On one of my recent trips, I finished reading EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey. The book offers practical wisdom from Dave based on his years of experience building a business from scratch. It offers insights on both entrepreneurship and leadership — it’s not an either or proposition when you’re launching a business.
As a leader launching a church consulting business, this book really resonated with me. However, most of the principles Dave outlines also apply to church planters and other church leaders. With that in mind, here are some highlights from my reading:
- “If you want employees, then boss them around; if you want team members, explain why you do what you do. If they won’t do what you ask, explain it again and again. Then, if they are simply contrary, they have to work somewhere else. But don’t lead with threats and fear.”
- “Just because an idea is a good idea does not mean it is good for you or your company to take it on.”
- “President John F. Kennedy said, ‘There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.’”
- “Marketing has to have energy. Logic, while factual, is flat and moves no one to action.”
- “You can’t lead, market, and/ or run a company successfully without drawing fire from people who don’t understand. So as you win prepare to be misunderstood and lied about.”
- “The fact that someone got on your team who should never have been allowed in the building is your fault.”
- “There are some people you don’t need to hire—simply because you don’t like them. That is good enough.”
- “I also won’t let a team member stay if they decide to have an affair. If their spouse can’t trust them, neither can I.”
- “Owning the wrong location will cause you to stay longer than you should. I’ve seen businesses try to make their business fit their building instead of making their building fit their business.”
- “People don’t naturally unify; they must be led to do so. To create a culture of unity you have to get your team to buy into a cause bigger than their selfish motives.”
- “As a micromanager you will have a very difficult time attracting and keeping high-quality people because they won’t put up with that trash.”
- “When an organization or its leaders begin to dish out responsibility without authority, it is a sign they have people whose integrity or competency they don’t trust. That is a symptom of a company having outgrown the quality of its team, and that is the beginning of the end for them.”
This is just a small sliver of the quality content, so here’s my Amazon link if you’d like to pick up your own copy of EntreLeadership.
