Our Story of Leaving Ramsey Solutions

On April 25th, 2019, my husband Nathan resigned from his job of over 7 years at Ramsey Solutions. In the months since, we’ve struggled over what to say, to whom, and when. We’ve been honest with those who have specifically asked us for our story.

I’ve written a few things publicly. This feels like the right time to share more of our details for those who wanted to hear directly from us, but maybe felt like they couldn’t or shouldn’t ask.

When my husband first resigned, we felt it was appropriate to mostly stay silent. We didn’t want to put our friends who remained at the organization in an awkward situation. However, we have learned that this situation was partially addressed publicly at the company itself. This is one motivation for a public response.

The Beginning of the End

In late 2018/early 2019, Nathan and I independently came across some information that indicated that a team member at the company might not be living in alignment with the core values of the organization. This particular situation had huge ramifications. In many organizations it wouldn’t be a big deal, but in this one, the CEO has blog posts and books that clearly state what this company stands for. And this matter had the potential to impact people we truly cared about.

Nathan and I stayed silent and prayed over it for two months. We hoped somehow something would happen to alleviate our concerns. To the contrary, during that time, our concerns only increased because of situations we observed.

By late February/early March, Nathan and I agreed it was time to bring this up to his immediate supervisor. Nathan followed the procedure his employer had put in place – communicate up the chain. We were well aware the stakes were high. We prayed constantly and only shared this with Nathan’s leader.

This leader listened to Nathan’s concerns. Nathan left the meeting encouraged that he had been taken seriously. His leader said he was praying about his next steps and also affirmed that he had similar concerns prior to this conversation with Nathan. He didn’t feel that it was appropriate to discuss this with Nathan. His own concerns would be communicated up and through appropriate channels just as Nathan was doing with him.

We continued to pray.  A month later, Nathan’s leader unexpectedly announced his resignation. In a final meeting with Nathan, he let Nathan know he had shared Nathan’s concerns with Ramsey leadership. They would be reaching out to Nathan to set up a meeting. That’s how my husband found himself in a meeting with two members of the operating board.

A Meeting with Ramsey Leadership

In that meeting, Nathan listened as a board member offered unsolicited information that confirmed his worst fears. Until that moment, Nathan and I had not had any conversations that confirmed what was most concerning us. This board member may have believed she was reassuring Nathan that although certain information was true, it could be minimized by having happened a long time ago. This perspective didn’t reassure him. The confirmation and then the minimization of it by representatives of the company gave us serious pause.

The timeline offered by the board member still clearly conflicted with positions on core values maintained by the company. In addition, our own observations led us to believe this was not a singular or “long time ago” problem.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Nathan was advised to go home and pray with me. She said we needed to decide if we trusted their handling of this situation. Nathan said she trailed off after that. The message Nathan received was that if he decided he didn’t trust their handling of this, he would need to resign.

That night was agonizing. Nathan and I were heartbroken (I wrote about it here). We wanted this organization to be the place they represented themselves to be. There was no way to reconcile the inconsistency we were seeing between the publicly espoused core values and what Nathan was being told. We felt a deep conviction that the board members had not been completely honest about this situation.

Other Concerns

I want to be clear. If this had been the only red flag we had seen, we might have been able to trust the way the leadership was handling this. It wasn’t the only red flag. As the years passed, especially as they were working toward cash-flowing the new building(s), it felt like the pressure was on to increase revenue. There’s nothing wrong with creating a successful business, but some of the ways they went about it made Nathan uncomfortable, and we wondered if they were crossing some lines. It also felt like they were measuring success more by revenue than by changed lives. To be clear, there is a correlation between those things at a typical for-profit company. However, Ramsey Solutions is openly built on Christian principles, and in all-company meetings, emphasizes their mission to share the Gospel as well as financial hope. There were tactics we felt were inconsistent with these principles.

Best Place to Work Contest

One example is that Nathan and I were both uneasy with the communication to team members when it came to the annual survey they filled out for the Nashville Business Journal “best place to work” contest. One recent year they didn’t win. Nathan reported to me that a board member shared during a team meeting their extreme disappointment that a few employees had given negative feedback on the survey. The message given during the team meeting was if you can’t give good scores on the survey, you shouldn’t be working at the company. It felt like there was no room for disagreement, constructive criticism, or for anyone to have any opinion other than “this is the best place to work with no room for improvement.”

For a place that makes a lot of money teaching others how to run their businesses, this sort of behavior made us uncomfortable.

Handling Criticism

Personally, I had been feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the way Dave would respond to those who disagreed with him. In listening to the daily radio show, I heard a consistent use of mocking and misrepresentation of people who questioned him. And although we had seen some ways he could be incredibly kind and generous, we had also seen signs of narcissism that alarmed us. Our brains were experiencing what I now know to be cognitive dissonance – where what you are being told does not match what you are experiencing and your brain is desperately trying to make sense of it.

We did our best to put our misgivings aside because we still believed in the mission. That’s been one of the most mind-bending parts of this situation. This organization has done great good. There are many who work there who are wonderful people, who believe in helping others, and who love Jesus. Still, we can’t discount the accounts of people who have experienced great pain due to some parts of the organization we believe to be unhealthy. This can be hard for some to reconcile since the organization is big enough that if you’re in a healthy team, you may never see the parts of the company that are not.

One way or another, eventually, God would have moved us on. We just didn’t expect it to happen the way it did. We had been holding on to hope that our misgivings were things that would get better. After Nathan’s meeting with the board members, our hope evaporated.

Nathan’s Resignation

On April 25th, 2019, Nathan sat in a room with those same two executive board members one last time. He was honest. Nathan admitted he didn’t trust that they were handling this situation in keeping with the company’s stated core values. In addition, he shared some other misgivings. In response, the executive board member who had been doing most of the talking in the previous meeting, dismissively suggested that this situation wasn’t the real problem and accused Nathan of losing faith in them long ago.

You know what? She was wrong.

They lost Nathan’s trust. The way she framed that statement gave the impression that this was something Nathan had done wrong. But Nathan’s loss of trust came about due to things he had observed and experienced. That fault does not lie with Nathan.

It’s taken almost a year, but Nathan is no longer willing to carry that false guilt. Losing trust in Ramsey Solutions was not an indictment of Nathan. When someone loses their trust in a healthy organization or leader, that place or person mourns that loss, engages in self-reflection, owns their mistakes, and works to regain that trust. Sadly, that wasn’t our experience.

It was right that Nathan should leave.

It was disappointing that they didn’t desire to regain Nathan’s trust. That is clearly their prerogative. They get to decide the rules of how their company operates.

After Nathan’s Resignation

Later, we discovered that a little over a week after Nathan’s last day at Ramsey Solutions, Dave stood in front of hundreds of current employees and mentioned that some team members had recently left over how the company had handled a situation. Dave indicated that these employees had heard some things they believed to be true. Dave said it was probably a good thing that they quit.

He was partially right. We did hear things we believed to be true. What he failed to communicate was that one of those things we believed to be true had been told to us by an executive board member.

Dave also said that if people didn’t have a backbone to come and ask what was going on, they should quit. This statement is perplexing. Nathan followed the protocols laid out at the organization. He went to his team leader and then met with two board members at their request. 

I’m proud of the courage and backbone Nathan exhibited in this situation.

Dave indicated to the team that the people who left were believing lies.

Nathan never believed any lies.

I’ve spent many tears and prayers trying to make sense of the fact that my husband and his leader had their backbone publicly questioned in front of hundreds of people. I’ve wondered since then if there was even one leader in that room who knew the truth and if they had the courage to say anything. Did they all sit quietly in that team meeting, afraid to say anything, knowing the way Dave was representing Nathan and others was not accurate?

Shortly after this team meeting occurred, an article was posted on the company website under Dave’s name. In it, he lamented about team members who were not loyal: “It’s sad how fast rats respond to an unproven, unconfirmed alarm and leave a ship they think might sink even though there are no signs of actual water.” I later learned this article was a repackaging of things Dave shared in that same staff meeting where he characterized the people who had left as believing lies.

For someone who teaches against gossip, it was ironic that he would stand up in front of the entire team and say such things.

A Catch-22

Ramsey team members considering leaving the organization can be caught in a catch-22. On the one hand, they are encouraged to quit if they can’t support the actions of the company and Dave, himself. Dave even encourages such people to leave, saying he won’t be mad. On the other hand, Dave is willing to characterize people like Nathan who leave under such circumstances as disloyal. This is a no-win situation.

I’m not sure what story you have heard, if any, about Nathan’s departure. When Nathan and I agreed it was time for him to resign, we did so based on the information shared with us by a board member and after praying for discernment.

Since that time, I’ve seen, with my own eyes, documents confirming the truth of the situation that caused us to decide to leave. What we found was inconsistent with the core values of Ramsey Solutions. It was clear confirmation that Nathan’s decision to leave was the right one.

Nathan and I are grateful for the years he was there. We treasure the friendships. The team leader that Nathan had during most of his years there was a blessing. Nathan was part of an amazing team. God has used this organization to do some wonderful things and bring hope to many. It broke our hearts to see some of the rot behind the curtain and that it appeared to go all the way to the top.

Last summer, as I was processing our painful exit, I listened to a podcast from Michael Hyatt. He shared about a difficult ethical situation he navigated while working in the publishing industry. The co-host chimed in to add, “. . . core values look good when they’re hanging on the wall. They are very difficult to enact in a real-life business situation.”

I cried as I listened. “Very difficult” felt like an understatement. Our core values are tested in these situations. In my journal, I wrote down one final quote from the podcast: “Err on the side of integrity, even if it costs you in the short term.”

I have to be honest, telling our story makes me anxious given that Dave’s previous responses to criticism have allegedly included firing people, calling people’s pastors, shaming people from the stage (this shaming being something Nathan observed), and even suing them. We have prayed over this situation and asked others to pray with us. After seeking the Lord, just as we did in Nathan’s decision to leave, we feel like the time is right to speak.

(edited to add this note on 1/13/21: Our fears turned out to be well-founded. In May of 2020, we were sent a C&D from the RS team that a lawyer we spoke with described as the legal equivalent of a bully saying, “Nice bike you have there. It would be a pity if something were to happen to it.” They threatened us with legal action and followed that up by setting up a meeting between the RS CTO and the leadership at my husband’s new place of employment. During that same time period, the RS leadership also gathered many of the current employees together to, once again, malign us.)

Over the years of Nathan’s employment there, he would regularly hear Dave talk about how God had blessed them. Dave added that if God’s blessing ever left, it wouldn’t be worth keeping the business open. How do we know if a company or a person is specifically being blessed by God? Would we even recognize it if God’s blessing left? I don’t know the answer, but over the last year, God has gently turned our focus from chasing a blessing to chasing Jesus. One of the ways that played out was in our decision to leave Ramsey Solutions. We are grateful for the way God used Nathan’s time there even though it ended painfully. And we are grateful for a faithful God who goes before us as we seek to continue to honor him wherever He may lead us.

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Related: Is Dave Ramsey’s empire the ‘best place to work in America’? Say no and you’re out (religionnews.com)