Dan Martell - How to Grow Your Business SO Fast it Feels Like CHEATING

00:00:00.000 I built and sold three companies in under 10 years

00:00:02.560 for millions of dollars.

00:00:03.860 They scaled so fast, it felt like cheating.

00:00:06.400 One of my latest companies, Martel Media,

00:00:08.320 scaled to $2 million a month in under 18 months.

00:00:11.340 And today I own Martel Ventures,

00:00:13.280 a portfolio of companies that's on track

00:00:15.220 to become worth $1 billion in less than three years.

00:00:18.300 I'm gonna break down the strategies I use

00:00:20.280 to get to this level of speed

00:00:21.560 so you can apply them to your own business,

00:00:24.140 even if you're starting from zero.

00:00:25.780 Number one, focus on cash, not perfection.

00:00:28.540 stop trying to make everything perfect and just start selling everybody wants to start a business

00:00:33.900 but nobody wants to start selling i always say the moment you sell something to a stranger is the

00:00:38.700 moment you become an entrepreneur so the more money you can get in cash up front before you

00:00:43.380 spend a lot of money to deliver what you sold then the easier it is to grow your business because

00:00:47.880 there is a massive difference between receivables or invoices and revenue versus cash because i

00:00:54.140 I can't pay people in invoices.

00:00:56.300 I can't pay people with receivables.

00:00:58.600 But to actually get people to give you their money,

00:01:01.140 you need to present the right offer. 0.68

00:01:02.880 Number two, make people feel dumb to say no.

00:01:05.900 First off, you need to build a transformation-focused offer,

00:01:09.420 not a bunch of deliverables.

00:01:10.860 Too often people are like,

00:01:12.000 well, if you buy my thing, you get this, you get this,

00:01:13.940 and you this them to death. 0.75

00:01:15.320 People don't want a bunch of features.

00:01:17.060 What they want is their problem solved.

00:01:18.840 They wanna know that you understand them.

00:01:20.520 And then you gotta add urgency, scarcity, and risk reversal

00:01:23.800 If you don't put that into your offer,

00:01:25.720 then people will sit back and wait

00:01:27.600 or talk to their spouse

00:01:28.940 or think about doing it in the future

00:01:31.020 because they don't believe

00:01:32.340 that they'll actually do the work.

00:01:34.140 By telling people you only work

00:01:35.700 with certain types of clients,

00:01:36.800 it creates a scarce resource

00:01:38.240 that only certain people that are approved

00:01:40.000 can actually buy.

00:01:40.980 Or urgency by saying that you are a small team

00:01:44.180 and you like to be very personalized and customized

00:01:46.160 that you can't do it for everybody.

00:01:48.060 So you only take on a handful of clients per month

00:01:50.000 or the risk reversal saying

00:01:51.900 if you don't achieve a certain outcome,

00:01:53.980 then we'll give you a full refund.

00:01:55.520 Now that might sound scary to you,

00:01:56.960 but you can also say it's on the back end

00:01:58.640 of you agreeing to doing all these things 0.53

00:02:00.400 that you know it would be ridiculous for them

00:02:02.860 not to get a result if they followed all those things.

00:02:05.760 And the reason why this kind of offer

00:02:07.540 will feel like you're cheating

00:02:08.680 is because better offers equals higher close rates

00:02:11.340 and premium pricing.

00:02:13.160 All right, so you did all that.

00:02:14.300 You've got your offer down.

00:02:15.640 Now let's make sure people actually see it.

00:02:17.880 Number three, build a marketing system,

00:02:20.040 not a marketing plan.

00:02:21.140 You know what I've learned with most entrepreneurs is they feel guilty if the machine is working.

00:02:25.900 To feel less guilty about growth, you need to build a system that creates predictability

00:02:30.440 in the business. And if you do it right, it will feel like cheating. And I need you to stop yourself

00:02:35.380 from throwing a hand grenade in the business and blowing the whole thing up because it's actually

00:02:38.900 working. To build the marketing system, you need to build the system. And most people overcomplicate

00:02:44.420 it. So I'm going to break it down. So first thing, we have to start with the camcorder method. If

00:02:48.640 you're doing something to generate leads, you have to record yourself doing that activity. So that way

00:02:53.740 you have a training video and you can have multiple videos of you doing the activity that generates

00:02:58.260 those leads as an example. Then we want to create the course. We want to document the steps that we

00:03:03.040 outline in those videos so that somebody can come in and follow one, two, three, and create

00:03:07.880 predictability. Next, we want to focus on the cadence. What's the schedule? What do they do on

00:03:12.740 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? If it's marketing, if it's sales, you have to document

00:03:17.440 the cadence and set up the schedule so somebody can create a system of predictability. Finally,

00:03:22.380 we want to generate the checklist, the seven to 10 things in their day that if they do every day,

00:03:27.880 they will generate the result that you want for you in the business. And if you build this out,

00:03:32.320 you'll create a marketing system, not just a marketing plan that generates predictable leads

00:03:36.680 and predictable leads generates predictable cashflow that allows you to scale your business.

00:03:41.260 So now that leads are flowing in, now it's time to make space to close them. Number four, audit your

00:03:46.120 day. It's interesting because people read my book and they still get it wrong. I had a CEO in one of

00:03:50.780 my portfolio companies at Martell Ventures who realized he was spending four hours a day on

00:03:55.440 admin and customer support. And I sat down with him and I was like, okay, you could be doing sales

00:04:00.760 that's going to generate cash. When if I look at your buyback rate, I know what you're taking as a

00:04:05.100 salary. I know the opportunity ahead of you. You're not making efficient trades. If your goal is to

00:04:10.260 make a million dollars a year anything that isn't a 500 an hour activity is costing you the

00:04:16.020 difference because there's 2 000 hours of work an average person does and at 500 an hour of income

00:04:22.320 that's your million dollars a year see most people just spend all their time doing 10 tasks wonder

00:04:26.540 why they haven't built a million dollar business here's how you get ridiculously efficient with

00:04:30.600 trading your time for money first off you need to track your time so i do a two-week audit of

00:04:36.220 everything i've done for the last two weeks going off every 15 minutes there's a timer ding ding

00:04:40.940 ding it goes off you write it down that way there's no bull if you spent three hours scrolling

00:04:45.660 tick tock i want you to write it down then i want you to go through and i want you to highlight in

00:04:50.380 red anything that sucks your energy then we got to figure out what your time is worth because if

00:04:55.020 you're going to trade your time and pay some money for somebody else to help you out it's got to be

00:04:59.980 a good trade so you take the amount of money you make in a year divided by 2 000 take that divided

00:05:05.100 to buy four, that's your buyback rate. If you're not happy with that number because it's less than

00:05:09.320 five bucks, it just is what it is. Charge more for what you sell or figure out a way to become

00:05:14.340 more valuable. The more you buy back your time and reinvest it in things that help you sell more,

00:05:19.320 generate more leads will equal more money in that'll help you scale faster that will feel

00:05:23.440 like cheating. But freeing up your time is only part of it. Next, you got to learn how to schedule

00:05:27.520 it. Number five, rebuild your calendar. Now that you've bought back your time, I need you to

00:05:32.600 reinvest that time in things that are going to make you money. Too often, entrepreneurs wake up

00:05:37.220 at the beginning of the week and they're like, I hope I grow. It's not in your calendar. If you

00:05:42.240 have a problem, put it in there, schedule it, focus on it. Here's what I mean. Block 10 to 15

00:05:48.120 hours a week focusing on high revenue activities, things like sales calls, generating leads.

00:05:53.640 There's probably things in your business that are broken that you don't know are broken

00:05:57.440 because you haven't put the time to actually improve it.

00:06:00.980 To take this to the next level, here's the number one hack.

00:06:03.900 You have to schedule for energy flows.

00:06:06.680 For example, if you know that your best time

00:06:08.980 to do any kind of creative writing

00:06:10.680 is first thing in the morning,

00:06:12.240 do it first thing in the morning.

00:06:13.540 So now that your time is protected,

00:06:15.100 let's make sure that your systems don't break.

00:06:17.420 Number six, delete the fricking bottlenecks.

00:06:19.960 So Elon Musk has this rule.

00:06:21.600 If he's getting a meeting to solve problems,

00:06:23.360 there's 25 people in the meeting

00:06:24.620 and somebody says there's a constraint

00:06:26.520 and that person's not in the meeting, guess what?

00:06:28.700 Somebody call that person.

00:06:30.000 He will fly people in all around to be in one meeting

00:06:33.240 so that if the bottleneck exists

00:06:34.780 and it needs to be solved,

00:06:36.000 the person is in the meeting who can solve the problem.

00:06:38.300 If it's not, everybody get back to work.

00:06:40.280 So for example, if I've got a plant that makes cars

00:06:42.580 and it takes three parts to make a car,

00:06:44.740 the tires, the engine, and the chassis,

00:06:47.020 and I can make four tires per day,

00:06:48.860 which I need for one car,

00:06:50.340 and then I can make 10 engines per day

00:06:52.300 and I can make 100 chassis,

00:06:54.200 how many cars per day can I make in that plant?

00:06:56.520 one because my number one constraint are those four tires so any time energy resources anything

00:07:02.660 other than increasing my ability to make freaking tires is not a good use of the time and that is

00:07:07.960 what you need to focus on so the way i fix constraints in my teams is using a very simple

00:07:13.120 but incredibly powerful tool called 50 to fix it so essentially any person that sees a bottleneck

00:07:19.000 a constraint in the business if they can solve the problem for less than 50 they're allowed to spend

00:07:23.820 that money they can expense it nobody asks questions it only ask is that they tell their

00:07:28.220 leader or manager after the fact i go 50 for individual contributors 500 for leaders 5 000

00:07:34.300 for managers and 50 000 for c-level people that way the throughput is always increasing and

00:07:40.220 bottlenecks are getting unblocked and the business is making more cash that will lead to scaling and

00:07:45.260 make you feel like you're cheating with speed fix now it's time to scale yourself number seven

00:07:51.020 replace yourself. The best way is having an executive assistant. And there's two things

00:07:55.340 they have to focus on, your email and your calendar, because your email is nothing but a

00:08:00.200 public to-do list on your time. And your calendar does not need you to be there if you create a

00:08:05.180 system for them to interact with so that you can focus your actual time on things that make you

00:08:09.700 money to grow. The coolest part about this process is that you start to buy back 10, 15 hours a week

00:08:15.660 to reinvest it in things like sales and growth and partnerships. And that's how you scale the

00:08:21.360 business in a way that's going to leave you feeling like you're freaking cheating. Now,

00:08:24.440 if you want my complete playbook for how I interact with my executive assistant, it's like

00:08:28.360 42 pages. Just go to Instagram, find me Dan Martell, 2Ls and Martell. Follow me and then

00:08:33.340 message me the word EA, YouTube. Then I'll know you came from here and I will send you the direct

00:08:37.720 link, no opt-in for my complete playbook on how I work with my executive assistant to get back 30

00:08:42.780 or 40 hours a week. Now that you're not the bottleneck, it's time to increase your ability

00:08:47.120 to hire better. Number eight, increase talent velocity. Every business comes down to two key

00:08:52.680 funnels. One is the customer funnel. How do I get customers? How do they buy all the things we just

00:08:57.360 talked about? The second part is the talent funnel. How do we attract, retain, and develop top talent?

00:09:03.500 If you have a bunch of customers and you have the right people to deliver for those customers,

00:09:06.900 then the business will easily scale on its own and you'll feel so guilty that it's just working.

00:09:11.900 So the easiest way to do this is in 12 months, as my revenue grows, whatever that target is,

00:09:16.700 I want you to design what the organizational team's going to look like at that size.

00:09:21.240 That's going to give you the gap.

00:09:22.920 Then you create a people plan, which is essentially all the people you get to hire that aren't

00:09:27.020 on the team right now, and sequencing it based on dollar spend that's going to get you your

00:09:31.860 time back the fastest, that's going to allow them to go make money for you to reinvest

00:09:36.300 in things that make you money so you can scale easier.

00:09:39.220 If you do this right, you build the people and the people scale the business.

00:09:43.800 And that's why you'll be able to grow the business in a way that feels like cheating.

00:09:47.520 Now that you've hired help, it's time to focus on building their knowledge.

00:09:51.020 Number nine, pay for the blueprint.

00:09:53.100 You know what money likes?

00:09:54.280 Money likes speed.

00:09:55.300 If you want to generate $83,000 a month in your marketing agency,

00:09:58.680 you better learn from somebody else has done it, or it's just going to take you a decade.

00:10:03.140 How do I know this?

00:10:03.940 I was that guy.

00:10:05.040 I went years trying to figure out because that's what I thought I had to do.

00:10:07.860 learn every part of the business. Instead, I finally hired a coach and that one coach made

00:10:12.800 me $960,000 in the first 12 months. Why did I wait so long? Because I was scared. I was scared

00:10:18.420 that I was going to waste my money paying for somebody who's going to give me a blueprint that

00:10:21.160 wasn't going to work for me. That was the problem for me to solve. And that's what you need to do

00:10:24.680 yourself. When I invest in my people, I focus on three things. One, the coaching. Who is going to

00:10:29.660 be their coach? Well, people say, well, what if I invest in coaching and I train them up and then

00:10:34.300 all of a sudden they leave. What if you don't and they stay? Do you see how silly that is?

00:10:38.760 What are the tools they need? Who are the other people on your team from a talent point of view

00:10:42.520 to support that person? The more you can invest in coaching tools and talent to grow you,

00:10:47.740 you will have more resources to invest in the business. I mean, just ask yourself this simple

00:10:51.500 question. What would the 10X version of you do today? Because if you were already the person

00:10:56.280 you needed to be today to win, you would be winning. If you're not where you want to be,

00:10:59.960 it means there's parts missing that you got to go buy. Paying for the blueprints is the fastest

00:11:04.060 way to scale so now you're moving fast awesome but are your clients sticking around number 10

00:11:09.180 resolve your retention there's nothing worse than building a business that has a bucket where all

00:11:14.140 the customers come in and there's a big hole at the bottom so you spend all this money and time

00:11:18.940 and energy trying to get a bunch of people in your business to just have them slip out the bottom of

00:11:23.340 the funnel because you've not designed a way to keep them around i had a client of mine once where

00:11:27.740 he had this big churn problem he's losing 10 of his customers every month if you're losing 10

00:11:32.380 every month. That means every 10 months, you lose 100% of all your customers. All we did is ask

00:11:37.700 ourselves, how can you get a quick win for your customers as soon as they join? So we created a

00:11:42.880 list of 12 different quick wins that they could do with that client to get them a result that

00:11:47.500 would make them feel silly for quitting because of the results they got in the first seven days.

00:11:51.160 We implemented that. All of a sudden, churn goes down to 3% a month, meaning that the customer is

00:11:56.600 worth four times more to them over the long term, which also meant they could spend more money to

00:12:01.260 acquire them. That is the game changer when we fix retention. To do this for yourself, ask yourself,

00:12:06.260 what's the fast win you can get a client as soon as that joint? I'm talking 48 hours. If you can

00:12:10.960 get them to make their whole investment and working with you in the first 48 hours, they're

00:12:14.940 going to talk about you to every one of their friends. Then you want to add strategic upsells,

00:12:20.180 referrals, or other ways you can create value for your business. Maybe it's case studies,

00:12:24.080 testimonials, have them on your podcast. And then we want to track the churn weekly because we don't

00:12:28.520 to ignore it if we fix it by getting referrals and upsell to get them to buy more things that

00:12:33.000 you have then you got to make sure that you monitor it so that if it goes bad again you

00:12:37.000 can fix it see it's not something you can just set it and forget it you have to monitor it like

00:12:41.000 anything that's important and when you have better retention you'll have higher lifetime value of a

00:12:45.080 customer which means you're going to have better margins which means you have more resources to

00:12:48.840 scale faster in a way that absolutely feels like cheating now that you got results now it's time

00:12:53.480 time to multiply them. Number 11, scale sales without scaling you. I remember the first time

00:12:58.200 I hired this guy named Michael to be my sales guy and he was selling my coaching program. And that

00:13:02.560 was a weird idea to have somebody else sell me on my behalf and me not talk to them. First call he

00:13:08.200 had, Dan, I got somebody to buy. How? He's like, dude, I think they bought because you demonstrated

00:13:14.220 by having me sell you that you can teach them how to do it for them. And it was crazy for me to

00:13:19.900 believe this because up to that point sure I'd built companies that sold products but I hadn't

00:13:24.420 had a sales team that sold me and I had a belief that nobody else could sell like me and it turns

00:13:30.160 out that's not true and if you have that belief it's the reason it's going to hold you back and

00:13:33.920 we need to learn how to multiply you so here's how we do this where you feel like it's going to work

00:13:38.780 and it's not going to go sideways really quickly first thing is we got to scale your sales calls

00:13:42.640 and objections everything that you know people are going to bring up you have to script it they're

00:13:46.380 called talk tracks and you put it in a document and you got to be very detailed if there's six

00:13:51.000 parts of your sales process or nine parts of your sales process write it in add talk tracks and

00:13:55.400 questions to guide the buyer to make the decision to buy your product then we do my favorite thing

00:14:00.060 which is record winning calls winning sales call winning chats it doesn't matter to train the new

00:14:05.700 sales people because if they see what winning looks like and they pattern match that then they're 0.99

00:14:10.160 just going to have some good best practices from day one that they just follow to get the same

00:14:14.300 results that the person who won on the call got for themselves. Then we want to hire salespeople

00:14:18.720 that are commission-based. See, if you pay them too much of a base, they're going to stick around

00:14:23.340 even if they're not making any money because they don't need to make money because you're

00:14:26.400 paying them a good base. What I like to do is pay them enough to cover their expenses,

00:14:30.440 but not enough to get rich. And then I pay them a commission based on what they sell

00:14:35.200 so that the more they sell, the more money they make, the more money the business makes,

00:14:39.020 because then I'm not incentivizing somebody who can't sell to stick around. And this is why using

00:14:43.540 this process to scale feels like you're cheating because the more closers means the more sales

00:14:48.780 without you working more. Now that we've got sales off your plate, last but not least, it's time to

00:14:53.140 protect your productivity. Number 12, stay in your zone of genius. I want to be out there spreading

00:14:58.680 the gospel. I want to be talking about my mission, my vision, where I see the world going. And in

00:15:03.460 doing that, I'm going to attract customers. And more importantly, like I said earlier, talent,

00:15:08.160 Your job as a CEO is to stay in your zone of genius,

00:15:11.620 focus on three things.

00:15:13.040 One, the vision.

00:15:14.160 What should exist in your business that doesn't yet?

00:15:16.840 That is vision.

00:15:17.700 Do you see around the corner?

00:15:19.020 The other one is money.

00:15:20.300 Do you have the capital to support the scale,

00:15:23.060 the growth, the investment in the business?

00:15:25.160 And the third are the people, right?

00:15:26.740 When you think about it,

00:15:27.620 do I have the right people to build the business?

00:15:29.740 Because you can't build enough systems and automation

00:15:31.900 and all these wonky things that are gonna make it happen.

00:15:34.300 You have to have the people on your team

00:15:36.160 that are gonna level everybody up.

00:15:38.160 If you do that and you stay in your zone of genius,

00:15:40.760 that will make you the most money,

00:15:42.060 but it'll also make you feel guilty

00:15:43.620 because you're gonna grow and it's not gonna be hard

00:15:45.560 because you're doing the thing that feels easy.

00:15:47.820 When you get to a place in your life

00:15:49.680 that looks like work, but feels like play, you've won.

00:15:53.460 When people say, why don't you retire?

00:15:55.220 You're now making all this money.

00:15:56.880 And you think to yourself,

00:15:57.720 why would I retire from being me?

00:16:00.360 Because what you do every day in your zone of genius

00:16:02.980 is just an expression of who you are

00:16:04.860 and it feels effortless.

00:16:06.920 That's what you wanna get to.

00:16:08.160 And that's how you scale a business so fast,

00:16:11.200 it feels like cheating.

00:16:12.360 Now, if you wanna learn what I learned about culture

00:16:14.440 from a billion dollar company,

00:16:16.080 click the video and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - July 29, 2025

How to Grow Your Business SO Fast it Feels Like CHEATING

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