How to Build $1M Business That Runs Itself
Episode Stats
Words per minute
186.91226
Harmful content
Misogyny
4
sentences flagged
Toxicity
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
2
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, I talk about the 3 things that changed everything for me and how I went from hating the place I worked at to not only changing the culture and loving the place but working my way out of being involved or running the business and it continues to grow every month and make more money than when I was actually CEO.
Transcript
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.
00:04:42.740
So I had the opportunity to do what I love best.
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.
00:06:43.460
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
00:13:28.180
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?
00:13:42.800
That sentence has never been said in the history of humanity.
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.
00:13:55.920
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.
00:18:39.480
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