Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership- A Raving Fan

Dave Ramsey, sharing his play book with us at EntreLeadership Master Series

 

I had the privilege of attending Entreleadership Master Series, a week-long training on Entrepreneurship and Leadership taught by Dave Ramsey in Nashville, Tennessee. Let me start by saying, I will do a great job of sharing the highlights with you, both through pictures and with words, however, that will only scratch the surface of what actually happened at Entreleadership. It must be experienced to be truly understood. It was rich,  rewarding and will totally revamp the way you view business, service and relating with people.

Once we started the process of engaging with the Dave Ramsey team to attend Entreleadership, you felt “special”, you felt like they wanted to “serve” you and help you succeed. This was a theme that ran through my engagement with them: on our first night in Nashville, we checked into our hotel room and found a beautiful gift basket waiting for us.

Guitar Shaped Dark Chocolate Bar. Yum yum.

 

It had beautiful chocolates and marshmallows and other sweet treats made in Nashville. And of course one of them was shaped like a guitar- after all Nashville is the music city. By the next morning when we woke up, room service brought up another gift a lovely leather-bound note-book, a pen and a note from Dave…

The letter from Dave that accompanied our leather-bound notebooks

 

Needless to say, for the duration of the training, we got new gifts every day, one that blew my mind, was on the first day of the actual course (we got in on Saturday,  we wanted a day off to rest before classes took off on Monday even though activities commenced on Sunday evening), so on Monday, we got to the course venue and saw a huge box on each of our seats, they contained books- 6 books that are compulsory reading for all members of Dave Ramsey’s team and others that he recommended. So we got 12 books in that pack. You know what was most amazing? You looked through them, and then filled out a card and they shipped it off to you. These packs were huge. They were couriered to Nigeria for me for free, they did so with the almost 12 other books I ended getting during that week and with the huge course binder. All for free.

Box on top with Entreleadership on it had the books and the binder with course materials is lying flat

 

The books in our gift pack. These arrived on the 9th of April, after I wrote this post so thought it’ll be nice to update it with a photo of the books.

 

Let me tell you something else that happened, one day, I went to Dave’s bookshop (there is a bookshop in his office) I ordered 2 large DVD sets and took them back to my seat at the conference (you had to walk across a parking lot to get from the Financial Peace Plaza where his office is, to the Financial Peace Conference Centre where the training was), anyhow, I hadn’t sat on my seat for one minute when a member of his team comes to ask for the package so they can ship it to me, one of them had seen me carrying it and alerted the other. She said they didn’t want me to have to pay for excess luggage. I was quite amazed because shipping those items cost more than I paid them for the books I bought but they were doing it for free.

On this occasion, it was raining as we got to the conference centre, the Entreleadership Team did not just hand out umbrellas or expect us to sprint, they formed this line of human umbrella canopies for us to pass through. For once I truly understood “the devil is in the details”. This was so beautiful, kind and poetic…

 

On another occasion, I went over to Martha’s Place, a snack and coffee bar in Dave’s building where I am convinced you get the best confectionaries in Nashville- absolutely free as well. So I went over there to get one delicious cookie I’d had the day before and to look at books- Martha’s Place is like the bar area of the library complete with high stools and all. I think I lingered over one book for lunch, thanked the beautiful attendant and went back to class. Guess what? When I got to my room that night, the book had been delivered to me. I don’t mean to gush but I was overwhelmed, the kindness, thoughtfulness and seeming selflessness. I can see why they are successful… I am a raving fan now, not a customer anymore. I daresay if spouses treated one another with that level of consideration, marriages will be blissful and last forever.

Yummy cookie! Oh gosh! I have taken up skipping to undo all the self-inflicted yummies around my waist!

 

The beautiful lady who now run’s Martha’s Place, great conversationalist as well. I enjoyed talking to her. Any chance you can send some cookies to Nigeria?

 

Let’s call this part “Entreleadeship- A Raving Fan”. On Thursday, I will post the second part titled “For Leaders Only” where I share practical nuggets from the course material, if you are an entrepreneur, small business owner or a leader in any form (and we all lead in our spheres of influence) then you don’t want to miss that. I’ll share the 3^rd part next week Monday and it’ll detail the “Entreleadership Experiences” where I will share photos of other experiences through which Dave & his team knocked my socks off, like shutting down the Country Music Hall of Fame so that we could all visit and enjoy the experience. Dinner at Mangia (awesome story, I will post a video for that) and getting some country music artistes and song writers to perform for us. They were such beautiful things that even if you had the money to get them, you could not get them on your own, so Mangia for example is booked 3 months in advance, so even if we happened to just travel to Nashville and could afford it, we still won’t be able to get in except we planned our trip around a restaurant reservation, because there is a 3 month waiting list to get in.

Ok, this seems like “gist”, like I just told you what happened to me, but there are whole lessons in here; lessons on service, on great marketing, on setting your customer expectations and exceeding them beyond belief. On creating “tribes”, people who now speak for you, market you because you treated them outstandingly and gave greater value than they thought they were paying for. There is a lesson here about creating raving fans. Now think, how can you apply these to your business and even in your job, how can you apply it to your position? I have a theory that employees are “employpreneurs”, you have to work with the mindset of an owner- see the bigger picture, act like you have a stake and soon you will… but Entreleadership is taking that concept much much higher. When your customers interface with you, do they want to brag on you? Do they feel cheated or worse robbed? What will you change today to ensure all of your team treats everyone that interfaces with your company in a way that keeps them coming back? What can you do?  Read all about it on Wednesday, in the interim, enjoy some random photos below:

I spy with my beautiful eyes, a handsome fellow in a yellow t-shirt. Listening with rapt attention. Hmm, I wonder who he is? Wink, wink.

 

Doing the peace sign when everyone was at lunch. I think this was the day I discovered Martha’s Place and dispensed with the need to queue. LOL, the peace sign is sugar induced.

 

This people were not joking. Every moment was a teachable moment. We had these lovely centre pieces at the buffet tables for lunch.

 

One of the signs at the reception at the Financial Peace Plaza, behind the Director of First Impressions aka the receptionist. You see that there? What first impression do your customers who walk in or call you get? Does your receptionist know what he/she really does?

 

Nuggets of wisdom.

 

Chris Hogan teaching. Do you listen to the Entreleadership podcast on iTunes? You should, great free education from not only Dave and his team but from top business people in every field of endeavour

 

Dave “wowed” us, while demonstrating how he “wowed” his team. Actually Chris Hogan demonstrated how Dave “wowed” his team. The point here, is that “people matter. Everyone needs applause, inspiration and recognition (AIR)”

 

Testimonies of people who have used Dave’s Financial Peace University to pay off large sums of debt.

 

There was always food. Some have nicknamed it EntreEATERship. LOL!

 

True that!

 

The Lampo Group (the parent company for Entreleadership & Financial Peace University) has been voted one of the best places to work 7 years in a row

 

We got to participate in a live recording of the Dave Ramsey radio show.

 

On this day, I cried. Dave (the figure in black in the background standing next to the speaker) invited us to this spot outside an old building. He climbed on this truck and shared his story with us. Of how he had to file for bankruptcy when the lenders were going to take the mattress off his daughters back. How he was up, down, up and down again financially. It was raining and cold out that day but see how we all listened with rapt attention. It was a story we could all relate with. A lot of us have been there, bad business decisions, failure… but Dave’s story tells you that with faith, with learning, with structures and above all, with God, the impossible IS possible…

 

Please be awesome this week. Do more, stretch yourself, become your best. I really want it for you, that’s why I write. I could have gone, learnt and stayed quiet, applied the lessons and hope to be rich, self-made (as if). But life is about much more than that. We all were created unique, with something beautiful to contribute. Find what you were created to do and do it excellently. Ciao! Watch out for the second part titled “For Leaders Only”, it’ll be posted on Thursday. In the interim, enjoy the highlights of our week at EMS at http://youtu.be/o1VyrsyuWgg.