Dan Martell - January 07, 2025


How to Build a Business That Runs on Autopilot

Topics
cash flow rules inbox management profit solves all problems teaching vs. telling 50 to fix it values
Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Steve Jobs John Iveson Richard Branson Dan Martel Todd Hire
You don’t manage time, you manage energy ADHD could be your superpower

Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

234.56

Word count

4,497

Sentence count

295

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The more money you make, the less you should have to work. That s only if you know these 12 laws of running a stress-free business. I know it s possible because I went from 100-hour work weeks and burnout in my 20s to today running a $100M empire working less than 40 hours a week. And you don t need 160 IQ or spend millions of dollars on consultants to implement these.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The more money you make, the less you should have to work.
00:00:02.920 That's only if you know these 12 laws
00:00:04.620 of running a stress-free business.
00:00:06.160 I know it's possible because I went from 100-hour work weeks
00:00:09.060 and burnout in my 20s to today running a $100 million empire
00:00:12.320 working less than 40 hours a week.
00:00:14.240 And you don't need 160 IQ or spend millions of dollars
00:00:17.280 on consultants to implement these.
00:00:18.800 So without further explaining it,
00:00:20.220 this is how to run a million-dollar business
00:00:22.040 without going crazy.
00:00:23.360 Starting with law number one, you create the rules.
00:00:26.520 When I started my first successful business,
00:00:28.460 I almost went bankrupt in the first three months because I didn't understand a concept called
00:00:32.520 cash flow. And I remember talking to one of my mentors, explained to him what was going on in
00:00:36.060 my business. And he just laughed at me. He goes, why are you doing that? I said, what? He goes,
00:00:39.840 why are customers only paying you like 60 days later? And then the money gets locked up in your
00:00:44.080 bank account because you're a new business. And essentially you don't have the money to pay for
00:00:47.600 your growth, your employees says, why don't you make the customers pay 50% upfront? Well, I didn't
00:00:52.480 know I could. It turns out you get to create the terms of engagement with your customers and your
00:00:57.320 business so that you can build the business the way you want to. The way I like to think about it,
00:01:01.580 it's called the infinite game. Your business, your rules. You need to design the game so that
00:01:06.880 you can play it forever without pain. So for example, I won't ever finance a customer's
00:01:12.040 growth. If you want my product or services, then you pay up front so that I can invest in the
00:01:17.180 business to deliver on my promise. If I don't work well with a client, then I don't work with them.
00:01:22.280 I fire people all the time. Some people accidentally come into my world and I realize
00:01:26.400 quickly, their philosophy on business and mine are completely different. I don't put up with it,
00:01:30.980 not because I'm being rude, not because I'm angry, not because I'm upset, because I think you get to
00:01:35.140 choose who you want to do business with. And that energy for your team, for your bank account can be
00:01:40.280 negative. If you don't want to do custom work for people, you're allowed to say no. Just because you
00:01:45.200 do landscaping, for example, or an HVAC and somebody comes to you with something above and beyond,
00:01:49.420 you can say no. You can refer them to somebody else. You can choose simplicity and scale over
00:01:54.600 complexity and potentially fail. The key is, is that if you have a client and you keep making
00:01:59.040 exceptions, you essentially taught them how to treat you. And the funny part is that the moment
00:02:03.100 you put your foot down, they're going to get upset, but it's your fault because you let it go
00:02:07.000 on and on. Creating your business in a way that you want to do business is rule number one of
00:02:12.200 being successful, running a business that you don't hate to grow. But even once you're making
00:02:15.860 money, distractions might be the thing holding you back. Which brings us to law number two,
00:02:20.300 never open your email. You know, people often say, you know, it's really cool. I got to
00:02:24.380 inbox zero. You know what's cooler than that? Zero inbox. I remember I spent a week with Richard
00:02:28.780 Branson and I watched a guy who runs 400 companies. He has two CEOs that runs the holding company that
00:02:34.660 manages those companies. The guy doesn't do email. He literally strategizes on a legal pad and he
00:02:40.220 built his life where there's no devices, just the notepad so that he can move things forward
00:02:44.620 without having to be involved and distracted. And it sounds crazy for a lot of you because
00:02:48.360 you're stuck to it. You're addicted to it. Your inbox is nothing more than a public to-do list
00:02:52.660 of other people's priorities on your time.
00:02:54.800 The first thing you wanna do is get an executive assistant
00:02:57.380 or a virtual assistant or an admin or an office manager,
00:03:00.460 honestly, whatever you wanna call them,
00:03:02.160 but every entrepreneur should be spending all their time
00:03:04.920 doing the thing that makes the money.
00:03:06.600 Anything else that is administrative in nature,
00:03:08.720 scheduling in nature, running errands,
00:03:10.520 have somebody else support you
00:03:11.780 so that you can make the most money per hour,
00:03:13.780 pay somebody else, you create jobs,
00:03:15.600 and that way get some time back.
00:03:17.080 The key is to have them manage your inbox.
00:03:18.940 So all inbound requests have to get filtered
00:03:21.900 by somebody else, they can bump stuff up to you if you need to so that you're in the right place
00:03:26.320 with the information you need to do the task. You literally have somebody else manage you like
00:03:30.280 you're a five-year-old, putting you in the right place with the details to be able to be the most
00:03:34.000 productive you possibly can. It's so effective. And it's what all the top people that you follow
00:03:38.200 on the internet, all those famous people, all the athletes, et cetera, that's how they run their
00:03:42.480 life. The big idea behind having an assistant is a few things. They don't have any emotional
00:03:46.900 response to an email. I know that I've gotten an email from somebody and it felt overwhelming or
00:03:51.400 felt big and I mark it as unread and maybe I'll look at it tomorrow and deal with it in the
00:03:55.000 morning and then that might turn into two days and three days and eventually you just leave it there
00:03:59.140 so you don't respond quick enough and then the opportunities come and go whereas other things
00:04:03.000 might be happening while you're on vacation or your meetings and they got to get moved forward
00:04:07.120 so if you think about the response time of a request or the ability to move something forward
00:04:12.500 when you're not involved because it's in your inbox and you could be doing something else your
00:04:15.720 assistance pulling revenue forward into your life I think it's two to three months for me
00:04:21.060 Some people it could be more, some people it could be less,
00:04:23.440 but usually for a business,
00:04:25.060 that two or three months pays for that hire
00:04:27.240 right out of the gate.
00:04:28.180 If you want the exact executive assistant playbook
00:04:30.660 that I use to delegate like a billionaire,
00:04:32.900 message me the word EA YouTube on Instagram.
00:04:36.020 That's at Dan Martell to Elza Martell on Instagram
00:04:38.180 and I'll send it right over.
00:04:39.280 But you can't build a business with just one hire,
00:04:41.960 which brings us to law number three,
00:04:43.600 don't hire to grow your business,
00:04:45.100 hire to buy back your time.
00:04:46.220 Most entrepreneurs build their business
00:04:47.880 completely backwards.
00:04:49.240 I have a friend that's a logo designer.
00:04:50.420 He got overwhelmed, too much work.
00:04:52.240 He hired another logo designer.
00:04:53.380 And then he was spending all of his time
00:04:55.000 managing projects and running errands
00:04:57.320 and dealing with all the office administrator
00:04:59.140 instead of designing logos.
00:05:01.060 But the new guy did and he was paying top dollar.
00:05:02.960 And then he's spending all of his time
00:05:04.180 dealing with all this admin stuff
00:05:05.560 that he could have paid anybody else to do.
00:05:07.180 And then all of a sudden he's not making any more profit.
00:05:09.340 Why?
00:05:09.820 Because he didn't have enough business
00:05:10.900 to actually support two people.
00:05:12.700 The right way is to hire somebody
00:05:14.000 to take the low cost activities off your plate
00:05:16.220 so that you can do more of the money-making moves.
00:05:18.540 The big idea around this is that million-dollar companies were not built off $10 tasks.
00:05:23.800 You could be the hardest worker in the room, and if you have to manage every small detail
00:05:28.360 of a company that does a million in revenue, there's not enough hours in the week.
00:05:31.300 Learning to delegate, having other people support you, that's what leaders do.
00:05:35.020 So here's the way you want to think about it.
00:05:36.780 I call it the replacement ladder, and I teach it in chapter five of my book, Buy Back Your
00:05:40.460 Time.
00:05:40.900 It starts on the bottom with admin.
00:05:43.420 You might be feeling stuck, and what you need to do is get out of your inbox or scheduling
00:05:47.580 things in your calendar. Then you move up to level two, which is delivery. This is once you
00:05:51.940 made a sale, somebody else taking over that relationship, that conversation, and really
00:05:55.940 moving it forward in regards to onboarding that customer into your business or supporting them
00:06:00.180 with the questions around billing or scheduling, etc. If you don't, you'll feel stalled. The next
00:06:04.500 level is level three, which is marketing. And this is where you might feel still a little friction in
00:06:08.780 your growth. The reason why is you need somebody to own campaigns and traffic, somebody that cares
00:06:13.320 about how much leads you're generating every day and ensuring you're running new marketing
00:06:17.140 campaigns to get new audiences. Level four is sales. And I call this level freedom for a big
00:06:22.600 reason, because if you do it right, have somebody else take all those sales calls, all those
00:06:26.700 opportunities and do follow up properly. You now have a system at four hires where you can go on
00:06:32.380 vacation. Somebody can have that conversation with that lead and bring them into your business and
00:06:36.020 buy your services and then onboard them into the delivery of the service. Even if you're still
00:06:40.320 involved, all that can happen while you're gone, while you're sleeping, while you're on vacation.
00:06:44.560 That is beautiful and rare for most entrepreneurs.
00:06:48.100 Level five, this is when things get really fun,
00:06:50.280 is leadership.
00:06:51.040 If you have somebody that owns strategy and outcomes,
00:06:54.220 you get to come into work
00:06:55.320 and really create the way you want to as entrepreneurs.
00:06:58.040 Focus on problems, make them better,
00:06:59.680 support your team, become a better leader.
00:07:01.380 That replacement ladder strategy
00:07:03.160 is the least amount of money to get the most time back
00:07:05.960 to get the biggest bang for your buck.
00:07:07.700 But here's what's crazy, is then people go,
00:07:09.980 what if I don't have the money to hire?
00:07:11.480 Which brings us to law number four,
00:07:13.120 which is profit solves all problems.
00:07:15.480 Every entrepreneur does it wrong.
00:07:17.100 They start, they think, I gotta get this inventory,
00:07:19.780 I gotta make this widget, I gotta have this skill,
00:07:22.140 and then I get to sell it.
00:07:23.400 Nope, a business is started
00:07:24.940 when somebody sells something to a stranger.
00:07:26.940 Every one of my software companies I've ever started,
00:07:29.460 I pre-sold the software using screenshots.
00:07:32.460 I had to find the customer, something you'll need to do.
00:07:35.040 I had to know how to sell them,
00:07:36.400 something you're gonna have to learn.
00:07:37.400 And I had to ask them for the money, most people don't.
00:07:39.600 And if you do this, then you actually have the profit,
00:07:42.360 the revenue from the business available to you
00:07:45.180 to actually go build things or recruit talent.
00:07:47.380 This is a massive idea that most people miss.
00:07:50.560 When you can't grow your hours, grow your profit
00:07:53.080 because then you go buy everyone else's hours.
00:07:56.040 See, unfortunately, most entrepreneurs focus
00:07:58.160 on top-line revenue because it's for show.
00:08:00.640 However, profit's for dough.
00:08:02.600 Most people don't make enough profit
00:08:04.180 to be able to solve major problems in their business
00:08:06.560 like lead gen or sales.
00:08:08.340 The truth is, if you have a problem
00:08:10.080 that can be solved with money and you have the money,
00:08:11.840 you really don't have a problem.
00:08:13.380 The way you actually increase profit is one,
00:08:15.700 have the customers buy bigger amounts of things ahead of time
00:08:18.960 before you have to invest any costs.
00:08:21.060 Two, increase your prices
00:08:22.400 because most people are undercharging
00:08:23.760 because they don't value their self-worth.
00:08:25.540 And three, ensure that you focus on the thing
00:08:28.120 that actually makes you the most gross margin
00:08:29.940 and sell more of those things
00:08:31.500 than selling a bunch of things
00:08:32.560 that don't actually make you any profit.
00:08:33.940 Now, here's the crazy part.
00:08:35.260 Almost every entrepreneur is guilty of ignoring this next one,
00:08:38.120 which brings us to law number five, teach, don't tell.
00:08:41.080 When I was 20, I would constantly be running around my office telling people what to do.
00:08:45.960 And honestly, it became exhausting because it was like spinning plates.
00:08:49.740 As soon as I didn't tell somebody what to do, they didn't do anything.
00:08:52.100 And then I got frustrated with them.
00:08:53.320 And then I learned a completely different way.
00:08:55.440 And that is all about developing the people, teaching them principles so they can make
00:08:59.800 decisions and make movement on their own.
00:09:01.800 Here's a principle that'll really help you integrate this.
00:09:04.420 An answer solves today's puzzle.
00:09:06.580 A principle solves tomorrow's.
00:09:08.220 Where most people go wrong
00:09:09.680 because they've never been taught
00:09:10.680 is they do what's called transactional leadership,
00:09:12.700 which they tell the person what to do,
00:09:14.500 they check that it got done,
00:09:15.660 they tell them what to do next.
00:09:16.760 Problem with that is you then become a bottleneck
00:09:18.960 if you don't show up for work
00:09:19.980 because they don't know what to do.
00:09:21.040 A better strategy is do transformational leadership.
00:09:23.880 That's where you show up
00:09:24.620 and you talk about the outcome of their work,
00:09:26.840 their project,
00:09:27.460 you tell them how you're gonna measure
00:09:28.720 their progress or success,
00:09:30.020 and then you coach them
00:09:31.320 if they're not on pace to where you need them to
00:09:33.520 with principles that help them grow.
00:09:35.480 Now, to make that really easy on a weekly basis,
00:09:38.220 you want to be doing leadership training.
00:09:39.760 I know so many entrepreneurs
00:09:40.900 that are frustrated at their team
00:09:42.260 and they got this list of things
00:09:43.700 that their team's not doing.
00:09:44.840 And I go, show me in your calendar
00:09:46.320 where you're teaching them.
00:09:47.500 Where are you teaching them
00:09:48.500 how to be more productive,
00:09:49.540 how to communicate clear,
00:09:50.600 how to manage their inbox better,
00:09:51.880 how to be making better decisions?
00:09:53.720 Because these are all things
00:09:54.700 entrepreneurs had to learn.
00:09:55.880 But unfortunately, they feel like,
00:09:57.540 oh, the person should just know this stuff.
00:09:59.060 Every week, schedule time to develop your team.
00:10:02.340 I think it's one of the most powerful habits
00:10:03.800 to get the most out of your team.
00:10:05.180 But you can't expect your team to hit an outcome
00:10:07.000 if you don't give them a framework to move fast.
00:10:09.520 Which brings us to law number six, 50 to fix it.
00:10:12.380 This sounds crazy, but most people do it completely wrong.
00:10:15.160 When you have somebody that you delegate something,
00:10:16.880 you have to empower them to solve the problem.
00:10:18.880 Recently, I had a team member that kind of bottlenecked
00:10:20.920 because they were sending out a bunch of swag
00:10:22.540 and things to our community.
00:10:23.720 And I empower them by saying,
00:10:25.780 if it costs less than $50 for you to fix the problem,
00:10:28.400 just fix it and just let your leader know after the fact.
00:10:31.080 So they went out, bought a shipping printer
00:10:32.720 and got that bottleneck solved
00:10:34.360 without anybody being involved
00:10:35.800 because nobody needs to give you permission
00:10:37.300 to solve a problem that's less than 50 bucks.
00:10:39.180 And that's the power of 50 to fix it
00:10:41.040 because it pushes the decision down to the person
00:10:43.120 has the most information to solve the problem.
00:10:44.940 See, a bottleneck is called a bottleneck
00:10:46.720 because it's at the top and you're the person at the top.
00:10:49.980 So build the structure.
00:10:51.640 Anyone on my team can spend $50 to fix a problem
00:10:54.520 as long as they tell their boss afterwards
00:10:56.200 so they can understand if there's a system issue,
00:10:57.980 but it empowers people to solve problems.
00:10:59.880 Allow them to do it themselves.
00:11:01.460 Now I elevate this without permission.
00:11:03.740 Managers can spend up to $500.
00:11:05.800 My directors can spend up to $5,000.
00:11:08.220 My executives can spend up to $50,000
00:11:10.760 without anybody's permission.
00:11:12.660 I wanna push decisions down to the team
00:11:14.560 so they keep the momentum going.
00:11:16.740 But leading isn't just about what you say,
00:11:18.580 it's about what you don't say.
00:11:20.040 Which brings us to law number seven,
00:11:21.700 lead like a five-year-old.
00:11:22.880 About a year ago, I was in my studio
00:11:24.280 and we just built some built-ins
00:11:25.740 and my GM, Todd, comes in.
00:11:27.640 He's looking at me, he's looking at these shelves
00:11:29.140 and he's going, hey, what are you putting on the shelves?
00:11:30.960 And I just kind of stare at him.
00:11:31.960 I was like, and he goes, oh, I guess that's my job.
00:11:34.320 I said, ding, ding, ding.
00:11:35.800 I teach the person how to treat me.
00:11:38.460 I teach them where to find the answers.
00:11:40.500 See, the problem is if you keep giving people the answers,
00:11:42.760 they keep coming to you back with the next problem.
00:11:44.620 So here's a fun concept.
00:11:45.880 When you buy back your time, make sure it stays sold.
00:11:48.680 Don't hire somebody and then do their job for them.
00:11:50.880 Hire somebody and let them be empowered
00:11:52.700 to move things forward.
00:11:53.800 I just believe that the problem is
00:11:55.120 most entrepreneurs and managers give the answers
00:11:57.240 all the time because they don't even understand
00:11:59.060 the downside of doing that.
00:12:00.360 This is where the one, three, one comes into play though.
00:12:02.460 Any of my direct reports that comes to me with a challenge,
00:12:04.900 I always ask them to present their one three one one specific problem. What problem are you trying
00:12:09.920 to solve right now? Two, what are the three viable options that you've considered all of them? I want
00:12:15.020 you to explore the option set. And then the third is what's the one recommendation out of those three
00:12:19.560 that you recommend we move forward with 90% of the time, I agree, things move forward. The fun part
00:12:24.660 about this is that every time they come to me with something big, they know they need the one three one
00:12:29.100 most of the time that they actually solve it themselves. So I don't even get presented with
00:12:32.740 them because they actually do the work that I want them to do, which is to try to solve it.
00:12:36.420 And I only get the really meaty stuff that actually requires my unique perspective. Now,
00:12:40.080 there's a massive difference between delegation and abdication of responsibility, which brings
00:12:44.820 us a lot. Number eight, 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome. Most people think
00:12:50.160 they're art. They have to do all of it. For example, I was recently giving a talk at Tony
00:12:54.700 Robbins Business Mastery and most people would think, oh my gosh, that was a great talk because
00:12:58.340 Dan gave so many examples, very personal, very action-oriented.
00:13:02.240 Man, that was incredible.
00:13:03.440 What they don't know is I worked with my head writer to create that presentation.
00:13:07.240 The way I did that is I used the 1080-10 rule.
00:13:09.780 Now, here's a big idea.
00:13:11.020 You can do anything, but you can't do everything.
00:13:13.620 You need other people to support you.
00:13:15.380 The way you do these type of artistic projects is following this process.
00:13:18.780 Here's how the 1080-10 rule works.
00:13:20.640 First off is the 10% up front.
00:13:22.580 That's the ideation step.
00:13:24.000 This is where you collect all of the information you know,
00:13:26.300 the stories, the topics, whatever it is you're creating,
00:13:29.900 you bring it together and you sit down
00:13:31.600 with the person that's gonna do the project
00:13:33.080 and you give them all of your ideas,
00:13:35.320 all of the stuff you've done, all the research.
00:13:37.420 The next step is 80% of the work,
00:13:39.440 which is all about execution.
00:13:40.920 This is really about having them go out there,
00:13:43.320 do more research, put together first drafts,
00:13:45.700 try to figure out how they're gonna deal with the conflict.
00:13:47.940 Like they obviously have to know how to do the work,
00:13:49.920 but they're doing most of it.
00:13:51.360 Then the last part is 10% integration.
00:13:54.040 And this is where the slides are presented to me
00:13:55.960 with the outline for my talk.
00:13:57.300 And I reviewed to make sure
00:13:58.480 that it had the personal touch,
00:14:00.000 that it had the magic,
00:14:01.140 that it had the soul of what I wanted,
00:14:03.000 but I got to save 80%
00:14:04.540 because somebody else did the execution part
00:14:06.620 and I only had to do the ideation and integration.
00:14:09.320 The best example is Steve Jobs comes in,
00:14:11.460 works with Johnny Ives on the 10% ideation.
00:14:14.180 Johnny Ives goes and builds prototype with his team.
00:14:16.440 That's the execution.
00:14:17.960 And then Steve Jobs takes all of that,
00:14:19.880 refines it and then goes to present it on stage.
00:14:22.420 That is the integration.
00:14:23.440 But the truth is,
00:14:24.300 it can still be hard to step back and get out of the details.
00:14:27.480 Which brings us to law number nine, everything needs a DRI.
00:14:31.320 As I mentioned, Steve Jobs is one of the best leaders of our time,
00:14:34.240 and he had this philosophy called direct responsible individual.
00:14:37.940 His philosophy was that any project in a business needed one person,
00:14:42.080 one name who is accountable for it.
00:14:44.100 That was the DRI.
00:14:45.960 Most businesses suffer because they don't have clear ownership.
00:14:49.060 Unclear ownership is just delayed failure.
00:14:51.540 So the big way I look at it, one person, not 10.
00:14:54.940 If I'm launching a new product, one person.
00:14:57.280 If I have a department, one person.
00:14:59.760 If I'm starting a completely new business,
00:15:01.840 who's the who?
00:15:02.580 I want one person.
00:15:03.840 And what I do is I track down all the metrics
00:15:05.800 for that person, I put their name next to it,
00:15:08.200 and that way they know what part of the performance
00:15:10.600 in the business they own
00:15:12.140 so that they can be accountable for moving it forward.
00:15:15.040 No accountability, no productivity.
00:15:17.240 Which brings us to law number 10, results over effort.
00:15:21.080 Don't confuse motion with movement.
00:15:24.080 A lot of people are busy, no results.
00:15:26.120 I remember there was this marketing person
00:15:27.300 I assigned once to fill a hundred person webinar.
00:15:29.760 That was the goal.
00:15:30.420 And then 13 people showed up and I'm like, what did you do?
00:15:33.560 And they're like, oh, we ran ads, we did email,
00:15:36.080 we did everything.
00:15:37.180 Interesting.
00:15:37.800 So you told me you did full effort with 13% of the results.
00:15:41.280 See, unfortunately, if you're building a business,
00:15:43.620 you have to hold people accountable to the results,
00:15:46.040 not their effort.
00:15:47.040 I don't care if you worked weekends.
00:15:48.320 I don't care if you worked long hours.
00:15:49.540 if you can't produce the result,
00:15:51.480 that's the only thing I can hold you accountable for
00:15:53.500 because I'm not sitting here to do your job.
00:15:55.220 Right from the beginning,
00:15:56.280 I don't hire people with the expectation
00:15:58.260 that I have to check in for them to get a result.
00:16:00.940 I mean, the truth is what doesn't impress me
00:16:02.940 is people being in the office all the time,
00:16:04.920 working crazy hours, trying really hard
00:16:06.800 and then falling short on the results.
00:16:08.640 What does impress me is hitting your numbers.
00:16:11.240 I'm more impressed with a person that works five hours
00:16:13.720 to hit the results that I thought it would take 40
00:16:15.620 and they do it in a fraction of the time.
00:16:17.540 The big idea is to set clear expectations with your team and hold them to it.
00:16:21.640 Your standards are not what you say they are.
00:16:23.800 They're what you accept.
00:16:24.820 And you might say, these are our standards and this is how we work here.
00:16:27.720 But if you accept underperformance, that's what you're communicating to the rest of the team.
00:16:31.260 But as your team grows, you can't monitor everything that happens.
00:16:34.540 Which brings us to law number 11, create culture, not rules.
00:16:37.820 Your employee handbook can't be big enough to deal with all the situations that are going to come up. 0.93
00:16:42.340 It's funny because a friend visited my studio recently and he told me, holy crap.
00:16:45.880 This entire team came up and shook my hand.
00:16:48.340 And I'm like, yep.
00:16:49.120 Did you tell them they had to do that?
00:16:50.540 Nope.
00:16:51.020 Why'd they do that?
00:16:51.900 Culture.
00:16:52.460 Culture is what you expect of people.
00:16:54.560 It's your values.
00:16:55.220 It's how you hire.
00:16:55.920 It's how you show up.
00:16:57.200 Culture is not what you tell people to do.
00:16:59.420 It's what they do when nobody's watching.
00:17:01.360 And for what it's worth, I believe this.
00:17:03.460 With the right culture, you don't need rules.
00:17:05.920 It's crazy when I see people change their business
00:17:08.280 for folks that have left,
00:17:09.680 instead of changing their business
00:17:10.840 for the folks that are staying, that are performing.
00:17:13.380 I believe it all comes down to one thing,
00:17:15.160 your values. And your values represent beliefs. And if you're not clear with them, then you won't
00:17:19.960 be able to hire properly because that's what it should be used for. Or you won't be able to fire
00:17:24.200 properly. The way I think about it is hire for the soul, train for the role. Do they have the skill
00:17:29.060 and the will? If so, they will win. However, the best entrepreneurs know it's not all business
00:17:33.880 strategies. Which brings us to law number 12, work harder on yourself than you do on your business.
00:17:38.620 In my 20s, I used to work crazy hours,
00:17:41.580 shifting things around, working harder, going crazy.
00:17:45.460 And I always felt like I was underwater.
00:17:48.040 I wasn't making ground.
00:17:49.380 Then I shifted it to working on me, Dan Martel,
00:17:52.920 not the business.
00:17:53.940 And it turned out me being better,
00:17:56.140 I was better for my team.
00:17:57.400 And the whole thing shifted all around me.
00:17:59.320 For example, my fitness.
00:18:00.580 I believe that I exhaust the body to tame the mind.
00:18:03.780 If I work on my mind, I have a calm mind,
00:18:06.420 then I can move things forward.
00:18:07.540 One of my favorite quotes is summarized this by a guy named Naval, and he says,
00:18:10.860 a calm mind, a strong body, and a house full of love is earned.
00:18:14.600 If I want to have those things in my life, I got to work on me.
00:18:18.400 They're not things I can buy.
00:18:19.700 They're not people I can delegate to.
00:18:21.680 Those are things that I have to earn.
00:18:23.300 So here's what I do.
00:18:24.460 First off, I always prioritize the pump.
00:18:26.680 The workout, the exhaust the body, tame the mind, it has to be there because it gets me
00:18:31.360 ready for the day.
00:18:32.460 I also read every day.
00:18:33.720 Why?
00:18:33.980 I consider it my opportunity to find like an offering
00:18:36.640 to the world, some passage that really resonates with me
00:18:39.300 and that I can share with people
00:18:40.420 as I meet them throughout the day.
00:18:41.600 And if I don't have the answer, I go external for help.
00:18:44.760 I was telling this to my team the other day.
00:18:45.920 It's like, if you guys aren't good enough,
00:18:47.940 please go find a mentor, find somebody that could advise you,
00:18:51.340 find a course you wanna buy, a seminar you wanna go to.
00:18:53.900 If you think we have the answers in this business,
00:18:56.780 we're all in trouble, including myself.
00:18:58.540 The truth is every Monday I do leadership training
00:19:00.680 and I tell my whole team this right off the bat.
00:19:02.760 You all have to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.
00:19:05.560 If you want to learn a 17 business cheat codes, I wish I knew at 17.
00:19:09.000 Click here and I'll see you on the other side.