Personal finance expert Dave Ramsey is best known for his popular radio commercial and motivational tool. He was once a Nashville kid with good energy and entrepreneurship who learned to try and fail and then try again.

Ramsey told The Pursuit with John Rich how he first learned about business and entrepreneurship at the age of 12 by standing behind a lawnmower on charges of drug trafficking.

As Ramsey’s parents taught him, the reward doesn’t come without hard work. Or as his philosophy is: “Get up, leave the cave, kill something and drag it home. Nobody will do it for you.”

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“Sometimes, looking for him, there is are Moments when it’s fun and sometimes it’s not, “he said.” It’s part of the equation … there’s just no substitute for activity and hard work. “

But just because hard work is done doesn’t always mean that the result is what is expected.

“You can work hard and still fail,” he said. “I did that myself. But this activity formula is the only possible route to your best possible life.”

In 1978, the year Ramsey turned 18, he passed his real estate license to sell his first home in Antioch, Tennessee just a week later. The young realtor continued to work in real estate throughout his four years of college and then invested in real estate as a recent graduate and newlywed man.

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When Ramsey was 27 years old, buying and selling real estate brought him to net worth nearly $ 4 million. But he “made it stupid”.

“I borrowed money for everything,” he said. “I was the opposite of who I am now. I’ve built a house of cards. It was Jenga … And with that began two and a half years of hell in which we lost everything. “

Ramsey credits his relationship with God for recovering from his feet after being advised at a sales conference that learning about God and learning how to treat people would lead to long-term success.

“So I came home and told my wife we ​​were going to church and she said, ‘Who are you and what did you do to my husband?'” He laughed. “Because I was one hell of a beer-drinking character and she knew it.”

“The Ramsey Show” was recorded on the radio in 1992 on a Nashville station and has now expanded to 18 million weekly listeners. Ramsey Solutions’ financial advisory service today employs thousands of people and offers endless money management tools.

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Ramsey revealed that the three attributes of becoming an active member of the Ramsey team are hungry, humble, and smart. He described humility in business as putting the spotlight on someone else when you’re successful.

During the Nashville kid’s rise to the top, Ramsey stated that the American right to be happy is “everything.”

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“It gives me the right to stand up and try to fail because success has no dignity unless you have skinned your knees and hands before falling,” he said. “To pursue this right – it is an essential freedom for human dignity.”