Dan Martell - How to Build $1M Business That Runs Itself

00:00:00.000 I went from hating the place I worked at to not only changing the whole culture and loving the

00:00:05.620 place but working my way out of being involved or running the business and it continues to grow

00:00:10.920 every month and make more money than when I was actually CEO. I want to share the three things

00:00:15.620 that changed everything for me. So first thing is I want you guys to write this down is know their

00:00:22.200 dreams. Know their dreams. Okay because that doesn't matter what stage you're at you're about

00:00:27.400 to hire your first person or you've got a team of on-site coach people that have you know 14,000

00:00:32.380 employees the key is for the people that report to you you need to know their dreams because here's

00:00:37.740 what I've learned everybody want to hire great people yes yes perfect well great people need to

00:00:45.020 be able to see that they can create their dreams within yours so the rule is that if you don't have

00:00:50.180 a vision big enough for your team's dreams and goals to fit inside of you're thinking too small

00:00:54.560 write that down draw a circle you can say vision my vision my team's vision and goals inside of

00:01:02.600 that because you won't be able to attract and retain top talent if you don't have that

00:01:07.460 so my rule is very simple this is this is your prescription this is my invitation for you to

00:01:13.780 consider is every person you interview I just interviewed a bunch of people yesterday for a

00:01:19.400 bunch of cool positions in my life and every interview I always end with the same thing

00:01:23.520 pretend we can't work together so we take that option off the table okay can't

00:01:27.720 hurt my feelings in five years from now you wake up and magically you wave a

00:01:33.780 magic wand and you're living your perfect life where are you living what

00:01:39.280 are you doing how much money are you making who are you hanging out with feel

00:01:44.020 free to brag to dream I'm all for it for example one of the ladies I 0.87

00:01:50.100 interviewed yesterday for she's going to be the assistant to my assistant sounds crazy very like

00:01:55.700 if you don't think if you've never considered that a if you don't have an assistant an executive

00:01:59.700 assistance key it's what my book's all about really but we needed to hire her another because 1.00

00:02:04.420 she's that busy and what was cool is she was from brazil and i heard she said her two goals

00:02:10.020 or dreams are one she wants to live in florida on the beach currently she lives in brazil

00:02:15.780 okay put that in the back of my mind okay she wants to live in brazil got it um number two 1.00

00:02:21.940 she wants to have a business okay selling patterns on the internet do you guys know what those are

00:02:28.260 like pattern design people okay well good i didn't either it turns out i actually coach one of the

00:02:36.180 top women her name is bonnie christie and this is how niche you can be as a coach she teaches 0.99

00:02:41.300 people how to create designs and patterns that then companies buy for t-shirts fabrics wallpapers

00:02:49.380 that kind of stuff now does that make sense perfect so i'm all excited because a i have

00:02:54.580 an immigration lawyer i have a real estate agent in florida and i know the top person in the world

00:02:59.060 i don't tell her this i now know that i can help her achieve her dreams and goals does that make

00:03:03.140 sense so here's the key and why it's so important is that you need to be able to map their desires

00:03:10.900 to your desires see all of us want people to show up for us and i think that's actually dumb because

00:03:18.740 it's better for them to be selfishly inherently wanting to drive towards their goals not ours

00:03:24.340 as long as we show them how they're aligned i'm telling this stuff is going to change the game

00:03:29.620 for if whatever business you're in this is the stuff that will change the way you because i just

00:03:35.460 think most entrepreneurs end up building companies they grow to hate is that lame for some of you

00:03:40.420 guys it's not the economy it takes us the business it's because we ended up

00:03:43.660 building the business in a way that we grew to hate as an example I do this

00:03:51.220 exercise with everybody my director ports I got a guy on my team named Sam

00:03:54.640 he's very important part of my new media companies my creative director he's my

00:03:58.000 business partner I've been working with him for six years and he's just showed

00:04:01.600 up every day to help me create my vision so I wanted to I wanted to bless him up

00:04:09.400 a little bit he's the kind of guy that every time i'd say hey man i need you to be rich he's like

00:04:14.920 or i'm here to learn not earn super great dude every time i and i'd say well i want to give you

00:04:21.640 more money he said give it to the team right and he's so financially responsible when i was like

00:04:27.160 hey man i know your dream is to do all these cool things or whatever you should do that instead he

00:04:32.200 decides to buy a house he's 22 years old buys his first house million dollar home at 22.

00:04:38.080 He'd been saving since he was 15.

00:04:40.040 He's like crazy.

00:04:42.740 So I had the opportunity to do what I love best.

00:04:46.660 And about two weeks ago, we land back home.

00:04:49.720 He's with me.

00:04:50.400 He's always with me.

00:04:52.440 And I lie to him and I tell him, I got to go stop in at the dealership to go look at some cars.

00:04:58.320 and as we're walking through the dealership I I look over and I see that

00:05:05.340 he sees his dream car a Porsche GT4 oh yeah you guys know what I'm talking

00:05:13.080 about white we called it project white monster as a team we all got involved in 0.93

00:05:22.380 it. And we walk around the corner, and he sees it. And I'm so nervous. I'm like, damn, I'm so

00:05:30.740 nervous. I had some stuff I want to say. I want to surprise him. And he's looking at me, and he's 0.97

00:05:36.580 looking at the card, and he's looking at me. And I said, dude, isn't that on your phone? Because

00:05:41.680 that's one of the things I teach people. If you want to know what your team's dreams are, help

00:05:44.680 them develop it, and then make them put a wallpaper and put it on their phone. And I said, pull out

00:05:48.600 your phone. He pulls out his phone. It's the exact same car. Oh, I know. I said, that's crazy, man.

00:05:54.840 He's like, that's so nuts. And we're standing there and I get a little teary-eyed and I just

00:06:07.380 tell him how much he means to me. And I pretty much say, I know you wouldn't do this for yourself.

00:06:14.080 so I did

00:06:16.220 and I pull out the keys

00:06:18.320 and I give it to him

00:06:19.320 thank you

00:06:22.320 and

00:06:28.400 it was so much fun

00:06:31.940 he let me drive it the next day

00:06:33.320 I showed him what the car could do

00:06:34.780 I think he's gone through 50 tanks of gas

00:06:38.340 and two sets of tires since then

00:06:39.660 two weeks

00:06:40.300 but that's just an example

00:06:43.460 like and look he this is not so I don't buy people cars all the time okay everybody the

00:06:49.200 next day when I went to work everybody showed me their phones got a g-wag just like guys calm down

00:06:56.920 you're not Sam like let's just let's just get clear and uh but I just think step one it's

00:07:03.600 important to know your team's dreams and goals so can you guys make me a commitment that if you have

00:07:07.280 anybody on your team especially if they report to you can you help them develop their five-year

00:07:11.460 dreams and goals because they won't know okay help them yeah clap that up for your team

00:07:16.580 i'm pouring into you so you can pour into them step two second thing we had to fix we had to

00:07:24.100 craft the culture write that down craft the culture here's how we crafted the culture

00:07:31.860 i want to remind you all that this business is your business and unfortunately some of us forget

00:07:40.180 that and because we want to be accommodating we make accommodations and honestly they're not even

00:07:46.500 accommodations you lower your expectations for greatness from other people or another way to

00:07:51.220 say it is you lower your standards of what you expect of other people and the challenge with

00:07:56.260 that is that you end up coming to work at a company that you eventually will fall out of

00:08:02.740 love with like i did and some of you guys have gone through this once twice or thrice

00:08:07.140 here's what i'm going to remind you it's your business and if you don't love the company

00:08:13.480 it's at risk for everybody at the company so that's why i always tell team members at the

00:08:18.920 end of the day you need to make sure that the person who's at the head of the table the ceo

00:08:22.660 that you support them because to the degree they want to show up and drive every day

00:08:26.800 if they're a good person you're dependent on them and i learned this big idea because some

00:08:34.240 of you guys are allowing team members on your team to be a certain way or

00:08:38.080 underperform or whatever it is is that you teach people how to treat you write

00:08:42.580 that down you teach people how to treat you people will only rise to the level

00:08:49.420 of your expectations of them if you don't hold them accountable for it it's

00:08:52.960 really tough now the key with that is that you have to go first so if you ask

00:08:58.720 them to show up on time and you're always late for meetings they're not

00:09:01.840 going to listen to you if you ask them to be growth minded but you haven't changed and evolved

00:09:06.460 in front of them in a meaningful way that they can see they're not going to be growth minded

00:09:09.980 and the people that are that that are good because people meet my team and they go how do I find a

00:09:14.940 Sam I go the truth is is unfortunately I don't know you well but he probably wouldn't work for

00:09:19.360 you it's just true because if I act like some of the stuff I see my clients that I coach act like

00:09:28.860 my team would run. They don't need to work for me. They get job offers every day. They can go

00:09:34.980 work anywhere else. Does that make sense? So here's the deal. You have to be good enough for

00:09:40.820 the good people. You've got to be good enough for the good people. And some of you guys are

00:09:45.960 frustrated with people that aren't good because you're not good enough yet. So that's the good

00:09:50.560 news is, you know, just like in that moment, I had to develop. I had to grow or I had to deal

00:09:54.860 with what I ended up with. Here was the exercise that we went through. First off, I reset my values

00:10:01.700 at the company based on what I needed. So we went away from this lovey-dovey family culture

00:10:07.300 that Karen built. You can just imagine what kind of culture a Karen would create. And here it was

00:10:13.700 crazy. She did it on her own. I woke up one day and realized that she put candidates forward,

00:10:20.120 not because they were the best but because she wanted them on the team so I will tell you and

00:10:25.560 hopefully you guys got the point whoever's running your HR department they need to be a business

00:10:29.640 partner they need to be somebody you trust you need to audit their process because when I found

00:10:34.040 that out I could only blame one person this guy right here now once we figured out what the values

00:10:40.040 were then we had to reset them with the whole team and say this is what we're about we're about high

00:10:44.840 performance teams and the whole like family vibe that's not going to work

00:10:50.080 anymore at the end of the day every person shows up and they demonstrate

00:10:53.780 through their actions that they are here to win we win championships that was the

00:10:58.460 new cultural mantra we're championship winners the way we did that is we took

00:11:06.080 an XY axis everybody just draw big X and Y you guys got that okay left side

00:11:14.540 effective how effective are they the bottom do they embrace the values okay

00:11:22.300 so now you get a quadrant you got effectiveness and values and then I made

00:11:27.980 everybody left on the team to plot every person that they thought and we argued

00:11:33.940 over it so that makes sense to some people right this person rocks I don't

00:11:37.580 really agree let's put them in the middle or it's like this person bleeds 0.90

00:11:41.060 our values is like really tell me how right and here's the deal people in the top right quadrant

00:11:47.060 these are people they're very effective and embrace your values awesome figure out how to give them

00:11:51.700 compensation structure that keeps them around those i call that the golden handcuff quadrant

00:11:56.420 the people that have high effectiveness low values okay cancer get them off your team

00:12:04.580 cancer get them off your team people that have high values low effectiveness you got to find a

00:12:10.500 different seat on the bus okay you're going to write this stuff down what did he say again

00:12:16.100 the seat on the bus means you coach them up or you coach them out they may not be able to stay but

00:12:20.180 you got at least give them another shot on a different spot on the the because they might

00:12:23.300 be in the wrong seat the people that are obviously low effectiveness and low values you had 60 days

00:12:29.780 to get them off the team and that's just the way we did it that's called the people analyzer if

00:12:35.300 you're struggling you have a bigger team it's a beautiful way to look at it or if you're working

00:12:39.460 with another leader and you have people that are underperforming it's a it's a really great tool to

00:12:44.020 get on the same page about kind of where they think people are on the team is that awesome yes

00:12:49.540 it's powerful it'll just make that whole process easier so you had to i had to craft the culture

00:12:55.460 here's the question okay some of you guys are like i like everybody i'm like okay cool

00:13:01.540 let's pretend that i paid and forced you to put all your employees on vacation for six months

00:13:08.500 they're going to bali on dan cool they're gone to bali you don't have to work they're gone

00:13:15.540 the question i would then ask you out of all those people could be one person could be 15

00:13:18.900 people could be a thousand people how many of those people would you enthusiastically rehire

00:13:24.820 in six months

00:13:28.180 if you don't have one or two names to come to mind then you probably got to go find some other people

00:13:33.440 See, you know what sentence has never been said in the English language?

00:13:37.480 I wish I would have never listened to my gut.

00:13:41.560 Isn't that funny?

00:13:42.800 That sentence has never been said in the history of humanity.

00:13:45.620 I wish I would not have listened to my gut.

00:13:48.360 You already know.

00:13:49.500 You know if there are people that you want around or not,

00:13:51.820 and you just got to know that and then just make a decision to transition them.

00:13:55.020 I don't call it firing.

00:13:55.920 It's transition them because I think it's selfish to keep them around

00:13:58.380 because you know they'll never be great with you,

00:14:00.900 and you're stopping them from being great on another team let them go cool that's number two

00:14:07.800 are you guys loving this yes or yes all right I'm baring my soul I'm giving you the best of the best

00:14:12.500 of the best third thing is this simple concept that will change everything from a leadership

00:14:19.480 point of view for you and how you build high-performing teams write this one down we build

00:14:25.480 the people the people build the business we build the people the people build the business

00:14:30.980 one day I was talking to one of my clients and he was a bit negative that day a little

00:14:36.980 frustrated with his team and he was going off about this and that and I was like okay Mr. Negative

00:14:42.620 let's do this I want you to write down all the things that you're telling me are frustrating

00:14:50.840 you about your team like just be detailed he's like what are you talking about I said like write

00:14:53.900 down. What did you just say to me? He's like, well, my team doesn't collaborate in our meetings when

00:14:57.080 we're doing like strategy stuff. Cool. What else? I just don't feel like they are, you know, really in

00:15:03.700 it part of the mission. Cool. What else? Some of them don't know how to manage their freaking time.

00:15:09.280 Cool. What else? And he made a list. Okay. This is the exercise you guys are all going to have to do. 0.91

00:15:13.580 So just take notes. So we made a list of all the things that frustrated him. And then I said, okay,

00:15:19.100 you got that list there's like 13 things on there he's like yeah i said okay now show me where you

00:15:24.200 have a playbook teaching them how to do that first one well i mean thank you clap it up that's

00:15:31.780 actually like that'll change your life because i believe if we have issues in our business we

00:15:38.860 either have a process problem or a people problem but i can't immediately go to people until i see

00:15:43.600 if i have a process problem so once he he heard that he's like well okay dan i have nothing for

00:15:48.940 any of this i said cool good news is now we have your hit list rank them by things that frustrate

00:15:55.180 you the most and every week for the next 13 weeks you're going to create a training for 60 minutes

00:16:01.420 and you're going to teach your team how you do that thing how do you collaborate in a meeting

00:16:07.340 what information do you prep for how do you let people ideate how do you prioritize the ideas that

00:16:12.700 come up how do you manage your time have you ever taught your team how you are so productive he's

00:16:17.260 like no i said cool now we're going to create it because my philosophy since then this is what i

00:16:24.380 missed is that i stopped as a ceo training my team and it was such a missed opportunity

00:16:32.220 i didn't ask my leaders to do it i didn't make sure it was being done yeah we had an unlimited

00:16:37.580 budget for education and you can have a library and book clubs and all that crazy stuff but at

00:16:42.780 the end of the day it's kind of awesome because what you're doing is saying here are the weak

00:16:47.180 parts of my business and my team boom boom boom and every week you can literally see light bulbs

00:16:53.740 get turned on and within 13 weeks his business was on fire and here's here's you guys want to

00:17:01.740 know the secret secret yeah no you don't all right do you want to know the secret secret

00:17:08.860 all right record the sessions put it into the employee handbook and all new employees have to

00:17:14.300 go into it and watch them before they jump on the team so that way i call it dry i'm a software guy

00:17:21.580 dry stands for do not repeat yourself so you want to be dry meaning that i want to teach it once

00:17:28.780 i never want to repeat myself i want to know that every new person i hire is going to know that

00:17:32.860 thing about how i do that thing and i start to build the culture at our team that was the third

00:17:39.820 thing so in real brief recap okay I went from hating the place I worked at to not

00:17:47.140 only changing the whole culture and loving the place but working my way out

00:17:51.160 of being involved or running the business and it continues to grow every

00:17:55.360 month and make more money than when I was actually CEO would you guys like to

00:17:59.320 learn how to do that all right here's what I want to share as we land the

00:18:04.900 plane. I believe that every person on earth is here to do two things. The first one, I'm assuming

00:18:15.500 I have some people of faith in the room. I personally believe that I was created in the

00:18:20.520 image of my creator. Awesome. Well, here's the deal. He had a big vision for my life.

00:18:27.060 When I was 17, I decided to try to take my life. He showed up and he stopped that situation.

00:18:31.760 and i didn't know

00:18:34.960 i didn't know god the way i know him today

00:18:39.480 but i will tell you yes thank you but he showed up and he had plans for me

00:18:47.220 so my philosophy the first thing i think everybody here on earth is here to do is to become the best

00:18:52.880 version of themselves become the 10.0 version of yourself become the person god created you in his

00:18:57.720 image i believe your job is to become the person you needed most in your darkest days

00:19:03.960 every day i wake up and i honor that journey i don't think i'll ever be able to stand up to that

00:19:08.840 but i strive for that second part as you're on that journey is to share what worked with other

00:19:16.040 people just tell your story i'm not going to stand up here and teach you stuff i read in a book i can

00:19:22.120 only teach you what worked for me i'm going to tell you how where i started the journey and my

00:19:28.200 desire is to help other people through that process why when we help other people we help

00:19:34.200 ourselves it's a beautiful thing i think a lot of people in the concept of tithing

00:19:39.720 they get confused they think it's about money i actually think it's about time

00:19:44.440 and i think what's really impressive is the people that decide to put their fears to the

00:19:48.760 side and step up into their courage and take those lessons learn and not diminish them and

00:19:54.040 think well everybody knows this everybody's doing this no they're not and regardless if they are

00:20:00.440 the world needs to hear your version of it and if you do that here's what will happen

00:20:11.880 that vision board that you've helped those team members create that hopefully they now have on

00:20:17.560 their phones your reputation being a great person that strives and you're

00:20:24.220 reached by helping other people will make all of their dreams come true guys

00:20:30.100 thanks for having me

00:20:33.940 awesome thanks guys

Dan Martell - June 21, 2024

How to Build $1M Business That Runs Itself

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