SS 43 – Run Your Business by The Book with Dave Anderson

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Dave Anderson is the President of Learn To Lead and co-founder of the Matthew 25:35 Foundation. He’s also the author of, “How to Run Your Business by THE BOOK: A Biblical Blueprint to Bless Your Business” and, “How to Lead by The Book: Proverbs, Parables, and Principles to Tackle Your Toughest Business Challenges.”

Anderson shares his strategies to run businesses according to “The Bible.” He gives some common business challenges that are tackled by scripture. He then explains what the Matthew 25:35 Foundation does.

Visit Learn To Lead at www.learntolead.com.

Find out more about Matthew 25:35 at www.Matthew2535Foundation.org.

Dave Anderson is president of Dave Anderson’s LearnToLead, an international sales and leadership training and consulting company. Prior to beginning LearnToLead, Dave enjoyed an extensive and successful career in the automotive retail industry. Dave has given over 1,000 workshops and speeches over the past decade on sales and leadership development and has spoken in fifteen countries.
Dave is author of twelve books, including the TKO Business Series, Up Your Business, If You Don’t Make Waves You’ll Drown , How to Run Your Business by THE BOOK, and How to Lead by THE BOOK.

He authors a monthly leadership column for two national magazines and his interviews and articles have appeared in hundreds of publications including: The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily and US News & World Report. He was a featured speaker at the NADA Convention for ten straight years and is a frequent panelist on MSNBC’s Your Business show. Please visit www.LearnToLead.com to learn more about Dave as well as gain over 500 free training articles and videos on sales, management and leadership!

Dave is also a martial arts enthusiast who holds a black belt in Tang Soo Do karate. Dave, along with his wife Rhonda, is the co-founder of the Matthew 25:35 Foundation, whose mission is to bring food, housing, clothing, healing, and ministry to under-resourced and imprisoned people worldwide. Please visit, www.facebook.com/M2535F for more information.

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ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Solomon Success Show, where we explore the timeless wisdom of King Solomon and the Bible, as it relates to business and investing. False prophets and get-rich-quick schemes are everywhere; let’s not be distracted by these. Instead, let’s go to the source: the eternal principles that create a life of peace, power, and prosperity. Here’s our host, Jason Hartman.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the Solomon Success Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, where we talk about Biblical principles applied to business and investing. Learning from King Solomon, of course. And we will be back with a fantastic guest for you in just a moment here. But be sure to visit our website, www.solomonsuccess.org, or www.solomonsuccess.com. Take advantage of our extensive blog library, and our free content. I think you’ll find some fantastic things there. So, be sure to visit us on the web at www.solomonsuccess.com.

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JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Dave Anderson to the show! He is president to Learn to Lead, and cofounder of the Matthew 25:35 Foundation, and author of How To Run Your Business By The Book: A Biblical Blueprint to Bless Your Business. He’s also author of at least one other book, maybe some more. I’ll let him tell us. Dave, welcome. How are you?

DAVE ANDERSON: I’m doing great, Jason, how are you today?

JASON HARTMAN: Good, good. I’m glad to hear you’re with us, and you’re coming to us from the Los Angeles area.

DAVE ANDERSON: That’s right.

JASON HARTMAN: That’s my hometown area, in Southern California. So, tell us a little bit—how many books have you written, by the way?

DAVE ANDERSON: I’ve written a dozen books. The last three—they’re often business books. The last three were Biblically based, strategies rooted in the Bible that are applicable to business today.

JASON HARTMAN: Well we certainly could use more of that in our overly secularized, very confused culture. Before we started recording, and we’ll get to kind of the business stuff. But maybe let’s just tackle a couple of current, or semi-current events here. And I gotta tell you Dave, as I expressed to you off air, I am outraged at this stuff you see from people; this real hatred toward the Christian community. You know, I was mentioning—I have this one friend on Facebook, would constantly be posting these things about how the founder of Chick-fil-A was such an evil man, and Chick-fil-A should be boycotted, and Sarah Palin going there to eat lunch was just outrageous, what a bigot she is, and all this kind of stuff. And never any outrage against, say, for example, Muslim stonings of gays.

DAVE ANDERSON: Right.

JASON HARTMAN: Or beheadings. Or tortures. Or the fact that in, I believe I may get the country wrong here, I apologize if I do. But I saw a news story two weeks ago. I think it was Nairobi, that passed a law that made it illegal to be gay, saying that people who are gay go to prison for 12 years. Now, I didn’t see the Duck Dynasty guy, or the founder of Chick-fil-A, or really, any Christian, saying or even implying that anything like that would be okay.

DAVE ANDERSON: No, you know, it’s open season on the Christians. It wouldn’t be politically correct to talk about what the Muslims or other religions do to gay people, but there just seems to be a bulls eye on the backs of Christians in this age. And you know, sometimes Christians themselves mistake being humble for being doormats, and there’s a big difference between the two. And you know, it’s nice to see the pushback, and people stand up for the Chick-fil-A’s, and they had record sales in spite of those boycotts, and people rally around Phil Robertson with the Duck Dynasty because there does come a time when this nonsense just goes too far, and enough is enough. And it’s nice to see people stand up and say, you know what, we are humble, but we’re not timid, and we’re not doormats, and this isn’t right. And you know, we’re not being represented properly here.

JASON HARTMAN: Well you know, you write about leadership, and your company is based around teaching people leadership skills. Are Christians just too polite? That seems to be the problem with me, you know. That they won’t call these people out, and fight back and say, hey look, this is wrong, what you’re saying! It’s outrageously imbalanced! This person, her name’s Stephanie, she would never post anything, you know, about the stonings that go on. All of these outrageously barbaric things that happen in radically Islamic countries.

DAVE ANDERSON: You know, I think there’s a lot of indifference, and unfortunately too, Jason, with Christians and [unintelligible] they don’t speak up, and they’re more apathetic and indifferent than they should be. And those that do speak up are sometimes so vilified that it discourages others from doing the same. But the media is intimidating. There’s just this sense that it’s politically incorrect and perhaps as you say impolite to actually step up and defend yourself. But really, these people don’t have a problem with Christians as much as they have a problem with the Bible that the Christians are referring to. And they just ought to just come out and admit that they’re not angry at us, they’re angry at God. They’re angry at God’s word. We’re just the whipping post and outlet for their anger.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, maybe that’s worse, though? Isn’t it? I don’t know.

DAVE ANDERSON: Yeah. Well, it is.

JASON HARTMAN: Talk to us about that a little bit more. Drill down on that one, if you would.

DAVE ANDERSON: It’s just—well, you know. It’s like, you watch the anger that atheists have, and it’s like, how can atheists be so angry at a God they don’t even believe exists? But there’s this—there’s this anger that is directed towards Christians ostensibly, but I think what people really, really have a hard time with, if you peel back the onion, is the values that the Christians represent that convict them of their lifestyles, that convict them of the darkness that they live in. It’s not the Christian per se, but it’s what the Christian represents. It’s a moral God, and a just God, that says there is right, and there is wrong, and there is a heaven, and there is a hell, and I think at the core of things, that’s what people truly have a problem with. It’s just easier to beat up the Christian than it is to beat up the belief or to beat up God.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. It’s just amazing. You mentioned the atheist movement, and you know, I have some very devout—I’m saying that with single quotes—‘atheist’ friends, okay? And you know, I’ll debate with them sometimes. And what I’ve come to realize is that atheism is a religion.

DAVE ANDERSON: Oh, it is. Well, it undoubtedly is. And I’ll just give you an example, since we’re on this topic. The book that you mentioned, How To Run Your Business By The Book—there was a professor at Iowa State University who was going to use my book as the basis for an elective course—an elective, mind you—on the Bible’s relevance in business. And the course was approved, and people were signing up for it, and a couple of atheist professors at Iowa State University got a petition together and brought it before the board, and had the course dismissed, and the book thrown out of Iowa State, even though they have electives in a cult, in witchcraft, and those sort of things people can take, and they can learn, and they can go through those lessons. And so I was interviewed by an Iowa radio station after this happened, to get my take on it, and they said it’s just a shame that at that university they can learn lessons from Ted Turner, who was an atheist, they can learn lessons from Steve Jobs, who’s a Buddhist, but they can’t learn Biblical wisdom from Solomon, who had far more money and success than the two of them combined. It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. Well, we’ll see where this goes, but our culture is so misguided.

DAVE ANDERSON: Yeah, it is. Misguided. That’s a polite word for it.

JASON HARTMAN: That’s the understatement of the millennium I’m making there. But anyway, let’s move on from maybe the current event issue. We may come back to it in our discussion today. But, tell us about some of the strategies for running a business according to the Bible! That’s what this show is about; Biblical principles for business and investing. And I know there are some great ones in the book. And give us your take on some of them.

DAVE ANDERSON: You know, there’s so many great principles. It’s not like you have to look for new ones. The best ones were long ago established. One of the challenges, for instance, people have in the workplace, Jason, is you know, if I do something for this person, I also have to do it for that one. I have to give them equal time, equal rewards, you know, equal this and equal that. And when you look at the story of the talents, there’s a very powerful lesson there about distributing opportunities, rewards, and so forth, in accordance with what someone has earned and deserved based on past performance. One of them got five talents, one of them got two, and one of them got one. And they were distributed based on what they had done. Not how long they had been there, not how much experience they had, but based on performance. And I think in business we have to remember that. We should distribute rewards not equally, but based on people’s performance, on their proven track record. And we get hung up sometimes as a politically correct, but there’s a Biblical precedent for distributing according to what people have earned and deserve, and I think we’ve gotten away from that, unfortunately. But there’s a solid principle there that really frees leaders up to reward—to give their best to the best, and less to the rest! So they don’t weaken the strong in order to strengthen the weak and diminish their entire business culture.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, yeah. That wouldn’t be in compliance with the Marxist, leftist concept of Affirmative Action, would it?

DAVE ANDERSON: No, it wouldn’t. Not at all. You know—and you can just go on and on! There’s a wonderful story in Exodus 18 with Moses trying to do far too much himself, making every decision, solving everybody’s problem, having to come up with every idea, had people lined up all day to see him—I know a lot of leaders in that same situation! They’ve made their people so dependent on them, their people can’t think for themselves, and the leader’s so bogged down he’s no longer effective! And then good old father-in-law Jethro comes along and says, what are you doing? This is not smart! And teaches him the art of delegation. And the art of pushing power down, and equipping people at lower levels to handle those things, to where he would spend greater amounts of time with the major issues. And a lot of leaders need to learn that lesson. They’re spread a mile wide and an inch deep. And they’re so far out of their zone, they’re not even leading anymore. They spend most of the day doing damage control! They haven’t learned how to push power down.

JASON HARTMAN: Oh, Dave, guilty as charged [LAUGHTER]

DAVE ANDERSON: We all are from time to time!

JASON HARTMAN: Not always, but sometimes I am guilty as charged. That tendency to want to micromanage things is a very costly one.

DAVE ANDERSON: Well, you know, and here’s another thing people mess up, I think, Jason. Is that, you know, micromanagement means to control with excessive attention to minor details. There are some major details that need to be micromanaged, like the values of the company that support your culture. You can’t talk about those enough. You’ve got to hold those in an ironclad grip. You know, I know people who say, well all my boss does is harp on the values and talk about the values, and values, values, we get so sick of hearing it, he’s such a micromanager. I said, he is not a micromanager! Values are not minor details. You’ve gotta hold them close. It’s the nitpicking of the every little nickel and dime so and so that can turn you into the micromanager. I think a lot of people are labeled as micromanagers when they’re not, because the things they’re holding in an iron grip are the things that matter most, and must be managed closely.

JASON HARTMAN: Are there any more specific tips on delegation, and what to delegate and what not to? You mentioned that. And maybe how to hold accountable—one of the old good tips I think that’s common in management practices is, delegate but account. You’ve got to—you can’t do delegation without accountability.

DAVE ANDERSON: Well, that’s exactly right. And it’s like Jesus did when he sent out the disciples. He delegated outcomes, he said, you know, go heal this, raze this, cast this out, and so forth. He delegated outcomes without delegating every step-by-step specific method. He allowed the methodology to the person, and I think that’s wise, to delegate outcomes without delegating step-by-step methods that can cause you to become a micromanager. And then when they came back, he debriefed them, and found out what happened, and there needs to be that accountability. You go back to the story of the talents. I mean, the guy that didn’t use the talent had it taken away from him. I mean, there was a consequence for not doing what he was supposed to do. So, I think when you delegate outcomes—here’s what we want done, here’s when we want it done by—you know, I’ve trained you, I’ve showed you how to do this, so I’m gonna let you use your wisdom that you’ve gained to make this happen, and then we’re gonna talk about what happened, and reward you if you’ve done well, and if you haven’t, we’re going to redirect you, and there may be some consequences there. I think that’s very fair. The unfair thing, is when you’re not clear, and you don’t delegate, but you dump. And you throw something at somebody, and you’re not clear about what you want done, or when you want it done, and you haven’t given them a clear picture of what success should look like, and then beat them up because they guessed wrong!

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, very good points. So dumping, versus delegation. I like that distinction.

DAVE ANDERSON: Oh, there’s a big difference. Yeah.

JASON HARTMAN: That’s very good. What are some other principles?

DAVE ANDERSON: Well, you know, be in the inner circle, is a wonderful Biblical principle. You know, we think, well I have to spend equal time with everybody. And that’s absolutely not wise. Nor is it true.

JASON HARTMAN: Nor is it possible.

DAVE ANDERSON: Nor is it possible. No, absolutely. And you just exhaust yourself trying to do that. But Jesus, again—let’s pull out a wonderful example here. He sent out 70; he spent most of his time with 12. But there were three that he took to special places. You know, John and James and Peter. And they went to the Mount of Transfiguration, they went inside the room when he healed Jairus’ daughter, they went to the special place in the garden where the others were required to stand far off. And that’s only the three we know about. There are a lot of things Jesus did that aren’t in the Bible, so we can assume safely that there were other places and things that he did with this inner three, the three he saw tremendous potential in, and that he wanted to pour himself into. And John Maxwell talks about in one of his books, how the law of the inner circle—those closest to you determine your success. You’ve really gotta pour yourself into the best and the brightest; those with the highest upward potential, as a priority. Love everyone on your team; train them, coach them, give them all feedback, learn how to motivate them, but you mentor the few. Those are the few you pour yourself into. And it’s a wonderful Biblical principle for building depth in your team, and learning how to, as you go on in leadership, spend greater amounts of time with smaller numbers of strategic people. That is a key to I believe exploding the growth on a team: spending greater amounts of time with smaller numbers of strategic people, high potential people, and pouring yourself into them, and then watching them expand the organization to levels that it wouldn’t have had a chance to be at before.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, great point. Great point, no question about it. Is there a certain number of things that we can learn from the Bible that relate directly to business and investing? I mean, are there two dozen major ideas? Are there 100? Do you have any thoughts on that?

DAVE ANDERSON: There are many, many ideas. Everything from how to handle debt, to not cosigning notes, to planning before you jump into something, to who to make partnerships with and who not to make partnerships with—I mean, all these things are really covered well in the Bible. Real issues that we face, you know—hiring people! You know, it’s interesting, even when I speak with Christian businesspeople, I say, your number one strategy for hiring people is first you’ve gotta pray! You’ve gotta pray for God to send you the right people, and for him to give you discernment. And this is what Jesus did before he chose the disciples, and as basic a strategy as that is, I know a lot of leaders, Christian leaders, who do not pray! They count on their own judgment and their own emotions to determine who should be on the team or not. So, there’s so many principles. How to pat people on the back! You don’t withhold that. In Proverbs 3:27 it says, don’t withhold good from whom have it coming to them! Let them know they’ve done a good job. Bring closure to those things. And it’s just on and on. So many examples. The dangers of pride, Jason. Which I believe is the root of the number one cause of all management failures, is rooted somewhere in pride. You can take the cause of management failure, peel it back, and pride is at the core. And how to cultivate humility, because it doesn’t come naturally; pride does. How to overcome that prideful tendency that can cause you to self destruct and become a Nebuchadnezzar and think it’s all about you, and then pretty soon you’re spending seven years eating grass.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, tell us about the pride issue. How do you see that’s at the root of all business problems?

DAVE ANDERSON: Well, I think it’s the root of every management failure. Any failure you can mention. I’ll give you a couple of quick examples. Why is one reason a leader might fail? Well, he gets overwhelmed, he’s trying to do too much himself, and he doesn’t do any of it well, and he gets burned out, and he’s in over his head. Well, why would he do that? Well, somewhere down at the core, he doesn’t want to give that stuff up. He thinks he’s the only one that can do it. Perhaps he’s reluctant to delegate, reluctant to give that power away. He likes holding it. He likes the reward that comes with it. He likes the accomplishment that he gets when he does it, and doesn’t think anyone can do it as well as he. So really there’s this pride that makes it all about him, that’s at the root of him not delegating, not sharing power, not passing it down, not letting someone else be in a position to where they can shine. Another example, you know, is not training people. So again, you have untrained people, and you end up doing too much yourself as a leader, and that same pride issue is at the core there. You do! You think you can do it well, as long as you’re there. You know, give me the ball, coach, let me run with it; these other guys can just follow along. And pride is at the core, again, in thinking that as long as you’re there and carrying the ball and running with it, that you really don’t have to invest in these people around you to help carry the load. Because for goodness sake, you’re there. You’re the star of the show.

JASON HARTMAN: Right, right. And actually that’s so common in the corporate world, where everybody’s trying to protect their turf, and when they hire, they don’t—managers are intimidated, and they don’t want to hire people who they consider to be smarter than them or more ambitious than them, because they threaten them! And this is why we have the Peter Principle problem, in the world.

DAVE ANDERSON: Exactly. And there again, pride is at the core of that. Not admitting mistakes, and losing the trust of your people. Pride is at the core of that; not giving credit away, and building up your people, so they eventually resent you. You don’t give credit away because pride is at the core of that. You want the glory for yourself. I promise you—you could take any management failure, and peel it back, and at some place, pride is at the core. And God detests pride. There’s no sin in the Bible judged more quickly than pride. It’s devastating. It’s what caused the fall of Lucifer. And so God takes it very, very seriously. He judges leaders very harshly who can’t learn to handle that. Especially a Christian leader to whom more is expected from that leader.

JASON HARTMAN: Very good points, very good points. What about partnerships?

DAVE ANDERSON: Well you know, I don’t think it’s wise to be unequally yoked. If people do not share your value system, and you are at financial risk with them, and you don’t have the final say on whether to make a decision, and someone else may make it, and it’s not an ethical decision, and it would cause you to violate your Biblical beliefs, then you put yourself in a horrible position there. I think that partnerships with Christians—obviously they’re not perfect, and they’re not foolproof, but they are preferred to partnerships that yoke you with someone who doesn’t have the belief in Christ, who doesn’t, perhaps, have the same moral compass that you do, and now you are at financial risk with this person, with a value system that may run totally counter to yours. I don’t like partnerships at all, really, but I totally will stay away from those with somebody that I would be unequally yoked with, which the Bible tells us to avoid.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, the equally yoked concept is a very important concept. And that really can translate into agreements, and you can bring that right into the lawyer’s office, and say look, this deal, we have got to be equally yoked! And have the same sorts of responsibilities, you know, investing in a real estate deal together! If one person’s not equally yoked with the other, that’s a recipe for some problems down the road. So yeah, very true. Very true. Excellent advice. My grandmother gave me a great quote before, and she said, Jason, the hardest ship to sail is a partnership.

DAVE ANDERSON: Oh, was she wise. She was very, very wise. You know, there’s—the Bible has so much to offer, and people read it through sometimes a very narrow lens. But there’s so much applicability to any aspect of your life, and business is no different. God did a lot in the marketplace. He did a lot with marketplace leaders, you know? And he wants to see his word alive and useful, and bringing fruit in the marketplace.

JASON HARTMAN: Okay, good. Well, anything else that you just want to kind of wrap things up with? Any other leadership ideas, or tell us about your foundation a little bit?

DAVE ANDERSON: We’ve got a foundation that’s called the Matthew 25:35 Foundation. I have a 28-year-old daughter who runs that for us. And it just makes our business mean more. We channel so much of our profits into the foundation, and we take care of, Jason, over 450 orphans a day over in gypsy camps in the Ukraine, where there’s extreme discrimination and poverty, and sexual trafficking. We work with the homeless, with the imprisoned, and it just is a joyful way for us to give back and honor God with the profits he gives to us in our business. And we continue to look for opportunities to expand God’s reach through that foundation.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Well, keep up the good work out there. And give out your websites, if you would, for your company and your foundation.

DAVE ANDERSON: I sure will. It’s LearnToLead.com. Just spell it out like it sounds. LearnToLead.com. And at that website you’ll find an icon for Matthew 25:35 Foundation, and it’ll take you to its website. It’s got a Facebook page for it as well. You can just go to Learn To Lead and you’ll find everything else you need there. Hundreds of free articles on leadership and sales and training; you can print them off and use them for your own growth, or for meetings. It’s a nice resource. Lots of video clips. My YouTube channel actually has a lot of By The Book business clips, where I give 5 and 7 minute Biblical lessons on running your business by the Book. There are a number of those that can be linked from our website as well, Jason.

JASON HARTMAN: Excellent. Well, good having you on the show, and thank you so much for sharing some of these great tips, Dave. We appreciate it, and God bless you.

DAVE ANDERSON: God bless you as well. Thank you for having me, Jason.

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ANNOUNCER: This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for any individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor Network, Inc. exclusively.

Transcribed by David

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