let the takeaways begin

i was at Catalyst 11 last week. awesome as always.
last year i was in Kenya and it was the 1st Catalyst conference i had missed since 2006.
i love Catalyst a lot and value it big time because of what it always produces in me.

maybe more on the conference as a whole later. for now, i'm just going to dive right into processing my learnings and takeaways. really for my sake, but if it works out great for you to have some "2nd hand learning & growth" then that's awesome too.

i'm processing Dave Ramsey's talk from day 1 right now. (i don't even feel the need to take time giving my props and gratitude to Dave for all he's done for us... you can just read HERE, HERE, and HERE if you must.)
for me, his talk was probably the 3rd best talk of the week. i love his leadership stuff as much as his $ stuff. and he gave ALL 13,000 of us a FREE copy of his book that just released, Entreleadership. (now i can take mine back to the library.)

he spoke about his organization's 5 core philosophies or core values. he simply called them:

5 Things that Caused us to Win

1  People Matter - There is a high correlation between success and relational IQ.

i see this big time everywhere i look. everything i've ever read or experienced myself backs this up.

opportunities come through people. plain and simple.

it was awesome to hear Dave talk about how amazing they treat their people that work for them. that's why they work so hard to hire the right people who will be around for a long time... because they are going to POUR into them & treat them right.

2  An Incredible Team that Demands Excellence Matters 

Pretty cool reminder that Dave's 1st step in their hiring process is to PRAY. his prayer = "Lord, keep your crazy children away." lol. start praying ahead of time for God to send us the right one. *Because we don't want anyone on our team who is working a J.O.B.

definitely some pretty funny, quotable 1 liners when Dave was talking about this section:
"I don't put up with drama. I'm not running a beauty parlor... I want to GET THINGS DONE!"
He said people tour their place all the time and say "wow. all your employees are such nice people." Dave replies, "That's right... we fire the other ones."

Dave's always good for some brilliant leadership principles + a laugh or 2 in the middle of it. i'll drop the next 3 values on you tomorrow. until then, What do you think of these first 2 so far?