mom and dad because your mom and dad have saved up for you to go to university. And it sounds like they would really like you to do that.

Is that correct? Not really. Not really. I saved up for myself. Oh, good.

So Mom and Dad aren't like super. What's their opinion on a scale of one to 10 one? They don't care. Ten. They'd really love for you to go to university where they go.

No, it's more like 12 because I've been to 11 countries because my dad my dad works. I used to work at a real company, OK? And it's all been about education. I'm from Yemen, so my background is nice. Oh, there you go. So you could tell.

All right. So Sean and I'll let John jump in here in a second and give you some thoughts on the relational component about how you share this. But I want to give you at least a framework to share with your mom and dad so that they at least know you thought through this. I know you don't want to go to university, but you can just say I talked to Ken Coleman on the Dave Ramsey Show and here's his criteria by which he gives advice on whether or not you should go to university or not.

Two simple questions. Is it the only way for you to get qualified to do what it is you want to do? Is it the only way? The second question is, is it the best way? So is it the only way or the best way for you to be a successful real estate professional and work your way up? So let's say you got into just selling homes right out of high school and you started crushing it the way you've crushed everything else you do.

And you start making money and you cash flow and you're saving like crazy and you save up for your first flip and you buy a house. I'm making this up for real numbers for one hundred twenty thousand dollars. Fix it up and flip it for one hundred eighty. And you keep doing that while you're successful. You don't need to ever darken the door of a college campus to be qualified or to be a successful real estate professional. College isn't going to teach you that.

So if you were my son, I'd go, this is what you want to do, why do you want to do it? And I'd walk you through it and you give me all the answers. And if I felt good about, I go, well, here's the path. And the path for you is even now at 16 to see if you can find a local real estate agent who will mentor you and let you do cleaning up their houses that they're getting ready to sell.

And then and then they teach you and and you learn from them and do coffee with them each week or whatever, and you become a sponge. And then eventually you could qualify to be a real estate agent. And a couple of those real estate professionals who've mentored you eventually become your broker. You get into it. So if I'm going to sell mom and dad, I want to be able to make a practical case as to why I'm not going.

Bujon, I want you to speak to the relationship component here when mom and dad are really passionate about him going to university. So, Sean, you love your folks.

Yeah. And I mean, I love them, but they did all this just for one reason to, you know, get me into into education, saying, hey, you know, I understand you guys want me to go into computer science, but I'm more interested in being an entrepreneur. Right. Real say, that's kind of like hold on. So you're telling me we have to travel all around the world, spend all that money, get here when our immigration status change in California, just so you could tell us this so I understand where they're coming from, just how can I write?

So that way here, I'm going to tell you something.

It's going to be hard to hear. OK, so are you track with my my promise to use this. I've talked to thousands of high school kids over the last couple of decades, and I love high school kids and I'm not going to lie to you. OK? Yeah. All right. Here's no, I'm to tell you a couple of things. Number one, you're sixteen and I want you to remember that. So when you talk to somebody who is an elder, somebody who loves you, I want you to just default to.

They've got wisdom that you may not have and that humility will serve you relationally forever. OK, now, I know it's hard to hear because right now you're just absolutely dominating things. Number two, you got to get some friends and enjoy being sixteen, OK? Working, working, working. I love the hustle. Right? I love the hustle. Number three, you know, there's a cultural component to education. As Ken said, when you approach your parents do it humbly and with gratitude and with a firm plan.

And no for Dave Ramsey himself went ahead and went to college and sold houses while he was a student. It wasn't an either or thing. And so don't box yourself into you have to or don't have to. You can't accomplish both of them at the same time, if it's going to be something your parents are going to require of you as a kid. But I love Ken's idea. Have a firm plan and sit down with humility and grace. Don't spend the money to do computer science because mom and dad won't, you know, not computer science, especially.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. So this is the time of year when everyone starts setting goals, going to the gym, quitting smoking, losing weight. Good for you. But what's equally important is making sure your family is taken care of by having term life insurance. Look, I've heard all the excuses, and I'm telling you, it's not expensive. It's not complicated. And you need to do this right now. So stop whatever you're doing and go to Zanders website right now and get your family protected.

It's an absolute necessity.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show on Ken Coleman, joined by my colleague, Dr. John Delonte. As we take your questions, eight eight two five five two two five. Take talking live, talking money, talking relationships, talking work. You know, one of the ways to get out of debt faster is get a bigger shovel. And that's what we talk about on the Ken Coleman show is getting promoted.

You know, we see John day after day with debt free screams that the income range always goes up. It's fascinating. I've never heard before scream where the income didn't go up some and that that intense focus. So John and I are here to talk money, life, work, relationships, tension over political talk, toxicity in the workplace. John, I love to take all those together, but let's talk about the fact that many of you are still trying to pay off debt and you feel like it's going to take forever.

But now that we're in the new year, it's time to get some new energy and new focus. And here's the truth. Paying off your debt won't take as long as you think it will with Ramsey. Plus, you're going to get where you want to go faster, debt free and spending your money without worry. Ramsey plus guide you through three apps that work together to help you pay off your debt as fast as possible. You can make more progress on your debt than you ever have.

Get Ramsey Plus to start living the life you want faster to start your free trial of Ramsey. Plus text the word trial to three three seven eight nine. Text the word trial to three three seven eight nine. Let's go to Dayton, Ohio, next, where Kyle joins us.

Kyle, how can we help? Good afternoon, Dr. Dean. How are you guys today? We're having a blast. What's going on so well? Meanwhile, I have Dave Ramsey plan now for about five years or maybe step two, and we've had to hit pause because of a bit of a family crisis. Anybody who watched the reset event will understand this. So I have a forty four year old brother who just retired from the military after 22 years.

On the day of his retirement, his wife asked for a divorce and left him four weeks later. And after that, he didn't receive a paycheck. For about six weeks, the military messed up his base pension, him and his daughter. I drove out to Delaware to pick him up and him and his daughter moved into a big brick house.

Good for you, Kyle. You're a good brother. You know where to start.

So thank you. So we gave them we gave him a couple weeks to kind of take all of this in. And then we sat him down and talked to him about the getting back on his feet money wise and watch the resettlement. We're starting to go through financial peace with him and my wife have Ramsey close us. And so we're doing the online classes with him. I told him, I said, you got to get a job. You can't mope around forever.

I said, I don't care if you don't want it for you right now, but I need to get a job. So he did he did finally get a job. But what we're what I'm trying to get out to find out today is if there's different things we should be doing or if what we're doing is the correct thing.

We've told him we're we're going to have to stay here till at least June when his daughter's out of school. She's in fifth grade. That way, she's not having to switch back and forth between new houses and all of that. Along with all of this through all of this, we've learned that she has had a lot of trauma mentally, a lot of damage as he has as well. But we've learned hers has gone on for quite a few years.

We're working on getting her into some therapy. We're going to get him into some therapy. I'm just trying to see what else would you guys recommend for us to do with them, or is this sound like a great plan?

So there's a couple of things here. Number one, I want to reiterate, man. You're a brother who stepped up in a time of need, and I'm grateful that I wish there more brothers like you in the country. So I'm I'm grateful to know you're in our community, man.

So I want to step back 30000 feet and look at your brother. And you probably know this intellectually, but I want you to hear this empathetically when you hear this in your heart, your brother has lost everything but his daughter.

And I don't mean tangibly. I mean identity. He did the military for this long. That is who he was.

Right. That's an identity.

And he'll tell you that he was a married man with a co-pilot. And when you're married that long, somebody else's is an arm and a leg. Right. And so he is recovering out of ash. And it's easy to see that and say, man, you get a couple of weeks, brother, you got to get up and shake it off.

I need you to hear and feel that he has had every single leaf shaken off that tree and he's going to have to grow from the floor up while also raising a daughter. Now, that should be enough. Why? But I don't want to minimize what a big deal this is. The second thing is I want you to orient yourself in this way and what you and your wife to get some really firm boundaries about dates, about time, about money.

And then I want you to keep this in the forefront of your head. Your brother is not a problem to fix. I don't want you to use the word damage when you're talking to his daughter as though she's a truck that hit a tree.

Yeah, I would never mention that to her. Right.

But I want you to think of your brother and your niece as somebody as people to be with, not as puzzles to solve. And you're going to heal. You're going to help be a part of their healing journey. You can't you'll have man, he's got to decide he wants to do this, but you can connect with him. So you've offered him a place to stay, which is above and beyond. You're going to provide some boundaries and structure for him and some encouragement, and then you're just going to be with him and you're going to hold firm to those boundaries, but you're going to be with him.

And if you can afford counseling for his daughter, great. If you can lean into some of those things, great. But I want you to let him know you are there to talk to him. But, man, he needs to go find a group. He needs to he's got to have a professional to walk through this season with him. And you can't do that walking for him. You can just encourage him and be with him and be with him, right?

Yeah. Kyle, you're doing great. The answer is that's an unbelievable amount of things you're doing for your brother. And because you're in Ramsey plus I'd bring him in, make sure he knows. Deal down the line. We're going to give you Ramsey plus for your brother. Look at that. Stay on the line. Zach's going to get it. Get his contact info so he has his own. He can have his own app and he can learn to use the stuff on his own and not be hitched to his little brother.

But other than that, I mean, you've got you've got a great plan here, and that's wonderful. The only thing is, is over time, you know, he's just re-entering the workforce. I would tell him to listen to my show, let him listen to its podcast, just recommend it. He can watch it on YouTube. So let's help him figure out what his sweet spot is outside of the military, what his contribution zone is, because that will bring tremendous meaning.

You know, we talked about this earlier, John and I. John texted me something on Saturday morning. And and we know from from from psychology studies and the neuroscience and all this, you were reading some stuff that being without a job or not having some type of connection to your work is is trauma on the level of losing a loved one. And he's already gone through a trauma with the divorce. Right. And so he's in a heavy, heavy time.

So helping him find some joy in his work will allow him to heal, I believe, faster with the therapy, of course, and coming home and be able to give himself fully to his daughter where he feels like, OK, I got this right.

But what about coming home to a brother who's judging him is going to hurt. He's this guy is not the judge, you know, but Kyle's a guy who's going to come up with a good plan. He's going to say you in the plan, you fall on the plan. And I won't call to be a great boundary setter. I want Kyle to be that great brother. But I wanted to come home and say, dude, it's so good to see you.

Yeah, of course. I'm going to give you a hard hug. Yeah, hard hug, man. And then once we get the kids to what we're going to do on the back porch, we just hang out. Yeah, cause you're my freakin brother. Yeah. I love you. I love you. That makes sense. Of course it makes sense. I think it's the right thing. You know, I don't sense any judgment in Kyle.

And I think, John, what you're saying and what you've got to get here is don't be over zealous.

You're not dad now. Yeah. Your brother, you've offered him these things. He's a big boy, to your point, John. And, you know, on the back porch, you're going to say, well, you got two months left. You can remind he's got to go, but you're loving. Not even go. Man, I'm so excited about the next chapter and reminding us of doing some fun things with him. You know what you guys used to do with brothers?

I think it'd be fun to recreate some of that. You know, I know my brother came in town for Thanksgiving and the toilet paper house. We did not.

Oh, man. Can't do that anymore. I love. That's where you go. I'm. Taking us to some Hallmark moment and you interrupt and say, did you guys go to somebody's house? No, we went and played putt putt. We used to compete. And so we were out there with my dad. It was like it was like time had suspended and we went back, you know, to some of that brotherly love stuff where you guys remember being innocent and there wasn't divorce and there wasn't all kinds of problems.

It was just we're brothers, man, you and me. That's right. You know, and I think that's a really good thing to do. But you're a good man, a good guy. And I'm going to nominate Kyle for Brother of the Year. So send your votes to I don't know where fellow Idaho. Pocatello, Idaho.

I need that honey, man. All right, listen, we're still just getting warmed up. We're not even close to done more of your calls, more of your questions, more breakthru, more hope coming up on The Dave Ramsey Show. Twenty 20 is over, let's start this New Year strong. Make sure your housing strategy is working for you. The right plan can lower your interest fees drastically. And ultimately, have you paid off years before others talk to Churchill mortgage call triple eight, loan 200 or Churchill Mortgage Dotcom.

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The Dave Ramsey Show continues, I'm Ken Coleman, joined by my colleague, Dr. John Delany, as we take your calls, eight eight two five five two two five. Hey, you need to find out for yourself why Blind's Dotcom is the number one online retailer of custom window covering. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code Ramsey to get the best deals, rules and restrictions apply.

Today's question comes from Chris in Indiana. In Indiana, she says, I've been at my job for almost 10 years and I make about sixty five thousand dollars a year and I'm about halfway through baby step three. I enjoy most of my job, but I have some very stressful duties that I don't enjoy about my job as well. Is it worth looking elsewhere and taking a pay cut to reduce stress and ultimately be happy at my job? Currently, I'm looking at a pay cut of about twenty thousand dollars are in this situation, Christine, because you are so close to getting through baby step three, which gets that fully funded emergency fund, that's three to six months is what we teach here at Ramsey Solutions.

That's such a big milestone and it's a game changer financially in this situation. I would not currently take a pay cut of about twenty thousand dollars. I'm OK with pay cuts only when you have to go backwards to get in. But there is a short term sacrifice and you know that you're going to climb the ladder and eventually replace that income and you're in a financial position, i.e. you're not in debt. You've got an emergency fund and you've you've made some changes in your budget to be able to absorb that pay cut and you're not going backwards.

So in this situation, here's what I want you to do. Is it worth looking elsewhere? Absolutely. But let's keep on looking because you enjoy most of your job. That's a good thing, Christine. I talk to people every day on the gold majo hate every part of their job. So can I weigh in here? Yeah, in just a sec. OK, all right. Last part, I, I'm good. No, here's the last part.

Because she enjoys most of her job. What I'm doing is I'm looking for something that she can step into that doesn't have as big of a pay cut. Twenty thousand a little bit too big. I'm wanting her to look around some more and then do some other things to try to reduce that stress that she is dealing with that. That would be my position on that one. Yes, sir. Go ahead. Weigh in, please.

So you you take calls about jobs all the time. I used to have conversations with my college students for years and years about job quality. Yeah.

I may be able to lunch here, so help me. Is there such thing as the perfect job that doesn't have parts of the job that are stressful? No is a dream job. I mean, there's not certain forms that you have to fill out that you hate that part, that you got to do budgets at the end of a term or.

Well, I'm in my dream job and there's stuff I have to do here. And sometimes there are certain days where I've got to do it. Make five to 10 percent. Yeah, that's one that itches our face. I have to sneeze. I don't know how many hours. I don't know how women do that anyway because I can't wait to take that makeup off. It is itchy. I first of all, I don't know what I'm doing if you get up close to me and please don't.

Social distancing at all. Exactly. It looks like I put it on like cake batter because I don't know how they do it. All I do is I just rub that thing around. And Dave conveniently left that part out of any of the interviews.

That was not in any of the interviews that we would wear. Makeup, when we're on stage under the lights are in these bright studios. But we digress. We lost we got off track.

But there are things in every job. Yes. That just because it's hard, just because it's crappy, just because you have to do it every day or every month doesn't mean it's not your dream jobs, right? Well, that's exactly right. It's why I said, look, you love most of your job. Be a big girl, put your big girl pants on and let's figure out how to deal with that. But if it is something that is toxic and she loves most of the job, but there is toxicity that's eventually going to wear you down, you know that.

So in that situation, I go, let's start looking, but until then, let's have an attitude of gratitude. So that's my feeling. One of my emotions need to be I'm grateful for this job and what it provides to me. Right. Stability and safety and and a launching pad if we need to move. And then my mindset needs to be, you know what I enjoy most? My job. I can figure out a way to deal with difficult people or difficult circumstances, right?

Yes. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, people say all the time, Ken, is it OK if it's a dream job?

If I love 80 percent of I go. Yeah, absolutely. Again. You do what you have to do to do what you want to do. Love it, you know, which sometimes I really like making money. I hate paying taxes. I don't get to just say, well, now this tax thing. Right. It really stresses me out. I don't like this. Right.

See how that works out for you or the marriage part. We always fight. I'm out. Obviously this you one because the disagreement I love date, night and romance, but I don't like this fighting. And you reminding me that I left my socks in the bathroom again. Oh, you want me to bathe every week? Well, then you're not the one know. Dude, everything's got hard stuff in it, right. That's it. Big grown up.

All right, let's go. Solving problems. We are Washington needs to call us. Yeah.

And the depth of that advice, by the way, was, you know, it's exactly it's worth every penny people paid for it. Good call.

Let's go to Mike, who's waiting for us in Los Angeles, California.

Mike, how can we help you guys? How's it going today? We're having fun. What's going on with you? How can we help you? I'm coming today to see where I should really take the next step. I'm twenty two right now and I finished up college last year. I don't have a job. And I got my undergraduate degree in a field, I'm second guessing, which is law. And I don't know if I should start a nine to five or work for myself by investing, since I have about one hundred twenty thousand in cash available to me right now and paid off all my debt, no car payment and I live at home.

What do you guys recommend? Wow, Mike.

OK, so you're in a good position. I didn't expect to hear that from the 22 year old unemployed college grad. When you say work for yourself by investing, unpack that a little bit more. Give me some details. What's it look like in your head? Sure, in my head, that looks more like investing in real estate, property flipping or purchasing home and renting them out or possibly opening a business. And the thing is, I want to know what that business would be.

Yeah. So, well, don't know what direction to walk toward. OK, great.

So you have some general ideas. And so what I want you to do is a process called clarify and verify. And this is this is in the book The Proximity Principle, my best selling book. I'm going to give you a copy of it. OK, when we're done with the call. So this is going to walk you through this. All right. But here's the point. I want you to start now again. Los Angeles is in lockdown.

So we've got an asterisk here with this advice. But when you can start getting out and shadowing some real estate professionals, people who flip homes, maybe some contractors, guys that build homes, some successful realtors, I kind of like you at 22, you're in good financial shape and you live in a home. I kind of like you getting a job for successful real estate professional, either a developer or realtor who dips in, you know, kind of sells homes, broken homes, but also does some flipping themselves.

And I like you just taking an hourly job for them and becoming a human sponge. You learn it all, everything. And that's where Clarify Verify comes in. I learn everything there is to learn about this particular piece of this because real estate professionals, one piece of it. Right, land developers, another piece, corporate office developers, another dealing with general contractor, general contractors is another piece. And by you following excuse me, of working for somebody, they're paying you to get a master's degree and actually running that business.

And you find out, oh, I thought I wanted to run this for myself. I thought I wanted to flip houses. It's way more fun on TV. You realize I don't actually like that.

Mike, are you tracker with me so far? Yes, so that's what I want you to do, I want you doing a lot of clarifying and verifying, I want you to get here's what the proximity principle says. And I wrote an entire book on it, and it came out of the Ken Coleman show giving advice. The Proximity Principle says, in order to do what Mike wants to do. And by the way, we can keep plugging in some different answers here.

So I like it being a fill in the blank, Mike, because you're 22. So now is the time to explore and discover. So in order to do what Mike wants to do, let's call it house flipper, real estate impresario. OK, Mike's got to be around people that do that and are doing that and successfully, by the way, not in title only. And then he's got to be in places where that is happening. So it's people and places.

Here's the formula. The right people plus the right places equals opportunity. Opportunity to learn. Opportunity to do that would be the experience of the education, real time education, real street education and then real experience. And I go, hmm, I do want to do this. I've learned how to do it. I'm going to bust it, make some money and be really, really smart, Michael, and remind you, I like the position that you're in.

But the Ramsey way is you better keep, save and get the work you need a nine to five pretty quick, keep working, keep saving, pay cash for that first dump and then flip it. If that is in fact the way you want to do it, do it cash so you can hang on. My best selling book, The Proximity Principle, is waiting for you. Zach will take care of you for the rest of you. You hang on too.

We have more of the Dave Ramsey Show coming right up. The Dave Ramsey Show continues on, I'm Ken Coleman, joined by my colleague John Dulaney, and we are taking your calls, eight eight to five five two two five. Our Scripture of the day, Romans, 12 six. Having gifts that defer according to the grace given to us. Let us use them if prophecy in proportion to our faith.

Our quote of the day from Maya Angelou. I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

It's one of my favorite quotes in the whole wide world. By the way, if you ever just want to feel good, you're having a dark day, you know, and you're just like, I'm tired of negativity. Go just do a little search for my angel on YouTube and just watch her drop some gold man.

You know, that was a woman who had a true gift with words and a legend. By the way, I want to mention we lost a we lost a legend today.

We did, man.

A legend in the sports world and also a man defined in in in his latter years and even in his career by as much grace as he had talent.

And that's Hank Aaron. Yeah. Heartbreaking man. I mean, a true prince of a man. Yeah. You know, you think through these things that he experienced, we can never understand.

And to break Babe Ruth's homerun record in the vitriol and and the nastiness that he endured. And yet, by all accounts and I lived in L.A. for 11 years, he's a legend of the world, but certainly is a legend in the Atlanta area. Right. And sad to see that he passed away today. Yeah, it's a hammer and Hank just keeps coming. Your son's name is Hank. It is, yeah. Hammerin Hank. What a great nickname.

Yeah. Hank is one of Hank Aaron's best when the class is humans to live.

Man. Really true. Really true. Triple eight eight two five five two two five is the number. Let's go to Burbank, California, right in the heart of Hollywood area. Benjamin is there. Benjamin, how can we help?

Hi, guys, thanks so much for taking my call. You bet. What's going on? Hey, so I being in Burbank, I work in the entertainment industry. I used to be a sound editor for cartoons. Oh, cool. And it's a great job. Totally loved it and make it. And, you know, everything went to to do this. And so I was left with no job and went to do the I'm not laughing at you.

I'm laughing with you really need to understand that John is in her seven year old came out when you said doo doo. There was no way he was going to make it through the segment without laughing out loud.

I'll give you that one. All right. So you are a sound editor for cartoons and you got laid off duty covid.

Yeah, pretty much the, you know, basically furloughed. So I wonder, OK, whenever, whenever or comes back, we'll call you type to say, OK, so I was left out to dry with OK, what do I do. I just moved here. I was, I've lived here for three months and then the kid this year and so I was going great, I'm out of college, graduated with two degrees unmastered. I'm sorry. I got my bachelor's in music industry studies and I got another bachelor's in finance.

And so this show has been great. It's little something for got so work in the house.

It is, yeah. Yeah. So I have no debt. I've got about twenty four thousand investments, I have two and a half thousand in emergency funds and I am currently in a place where I started a business, an online business where I sell guitar picks with flowers inside and it's been doing super well. And I came up with this idea on my own and I was sleeping. OK, well, if all jobs are out in the middle of nothing, I'm going have to make my own job.

And so I was doing this for a while and, you know, eating into my savings just to stay alive. And then all of a sudden in November, it began to pick up. And so I. I was running this job by my own and just innovating and everything like that no longer comes, my friends woke me up with a stay at home job working part time, and I'm able to kind of get on my feet a little bit.

So as I'm kind of gathering my feet, working part time to this one place to work from home, I'm still running my business. I'm working about one day a week. And so I'm seeing a lot of potential for this business and a lot of potential for growth. I'm working one day a week and I'm making about half of my monthly paycheck at this part time job, which is how much?

Give me a ballpark number.

So working part time hourly make about something around like twenty two hundred a month. And if I run my business, you know, if I put in one day's effort in a week from a business, I'll make about at Max a thousand a month somehow that well it's scale with you.

Meaning is that all it takes to fill the pick orders you have. Or if you worked every day like that, would it scale up that way?

I believe it would scale up because I'm constantly selling out stuff. The only reason I'm not making more sales is because I run out of stock.

OK, what are you doing in that one day that's driving all of the sales so that if you put in, let's say, two days a week or three days a week, you feel like you're going to see the sales come with that.

What are you doing? Right. So my day to day of working what I manufacture them. And so that takes about an hour or two a day. And then the rest is just managing the store. The online store opens up, you know, just sales coming in.

OK, so you're making the guitar picks yourself. So to John's point, you know, you're saying when you make them, but the orders are coming in even on the days you're not working, correct? Correct. Yeah.

So if you make a thousand dollars a month, just work in one day a week. If you were to work five days a week. You'd make 5000 dollars a month. Potentially, I mean, there's a big difference between, you know, I'm going to tell you. No, that's not the case because, Benjamin, you're making the picks. So you're sitting there in your apartment or wherever and you're making the picks and the orders are coming in regardless.

So you making the picks themselves doesn't make the orders come in more so. So that's that's the scary part you're going to scale. It's the second scale like you think it is. Because what's going to happen is, is you need to figure out what would cause the orders to to to pick up. So maybe I spent a little bit more time working on the marketing piece or the, you know, or the social media advertising piece or whatever, and let's get some more orders in.

But before we do that, let's go. What happens if my orders went up 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent, maybe go five, 10, 15, 20 and go, oh, that means I'd have to make this. At what point do you become limited in your ability to make the picks and now you've got to train somebody else to do it? Does that make sense, Benjamin?

Yeah, totally. And I've been thinking about all that, too. And so. Well, then here's my point.

I would start looking into it. So, so. So once you've done that homework and you said you've done it, I'd go, all right, I'm going to spend a little bit more time, then one day a week or I'm going to add an additional three or four hours on that one day a week. And I'm going to focus on driving more orders and let's see if that works. I would not commit to this thing full time yet. I would ease into it.

Let's see if we can incrementally, because you're the only manufacturer right now, correct?

Correct. So that could be eventually a problem, a good problem, but it could also sink you. So you've got to think through this and let's go incrementally on. All right. Let's see if I can raise my orders. And if I raise it by this much, I can still keep up with it. At what point do I get to a point where I need to train somebody how to make these picks with flowers in them?

And as you're building this thing, Dave spoke to the company. Dave Ramsey spoke to the company a few weeks ago talking about how he used to have to go early to events and said all the chairs up to himself now speak at the event, sign books and talk to everybody. And then when everyone at home take all the stuff down himself. And so this idea that. You got to be doing a lot of both and is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah.

When you're building a new niche market, you've got to do both and both.

And and you have some late nights, early mornings for a long season before this stuff takes off on. And here's the temptation, Benjamin and other entrepreneurs listen to me. There's a big temptation because what he's doing is got some real mo. It's cool. He's got some momentum. I mean, he's making half you know, he's making about a thousand. And it starts to feel like, oh, I can go do this. I could scale it now.

No, stick every nickel that you're making now back into the business to prepare for the long haul. And the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make is they try to go full time too soon. Yes, because we're excited about it. It's our idea of people actually buying it. Oh, I want to get it out there.

And it's like, whoa, it's my favorite scene from Braveheart, where the English army is thundering down on William Wallace and his merry men from Scotland. They got those long spears. He goes, hold, hold the horses, get closer, hold like, hey, hold. There'll be a time to go full time and it will be very, very evident. You'll know it. That's right. Hey, we had a blast. Appreciate you, doctor.

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