Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Dave Ramsey: 5 Stages to Build and Scale a Business That Lasts | Entrepreneurship | E344
Mon, 31 Mar 2025
Too many entrepreneurs get stuck on the business treadmill, hustling nonstop, unable to scale, and unknowingly stalling their growth. That’s where Dave Ramsey began. After crashing into $3 million in debt, he rebuilt from scratch, turning a small radio program into a national show with millions of listeners. With over three decades of experience in entrepreneurship, business growth, and content creation, he knows what it takes to build a lasting business. In this episode, Dave reveals the six drivers of long-term success, the five key stages of startup growth, and how he balances life as an entrepreneur and a content creator. In this episode, Hala and Dave will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:23) The Core Principles of Financial Freedom (05:42) Adapting to Change as a Content Creator (09:22) Balancing Content Creation and Entrepreneurship (12:34) How to Create a Clear Path in Business (15:19) The Truth About Starting a Business Today (18:22) The Six Drivers of Business Success (26:20) Shifting From Tactical to Strategic Thinking (29:44) The Five Stages of Business Growth (41:10) Leading with Care, Clarity, and Accountability (47:10) Identifying the Right Leadership Skills (48:35) Starting a Media Business as an Entrepreneur Dave Ramsey is a personal finance expert, radio personality, bestselling author, and the founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. Over the past three decades, he has built a legacy of helping millions achieve financial freedom. As the host of The Ramsey Show, Dave reaches more than 18 million listeners each week. He is the author of eight national bestselling books. His latest, Build a Business You Love, helps entrepreneurs navigate growth and overcome challenges at every stage. Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify OpenPhone: Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at openphone.com/profiting Airbnb - Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/host Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - Receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold Factor - Get 50% off your first box plus free shipping at factormeals.com/factorpodcast Rakuten - Save while shopping at rakuten.com Microsoft Teams - Stop paying for tools. Get everything you need, for free at aka.ms/profiting LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/profiting Resources Mentioned: Dave’s Book, Build a Business You Love: bit.ly/BuildaBusinessYouLove Dave’s Website: ramseysolutions.com Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Side Hustle, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking.
Chapter 1: What are the core principles of financial freedom?
It is the easiest time to start a business, but that doesn't mean it's easy. If your only purpose in business is to make money, you will not last. If you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money.
What are the five different stages of a business?
Chapter 2: What are the five stages of business growth?
Well, the first one is treadmill. Everything depends on you. And then the second thing is you start. And then when you've done that, you'll level up and you go into the Pathfinder stage. And then we move into Trailblazer. The next one is a sweet spot. Peak Performer. Oh, you're making so much money. Everything's going so good that you forget to break it, but you better break it before it breaks.
And then once you do that, you will naturally roll into the last one, which is.
What advice would you give to an entrepreneur right now who wants to start their own media business?
Do it.
Young Improfiters, welcome back to the show. And what if I told you that you could have a roadmap to building a business that you love? Well, that's exactly what we're going to be uncovering today with our guest, Dave Ramsey. Now, Dave Ramsey is an incredibly successful entrepreneur. He's got a media empire behind him, and he's helped millions of people unlock financial freedom over 30 years.
But he's not only an entrepreneur, he's a creator entrepreneur. He's a content creator. He creates content every single day while also running a business. So in today's episode, we're going to uncover how he manages that all.
And we're going to learn his formula for creating a business that you love, including the six drivers of a business and the five stages of business that we need to be aware of and how they interact. Dave has a new book called Build a Business That You Love, and we're gonna really dive deep on that topic today. So I can't wait to uncover this conversation.
We're gonna talk about everything from people to leadership to hiring and firing, and you're just gonna learn so much. It has jam-packed with gems for us entrepreneurs, so I can't wait for you guys to hear it without further delay. Here's my conversation with Dave Ramsey. Dave, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
Well, thank you for having me. I'm honored to be with you.
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Chapter 3: How did Dave Ramsey start his media business?
And so you have been preaching financial advice for so long, but I found out that you actually started your career with a radio show, a really small radio show. And it all started because you kind of hit rock bottom and this was your way out of that, getting this radio show. So talk to us about financial ruin and what happened there and then how you started with your first radio show.
Well, when I got out of college, I got married and Sharon and I were broke. We had no money. And I went through a couple of jobs and then I started buying and selling houses, doing flips. And that's before there was cable TV and before Chip and Joanna were born. So this is way back there in the early 80s. I was good at it.
I grew up in a real estate household and I was doing a lot of flips and making profit. But I borrowed a lot of money to do that. And I continued to borrow short-term notes to do the flips because we weren't holding the property. We were flipping it. The largest bank we were dealing with got sold and they looked down and said, there's a kid, 26 years old, owes us a million too. This is scary.
Me and two in 1982 with some money. And so they called our notes. And then another lender heard we were in trouble because we were in trouble. And so we had to come up with all of the $3 million worth of debt that we were in in like six months. And that was impossible in the real estate business. So it started a crash of foreclosures and lawsuits and stress that lasted two and a half years.
And finally, with a brand new baby and a toddler and our marriage hanging on by a thread, We hit bottom after two and a half years. I made $250,000 one year. The next year I made $6,000 because I spent the whole year selling everything, trying to pay the bill. So at 28 years old, I got the opportunity to start over.
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Chapter 4: How does Dave Ramsey balance content creation and entrepreneurship?
I went to buying and selling real estate again, but this time I was just doing it as a wholesaler, just pitching it to other people that are in the business because I had no credit and I had no money. to eat to feed the kids.
And then gradually I started learning common sense financial principles from old people that were rich and from the Bible as a Christian and started telling people to live on less than you make and be on a budget and get out of debt. And that's what Sharon and I were doing to recover, to heal. And so that started as just a little Sunday school class at my church.
And then we went on a broke radio station, as you said. It was talk radio. It was huge in those days. It was just beginning in those days, actually. Rush Limbaugh was just coming on the scene, that kind of thing. And we went on as just a lark, just for fun. We weren't paid. There was no money. It was just to help people. And we were horrible. We were awful at it.
the accents were super thick and the country fried and hillbilly. And if you heard those tapes, you would really get a good Saturday night live skit laugh, but that's how we started. And people got helped and they kept calling because they kept getting helped. And that was 34 years ago. It's,
incredible what you've built with it. It's turned into this whole big empire. So was there any like pivotal moments where you're like, wow, this is going to be way more than just a radio show? Like what were some of the key moments that you remember?
Like you, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. And so we see a need and fill it. And I'm looking around getting people out of debt. This is not exactly a niche market. This is huge. It's mammoth. And we always laugh and say, me and Jenny Craig got a big job. It's crazy out there. So we knew it could be huge based on the need.
But what I didn't know at 33 years old when I started, 32 when I turned on a microphone, that I had no idea how much work it was going to be to monetize it, to scale it, to build business models and systems and products that would insert themselves at volume into people's lives. I had no idea how much work. And I had no idea what I didn't know. I didn't know what I didn't know.
I probably wouldn't have done it if I had known how hard it was going to be. But it's a lot of work. We've worked our tails off for a long, long time. But it's fun, and we've helped a lot of folks, and it's turned into a wonderful, wonderful life.
And now you've learned so many principles that you're teaching other to help build a business, not only just gain financial freedom. So you started this show, this first radio show in the 90s. And so much has changed over the past 30 plus years in terms of how people consume content. And when I think about your brand, I think of you as one of the pioneers of creator entrepreneurship.
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Chapter 5: What are the six drivers of business success?
So you're right, I'm both the product and I am the CEO. And so what do I do? Well, I've got to be able to and master the task of shutting off one and turning on the other. So while I'm on stage talking to 4,000 people in an auditorium, I can't be up there thinking about business strategy. I need to be the best product.
And when I'm not up there and I'm doing something else, I can't be thinking about that stage. I've got to be the best CEO to compartmentalize and to say, okay, once I get off the radio show, this is what we're doing. Or once I get off the microphone, this is what we're doing. We're going to sit down, I go straight into that meeting. And so today I've done two podcasts and I'll do ours as a guest.
and I'll do ours. So I've been the product a lot today, but I had an early morning meeting over coffee with one of our team leaders on some stuff we were dealing with as the CEO. And I'll have another meeting after I get off the air today. And so it's just switch on, switch off is what it amounts to. And what that means is, is that my calendar has become very, very important.
We are very selective and intentional about what I'm going to spend my time on, whether it's being the product. And so I can't go speak to a group of 35 people. I don't have the bandwidth to do that and still run the company. I have to turn that one down. I'd love to. I like the people. I'm not arrogant about it. I just have to be doing the other stuff.
And so my calendar is 15-minute blocks is 100% full from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. when I'm working. And it's probably out through about August right now that way. And so if something gets on there, that means something else got bumped off. right now, between now and then. And that will happen periodically. My personal assistant's been with me 23 years.
She helps me manage that so that I don't get all fatigued and stressed out and become a jerk or too much caffeine and become a jerk. But yeah, we just got to navigate our way through that and manage those time blocks.
So I'm hearing time blocking. I'm hearing saying no, even though you want to help people. But sometimes you just got to say no if it's not going to be aligned with your priorities. So you've got this new book and it's called Build a Business That You Love. By the time this comes out, the book will be out. And in the beginning of your book, you mentioned an analogy about golf and red lights.
Can you share that story with us?
Yeah, I went to Scotland recently and played golf. I'm not a good golfer, but I had a lot of fun because it's the home of golf. And Scotland is famous for its horrible weather when you're playing golf. Among the horrible weather is fog. And so we played one course one day, my wife and I, and it was super, super foggy, and you couldn't see 40 feet in front of you.
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Chapter 6: Why is it both easy and difficult to start a business today?
But at least we had the sense that what we were doing was getting traction and it wasn't just a random freaking chaotic thing. And so you land out there and then you could see the next light. and get up onto the green, and then you've got a whole different process. So the point of that is that having a clear path in anything gives you huge hope and energy and belief to move forward.
It's very difficult to move forward when you're in the fog, when you can't see and you don't know what you don't know. Not only do you have all the frustration and the angst of being in business and working your butt off and not knowing, but you can't see where you're going. So one of the things we attempted to do is to lay out a clear path
through the process of business that we've observed in our business. And back in about the year 2000, we started coaching small businesses and we've now coached about 10,000 of them. And as we've coached them, we've watched them go through the same five stages of business. And that's the clear path. That's the light in the fog.
And I can't wait to go over those five stages and the six drivers. It was really interesting to learn about that. But first, I want to ask you why you think this book is so important right now, because I've heard from other entrepreneurs that have been on this show that it's the easiest time to be an entrepreneur and a business owner.
And then other people come on the show and they say it's a very difficult time. So what is your opinion on that?
It is the easiest time, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Ease of entry into the world of content creation, as an example, you can just decide one morning and you have a YouTube channel. You only have two people watching it, but you can decide and start. You can start a podcast. You can start and print a book today very easily. You can become an author very easily.
The ease of entry into, for instance, your world, my world, is amazingly easy in terms of the actual tactical things. But starting and running a business is hard. As soon as you become self-employed, you realize you have a jerk slave driver for a boss. Your boss will work you to death when you're self-employed because they think about it all the time.
And they think about what you should be doing all the time. And you're just consumed with it. And you do stupid stuff and it hurts. And you make mistakes, lots of them. And you have to survive them. So ease, easiest time to start a business, that's the tactical thing and all that.
But it's still hard because the first prototype you come up with is your sweet little baby and then you figure out your baby's ugly and it's never even going to make it to market. We've got to iterate this ugly baby and get it because it just sucks. It's awful. And we do that at Ramsey to this day. We're messing with products. We're putting them out for tests. We're doing beta with them.
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