Dan Martell - July 23, 2018


3 Great Business Questions To Cut To The Core Of Your Issues


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

193.99602

Word Count

1,398

Sentence Count

57

Misogynist Sentences

2


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 Hi there, I'm Dan Martell, technology entrepreneur,
00:00:02.040 investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:03.880 And in this video, I'm gonna teach you
00:00:05.080 the three business questions you need to be asking yourself
00:00:08.400 to help you cut straight to the core of your issues.
00:00:11.640 And be sure to stay at the end where I'm gonna tell you
00:00:12.920 how to get my business playbook strategy,
00:00:15.440 which is gonna help you document, delegate,
00:00:18.080 and disconnect you from the areas of the business
00:00:20.760 that are sucking the most energy out of you.
00:00:30.000 So if you've ever felt frustrated by bad decisions you've made,
00:00:38.580 specifically around these core areas, the people you hire,
00:00:42.080 the product you decide to move forward on,
00:00:44.640 the kind of the innovation in your business,
00:00:46.520 or even the process for how you get things done,
00:00:49.980 I'm going to teach you a different framework.
00:00:51.900 It's what I call growth stacking,
00:00:53.580 and it's all about doing the right things in the right order
00:00:56.640 or sequencing equals success.
00:00:59.000 Now to do that you need to be asking yourself these questions.
00:01:02.440 I mean I've learned it because I've read over a thousand
00:01:05.000 business books and over the years I've realized that the
00:01:08.340 right question at the right time is going to give you clarity
00:01:11.740 on specifically the next step you need to be taking in your
00:01:13.980 business.
00:01:14.680 Here are the three that I feel have added the most value to
00:01:17.720 my thinking.
00:01:19.120 One, scale.
00:01:20.680 The tenfold test.
00:01:22.800 You know I learned this strategy reading in a really great
00:01:25.200 book I highly recommend called Extreme Revenue Growth by
00:01:27.620 Victor Chang and in the book he talks about, you know,
00:01:31.120 scaling and growing companies and his question is,
00:01:33.220 if we 10x the business, grew the business by tenfold,
00:01:36.460 what area would break first or most?
00:01:40.160 And that is such a great question to just get you clear
00:01:43.400 on where you should be investing your time.
00:01:45.380 Is it on lead generation?
00:01:46.540 Is it on lead nurture?
00:01:47.480 Is it on sales?
00:01:48.380 Is it on customer success?
00:01:50.040 Is it on, you know, other aspects, partnerships, et cetera?
00:01:53.220 If you ask yourself how do I increase the throughput of the
00:01:57.920 business and look at what would break by making those decisions
00:02:01.660 that'll give you the clear path to prioritizing those solutions.
00:02:07.160 Two, strategy, the new owner question.
00:02:10.680 You know this is an incredible question that I've asked many of
00:02:14.440 my coaching clients to just get really clear on what needs to
00:02:16.940 change in their business and I got it from a guy named Andy
00:02:19.640 Grove who was the founder of Intel.
00:02:21.280 He wrote a book called High Output Management.
00:02:24.120 It's very kind of underground.
00:02:28.380 A lot of the tech founders have read it
00:02:30.020 because it's super nerdy around systems and processes.
00:02:32.500 I absolutely love it.
00:02:33.820 But in there he talks about the concept
00:02:37.000 of new management coming in and what would they change.
00:02:39.500 And he always said this with his leadership team
00:02:41.500 and said like, if somebody came in as CEO, his spot,
00:02:44.900 took my role, what's the first decision they would make?
00:02:47.640 So my question to you, to ask in your business,
00:02:50.300 If somebody bought your business tomorrow,
00:02:52.360 what's the first thing they would change?
00:02:54.340 Because I think what happens is as we grow our business,
00:02:57.340 it comes with a lot of historic baggage, you know,
00:03:00.840 some things that we want to keep for whatever reason.
00:03:05.120 It could be because we want to honor the person that came
00:03:07.580 before in our business, we want to honor our customer that's
00:03:09.680 been with us for 10 years, et cetera.
00:03:11.820 But we know that if somebody came in starting from scratch
00:03:14.960 and their whole focus was to improve the economics of the
00:03:17.260 business, they would make a different set of decisions.
00:03:19.720 And I'm not saying you have to make those,
00:03:21.960 but asking that question's gonna help you get really clear
00:03:25.360 on the strategic nature of your business and your scaling.
00:03:29.260 And to me, it's somebody bought my business,
00:03:31.260 what's the first decision or change
00:03:32.500 they would make in the company?
00:03:34.040 And if you ask everybody on your leadership team
00:03:36.140 that same question, getting clear on those,
00:03:38.100 it'll help you kind of fast track and prioritize
00:03:40.900 your next quarter's strategies.
00:03:43.480 Three, people, the hire back question.
00:03:46.740 You know, I first saw this asked by an incredible guy
00:03:50.840 named Cameron Harreld, wrote a bunch of books,
00:03:52.480 was COO at 1-800-GOT-JUNK,
00:03:54.280 is an incredible business coach, executive coach, COO.
00:03:56.880 He really focused on the COO side of the business,
00:04:00.220 the number two.
00:04:01.620 Check out his podcast, great stuff.
00:04:03.020 But he asked the audience, a bunch of entrepreneurs,
00:04:04.860 and he said, hey, let's just run through this experiment.
00:04:07.200 I'm probably butchering his story, but the essence is this.
00:04:10.000 If you had to lay everybody off in your business
00:04:12.400 for three months, for whatever reason,
00:04:14.540 just call it a downturn,
00:04:16.000 call it a temporary lapse of insanity, it doesn't matter.
00:04:18.400 Everybody's laid off for three months and then you got back
00:04:21.500 your, let's call it the salary cap, your capital to hire
00:04:26.280 people back.
00:04:28.040 Of those people that you let go,
00:04:29.380 how many would you enthusiastically hire back?
00:04:33.080 And the answer to that question will give you a ton of guidance
00:04:37.620 today on the people side of your business.
00:04:39.860 And you probably have folks that you've been holding on to
00:04:42.820 that aren't serving you and getting you to the next level
00:04:45.200 where you need to go in your business.
00:04:46.940 And by asking that question, it really gets you clear.
00:04:49.080 And if you're having a hard time with the answer,
00:04:50.440 ask your team.
00:04:51.280 Hey, if we laid off everybody,
00:04:53.080 who would we enthusiastically hire back?
00:04:55.140 Those names should be obviously front-loaded
00:04:57.380 for maybe promotions and management structure.
00:04:59.420 And the ones that don't make that list,
00:05:01.220 then just figure out a transition plan.
00:05:02.960 Because here's what I also believe is those folks
00:05:05.460 in the right company will be superstars
00:05:07.920 and you are holding them back from realizing that
00:05:11.760 because you don't want to go through the pain
00:05:13.820 of either hurting their feelings and or creating a void
00:05:17.080 in your business so I love that question of three months,
00:05:20.500 they go away but you can hire them back.
00:05:22.200 Who would you enthusiastically do it?
00:05:23.800 Thanks, Cameron, for that question but it is very powerful
00:05:27.500 and to get you clear on the people side of the business.
00:05:29.540 Here's a bonus tip just in regards to structuring your team
00:05:33.240 and hires, one is as a leader you should never have more than
00:05:37.380 seven direct reports so if you're about the million dollar
00:05:40.820 range right now, you probably have a dozen people reporting
00:05:42.640 to you, you need to change that.
00:05:44.200 Have seven max, and here's the key is when you hire your first
00:05:48.020 seven employees, hire people that can manage other folks
00:05:51.820 because as you grow, you're not gonna want to have to teach
00:05:55.580 them or have them just be sole contributors.
00:05:58.660 You want people that you can build teams underneath to scale
00:06:02.400 the company, especially if you're like, I deal with companies
00:06:04.760 that are growing very fast, 30% month over month, compounded.
00:06:08.600 If you miss that nuance, seven direct reports and making sure
00:06:12.100 that those people can manage other folks,
00:06:13.800 it's gonna make it really hard for you to grow your business.
00:06:16.780 So quick recap.
00:06:18.100 One, scale, the tenfold test question.
00:06:21.680 Two, strategy, the new owner question.
00:06:24.740 Three, people, the hire back question.
00:06:27.840 As I mentioned at the beginning, I wanna share with you
00:06:29.560 an incredible resource called the Business Playbook.
00:06:32.480 It is my process for documenting, delegating,
00:06:36.120 and disconnecting from the areas of my business
00:06:38.420 that don't support me.
00:06:39.460 You can click the link below this video
00:06:41.260 to download the templates and the structure that I've created.
00:06:44.900 I use Google Docs so it's available to anybody for free
00:06:47.960 and you can just copy that, implement it in your business
00:06:50.400 and get incredible results.
00:06:51.400 So click the link and download that.
00:06:53.400 And if you like this video be sure to click the like button,
00:06:56.200 subscribe to my channel and leave a comment and let me know
00:06:59.220 what other questions you've come across over the years to help
00:07:01.720 you get clear on challenges in your business.
00:07:04.480 I'd love to hear from you below in the questions.
00:07:07.360 I really appreciate you being here and I'll see you in the
00:07:09.380 next video.
00:07:10.380 Woo!
00:07:11.380 Woo!