Dan Martell - September 21, 2015


How To Be A CEO： What Should the CEO's Day Look Like？


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

235.9683

Word Count

1,400

Sentence Count

53


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.480 What should the day of a CEO look like?
00:00:02.680 You know, I get asked this all the time
00:00:04.080 ever since starting my companies at 17 years old.
00:00:06.800 You know, when I was first starting,
00:00:07.920 it was kind of chaotic, you know,
00:00:09.360 where every day I woke up and I just kind of
00:00:11.680 worked on the most pressing issues
00:00:13.280 and then kept going and going and then,
00:00:15.120 you know, over the years, really when I was about 24
00:00:17.760 and I started a company called Spheric Technologies
00:00:19.440 and I had a big team, I had to change the way that I worked.
00:00:22.400 I had to start asking myself,
00:00:23.920 what should I be doing with my day?
00:00:25.440 What are the things that are important to me
00:00:27.640 that other people, that I need to work on,
00:00:30.140 but other people can support me on and help me,
00:00:31.920 and that's where I came up with this framework.
00:00:33.500 I've talked to many, many CEO coaches.
00:00:36.560 I've read hundreds of books over the years,
00:00:38.600 and what I want to share with you guys is my framework
00:00:40.380 for thinking about what should the day of a CEO look like.
00:00:43.500 The first thing is every CEO out there,
00:00:46.320 every management team should start with the daily standup.
00:00:48.460 You know, some people call them huddles,
00:00:50.160 but to me, I took the idea from agile development.
00:00:52.860 It's a development process.
00:00:54.080 Daily standups, no more than one to two minute per person,
00:00:57.320 and really it's just answering three questions.
00:00:59.200 One, what did you do yesterday?
00:01:01.160 Two, what are you doing today?
00:01:02.780 And then three, are you blocked or are you stuck?
00:01:05.600 Is there anything that you can't complete
00:01:08.100 that somebody else can help you with?
00:01:09.160 And that to me is the first, that should happen
00:01:11.680 first thing in the morning with your whole team,
00:01:13.480 real quick, 15 minutes max.
00:01:15.320 And the key is to not make it turn into a meeting
00:01:18.260 where you're discussing all the different aspects.
00:01:19.940 You're just letting people voice yesterday, today,
00:01:22.320 and block, and then as a CEO, after the fact,
00:01:24.840 if you'd like to, you can kind of unblock those challenges
00:01:27.160 or follow with people specifically.
00:01:28.840 So that is the number one thing,
00:01:30.560 a daily standup meeting with your whole team.
00:01:32.840 Two is making sure that 50% of your schedule is open.
00:01:37.400 Now a lot of you guys hear me and you're like,
00:01:39.720 there's no way, Dan, that I could possibly
00:01:42.300 get 50% of my schedule open.
00:01:43.960 Trust me, when I was building Spheric, I get it.
00:01:46.660 For two years, my calendar was 100 hours a week,
00:01:50.060 fully scheduled, working, talking to customers,
00:01:52.740 and I didn't see, there was no possible way
00:01:54.940 that I could make it work, but I'm gonna challenge you
00:01:56.860 because I really think that if you adopt that mindset
00:01:59.440 and you ask yourself 50% of my calendar not scheduled,
00:02:02.800 you will start looking at opportunities to outsource,
00:02:05.580 to out-task, to have people support you,
00:02:07.840 to delegate, to hire new employees,
00:02:09.480 but really you need to free up that time
00:02:11.220 so you can do the other aspects on this list.
00:02:13.660 So the third thing I'm gonna share with you guys
00:02:15.220 that a CEO does every day is any major project
00:02:19.040 that they have accountability to,
00:02:20.640 that they have to create, needs to be in their calendar.
00:02:23.620 And I can't tell you how important that is.
00:02:25.560 If you're working on a new marketing strategy
00:02:27.600 or sales process or maybe a new HR program
00:02:31.580 to help kind of create core values for your teams,
00:02:33.620 whatever the project may be, it has to be in your calendar.
00:02:36.440 If not, life will just take over.
00:02:38.520 You will be busy, you will never get it done
00:02:40.460 and the business won't grow.
00:02:41.820 I mean, to me, that is, those projects
00:02:44.420 that should be in your calendar are the ones
00:02:46.100 that are really gonna have a material impact
00:02:48.440 on your business and your growth.
00:02:49.760 So I'm gonna challenge you guys,
00:02:50.960 make sure that A, you keep first the number two,
00:02:53.540 50% of your calendar open
00:02:55.200 And then also with the rest of the time,
00:02:56.580 if you have major projects, schedule them in there.
00:02:59.100 And I do 90 minute chunks if that helps you
00:03:00.860 kind of figure out the block time, I call it,
00:03:02.820 to get those projects done.
00:03:04.480 The fourth thing that you should be doing
00:03:06.360 every day as a CEO, to me it's really simple.
00:03:08.880 It's aligning, talking to your employees
00:03:11.300 and aligning their work with the purpose of the business.
00:03:14.300 You know, many times I've suggested
00:03:15.620 to first time entrepreneurs that they should be
00:03:17.520 spending a lot of their time sharing their story,
00:03:19.840 their why, their purpose of their business,
00:03:22.160 most of the time.
00:03:23.440 You know, and they go, well why do I have to keep
00:03:24.680 repeating myself, trust me, you know.
00:03:27.260 People forget, they get in these funks,
00:03:29.800 they don't understand why what they're working on
00:03:32.780 is gonna be aligning to the bigger purpose
00:03:34.460 and that's what you should be doing.
00:03:35.420 You should be going around to your team and saying,
00:03:36.820 hey, you know that interface you're designing right now?
00:03:39.280 That's gonna allow us to do X, Y, and Z
00:03:40.940 and that's gonna allow us to achieve this big results
00:03:43.480 that we've all agreed upon.
00:03:44.760 So that to me is kind of the forced thing
00:03:47.260 that in a business every day the CEO should be working on
00:03:50.220 is meeting with their team and really trying to explain
00:03:52.620 to them how their work, their specific work
00:03:54.560 is gonna have an impact on the purpose and the mission
00:03:57.120 and the vision of the business.
00:03:58.240 So that's number four.
00:03:59.300 Number five, and I got this from
00:04:02.060 so many amazing books I've read.
00:04:04.040 You know, a great example is Sam Walton from Walmart.
00:04:07.500 He pretty much spent four days a week
00:04:09.900 inside of his competitors' shops
00:04:12.660 or talking with customers.
00:04:14.400 And then that one day, the Friday,
00:04:16.300 they would all come together
00:04:17.600 and they would share what they've learned
00:04:19.160 with the rest of the team, execute on those,
00:04:21.160 and then do the same thing the next week.
00:04:22.740 So number five is talking with your customers.
00:04:25.280 If you have not picked up the phone recently,
00:04:27.660 not to try to sell them, not to try to get feedback
00:04:30.740 on how well of a service you guys have been delivering,
00:04:32.880 but just talking to your customers,
00:04:34.420 asking them questions like,
00:04:35.680 what are some of the big trends going on
00:04:36.920 in your industry right now?
00:04:38.080 Where do you see some of your biggest challenges
00:04:39.680 and opportunities for growth?
00:04:41.380 You know, really just trying to understand
00:04:42.700 where their business is, because to me,
00:04:44.600 that is where innovation lies.
00:04:45.880 That's where growth opportunities lies,
00:04:47.540 and that's where building an excellent business for you,
00:04:50.240 by understanding their challenges
00:04:51.720 and bringing those into your business,
00:04:53.400 and maybe offering solutions
00:04:54.900 will really help you grow your business.
00:04:56.260 So to me, again, I want to recap the five.
00:04:58.300 The five are very simple.
00:04:59.620 One, you need to make sure that you're doing daily stand-ups.
00:05:02.460 Two, you need to ensure that 50% of your schedule is open
00:05:06.420 to allow you to do other strategic work.
00:05:08.600 Three, if you have major projects,
00:05:10.660 make sure they're scheduled in your calendar.
00:05:12.880 Four, talking to your customers to ensure that the work,
00:05:15.960 or to your team to make sure that the work
00:05:17.600 they're working on is aligned,
00:05:19.020 and you explain to them how these things are aligned
00:05:21.000 with the purpose of your business.
00:05:22.540 And then five, talking with your customers
00:05:24.880 and trying to understand not only how good of a job
00:05:27.060 you guys have been doing for them,
00:05:28.440 but the strategy and the purpose for their business.
00:05:30.500 Because to me, understanding where your customers are going
00:05:32.760 will give you some really clear indication
00:05:34.720 on what things you need to be working on.
00:05:36.120 So I wanna thank you guys for watching this video.
00:05:38.060 I wanna ask you guys to please like the video
00:05:40.480 and comment, leave a comment below.
00:05:42.060 And let me know what are you doing in your business today
00:05:44.220 or what kind of the five things that I talked about,
00:05:46.460 which one was the most aha that you're like,
00:05:48.420 man, I gotta work on that.
00:05:49.280 Leave a comment below, I'd love to hear from you.
00:05:50.800 I wanna challenge you guys all to live a bigger business
00:05:53.360 and a bigger life, and I'll see you next Monday.