Dan Martell - July 23, 2018


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

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Cameron Harreld Victor Chang Andy Grove
5 Key Reasons You Might Not Want To Show Pricing On Your Website How To Measure And Increase Your B2B SaaS Sales Velocity

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

194.0

Word count

1,398

Sentence count

57

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

If you ve ever felt frustrated by bad decisions you ve made, specifically around the core areas of your business, the people you hire, the product you decide to move forward on, and the process for how you get things done, I m going to teach you the 3 business questions you need to be asking yourself to help you cut straight to the core of your issues.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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! 0.99
00:07:11.380 Woo! 0.99