Dan Martell - How to Lead Like the Top 1%

00:00:00.160 Boss or leader, what's the real difference?

00:00:03.300 I'm Dan Martell, the founder of Martell Ventures,

00:00:05.200 a portfolio of companies that makes

00:00:06.560 over $100 million in revenue per year.

00:00:08.680 In my 28 years of business,

00:00:10.440 I've hired over a thousand employees.

00:00:12.840 And a lot of my success in business

00:00:14.300 has come from learning how to lead,

00:00:16.340 not just bossing people around.

00:00:17.980 And so in this video, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:19.840 the rules of leadership that took me from a boss

00:00:22.520 to a leader worth following.

00:00:24.600 Starting with rule number one,

00:00:26.120 praise in public, correct in private.

00:00:28.460 bosses criticize publicly praise in private leaders praise publicly and then any critical

00:00:35.940 feedback is done in one-on-ones private in a closed room where there's a chance for it to

00:00:41.160 breathe to explain to ask questions not off the cuff criticizing people in front of others it's

00:00:46.720 funny because i had a buddy that was like trying to elevate his leadership style and i asked him

00:00:50.820 like well how do you give feedback and how do you do it and i said whoa dude sounds like you're a

00:00:55.580 seagull leadership. He goes, what's that? I said, you're the kind of guy that's never around. And

00:01:00.520 when you show up, you swoop down and you shit all over everybody's work. And then you fly off to the 1.00

00:01:06.920 next meeting. It's not a great way to make your team feel, especially if you only show up to

00:01:12.400 on them. He changed that one strategy. Instead, he would swoop down and give praise to everybody

00:01:18.680 doing the right thing. He'd write down all the stuff that people weren't doing right. And then

00:01:22.440 have one-on-one conversations with them after the meeting it changes whole business stop making your

00:01:27.720 team look bad and watch their performance go up praise in public correct in private rule number

00:01:34.280 two lighthouse versus tugboat bosses drag people leaders shine the way when i got out of rehab as

00:01:41.560 a teenager everybody said dan stick to your path don't try to fix other people that are still

00:01:46.760 struggling with their addiction because you're only going to get met with resistance and that's

00:01:50.200 what a tugboat is a tugboat wastes a lot of energy trying to bang into ships to try to get them

00:01:54.920 steered in the right direction where a lighthouse just stands there and it could help one two or a

00:01:59.560 hundred ships and it takes nothing from them as a leader you want to be a lighthouse the worst

00:02:04.520 example of this was a guy one time that came to me he says hey man yo my teams they don't listen

00:02:08.840 to me and i looked at him and i'm like bro look at yourself you don't listen to what you say for

00:02:14.360 your health you're not organized you look disheveled i mean the guy pretty much looked

00:02:18.760 homeless you don't listen to you that is the problem you gotta get in shape if you want your 1.00

00:02:24.520 friends to get in shape you have to be the example not the savior be the lighthouse not the tugboat

00:02:30.680 rule number three train don't tell bosses tell people what to do leaders train people on what

00:02:36.840 to do telling informs somebody but training transforms them if you expect something from

00:02:41.960 somebody i need you to teach it with a standard operating procedure work with them to have reps

00:02:46.040 and then coach them to success.

00:02:47.900 Remember one time I had a client,

00:02:49.080 they were frustrated with their team.

00:02:50.540 And I said, oh, sorry to hear.

00:02:52.380 Let me ask you a question.

00:02:53.660 How about you make a list of all the things

00:02:55.780 your team's doing that frustrates a crappity?

00:02:58.340 So for example, the first one was,

00:03:00.140 my team doesn't ideate in meetings with me.

00:03:02.440 They never come up with good ideas.

00:03:04.200 You tell me where you trained your team

00:03:06.700 on how to ideate in a meeting.

00:03:08.900 Well, I don't have one.

00:03:10.320 Zero surprise.

00:03:11.720 Everybody needs to be taught how to perform.

00:03:14.860 And if you don't do that,

00:03:16.140 you're always gonna be disappointed with your team.

00:03:18.000 My favorite way of doing this,

00:03:19.240 I call this the camcorder method.

00:03:20.760 Just record yourself.

00:03:21.740 You can jump on a Zoom call, share your screen,

00:03:24.260 record it to the cloud.

00:03:25.840 You just talk out loud about how you do it

00:03:28.300 and the philosophy behind each decision

00:03:30.780 that you're doing in the video.

00:03:32.260 And if you wanna take this to another level,

00:03:34.160 upload that to ChatGPT

00:03:35.720 and ask it to create the standard operating procedure.

00:03:38.520 If you haven't trained them, you can't blame them.

00:03:41.120 Train, don't tell.

00:03:42.400 Rule number four, delegate the outcome, not the task.

00:03:47.320 Bosses give tasks, leaders give outcomes.

00:03:50.480 A task to somebody creates a tenant.

00:03:52.680 They're like in the thing, but they don't own it.

00:03:54.640 An outcome, it creates owners.

00:03:56.460 It's kind of like a renter versus an owner in a home.

00:03:59.600 When you rent it,

00:04:00.420 you don't really think about like the maintenance

00:04:02.320 and fixing stuff.

00:04:03.900 Whereas if you own the place,

00:04:05.040 you're gonna treat it like it's your own because it is.

00:04:07.180 And that's a massive difference between bosses and leaders

00:04:09.640 who delegate tasks versus outcomes.

00:04:11.720 In my 20s, I had a business and I used to wake up every day

00:04:15.220 and I would go around and I'd give everybody their task.

00:04:18.260 I was like a professional task master.

00:04:20.760 Doing that with a team of 20 or 30 people

00:04:22.880 just created a lot of overwhelm

00:04:24.540 because I never had time to do the work myself.

00:04:27.100 I changed it from being task-focused to outcome-focused.

00:04:30.760 All of a sudden, I wasn't getting involved in the weeds.

00:04:33.000 I was staying very high level.

00:04:34.420 People had clarity what my expectations were

00:04:36.660 without me getting involved.

00:04:38.260 Here's a simple example.

00:04:39.320 You could tell somebody, hey, send five emails.

00:04:41.720 hoping to generate some leads or you could say generate 10 leads by friday using the channel of

00:04:45.960 your choice if they choose email cool i don't care how they do it i just need those 10 leads by

00:04:51.080 friday you have to give them what i call the definition of done you have to describe what

00:04:55.640 done looks like which includes the problem you're trying to solve so that they can go did this solve

00:05:01.880 that problem that means it's done ownership requires a finish line not micromanage steps

00:05:08.120 leaders delegate outcomes not tasks rule number five default to trust bosses withhold trust

00:05:15.480 leaders default to it trust speeds everything up i always start with access i back it up with audits

00:05:21.800 and reviews but i don't hold back because that's what bosses do leaders say i hired you for a

00:05:26.840 reason it's time to let you cook i remember one time i was talking to my friend rachel she has a

00:05:30.440 design agency and she was like resisting letting her inbox go until she realized that trust with

00:05:36.920 with some guardrails was actually the unlock.

00:05:39.480 I'm not saying just let people go willy nilly

00:05:41.860 and get in your inbox and start sending emails to everybody.

00:05:44.240 Give them some structure, monitor what's being sent.

00:05:47.260 Could you give in the first day full access

00:05:50.300 to all the systems that they need to get going?

00:05:52.040 And then you can set up some SLA,

00:05:53.780 service level agreements on what expectations are,

00:05:56.020 maybe some tracking, what I call sensors,

00:05:58.520 maybe a dashboard so that they have an understanding

00:06:01.000 of how they're supposed to play the game

00:06:02.360 so that if there's any other issues, it gets flagged

00:06:05.220 so that you can sit down with them and coach them up.

00:06:07.500 Default to trust, but the key is to inspect what you expect.

00:06:11.540 It's not abdication, it's involvement without holding back.

00:06:15.280 True leaders default to trust, they don't withhold it.

00:06:18.240 Rule number six, take the bullet for your team.

00:06:22.320 Bosses, they blame you.

00:06:24.120 Leaders, they blame themselves.

00:06:26.200 Great leaders own every miss first.

00:06:29.700 Something happens, my bad.

00:06:31.420 The language shifts from they messed up to we messed up. 0.96

00:06:35.820 The other day, a video got made and there was an issue.

00:06:39.140 My fault.

00:06:39.980 Somebody on my team lost a bunch of footage, my fault.

00:06:42.700 Your team sees you take the blame

00:06:45.360 for things that are clearly not your fault.

00:06:47.680 That's how you start to build trust.

00:06:49.100 That's how they know you got their back

00:06:51.140 and they're gonna show up to act

00:06:52.920 as if they own it themselves

00:06:54.320 and they're gonna push forward no matter what happens.

00:06:56.200 That's a leader.

00:06:57.160 Ownership builds trust, blame kills it.

00:06:59.880 Trust is required on a team to grow,

00:07:02.400 and that's what leaders know how to do.

00:07:03.840 If you wanna be a true leader,

00:07:05.460 take the bullet for your team.

00:07:06.900 Rule number seven, design the game so people can win.

00:07:11.040 Bosses demand the wins, leaders design them.

00:07:14.320 How can I be frustrated with a team playing a game

00:07:16.600 that I wasn't clear about how to play, how to win,

00:07:18.640 what position they're playing?

00:07:19.660 And that's what happens every day.

00:07:21.120 You think your team knows, they don't.

00:07:23.700 You don't even know.

00:07:24.940 This is a crazy story.

00:07:26.440 One of my editors, Nick, who at the time was 19,

00:07:29.820 One of his dream cars was the Ferrari Peace stuff.

00:07:32.480 I happened to have one of those.

00:07:33.780 And I said, anybody that gets a million view video,

00:07:36.480 at this time we were only doing like 100,000,

00:07:38.380 150,000 views, I will lend you my car for the day.

00:07:41.680 I didn't think anybody would hit it.

00:07:43.080 Nick comes out of nowhere, edits this masterpiece,

00:07:45.980 publish million view videos.

00:07:50.040 And here I am, heart beating,

00:07:51.960 watching a 19 year old roll out of my front yard

00:07:55.220 with my half million dollar super car.

00:07:57.600 That's the philosophy.

00:07:59.120 You have to design the game that when you win,

00:08:02.300 everybody wins.

00:08:03.500 The best example of this

00:08:05.000 is creating a visible scorecard per role

00:08:07.800 with clear success criteria in weekly reporting.

00:08:10.280 Like in my companies,

00:08:11.540 there are scorecards for every department

00:08:13.260 and there's names next to every metric

00:08:14.960 and the people know how they play the game,

00:08:17.460 how their scores are being tallied up,

00:08:19.180 how frequent it is, what their expectations are.

00:08:21.600 That's a leader.

00:08:22.740 Bosses hold people accountable to invisible scorecards

00:08:26.020 that they're never clear about.

00:08:27.160 Ultimately, great leaders are game designers,

00:08:29.800 not just scorekeepers.

00:08:31.200 You have to design the game so people can win.

00:08:34.020 Rule number eight, create rhythm, not chaos.

00:08:38.180 Bosses coach randomly.

00:08:40.480 Leaders coach rhythmically.

00:08:42.400 A great leader realizes that growth compounds

00:08:45.580 through cadences, not chaos.

00:08:48.100 Training and coaching plus unblocking every week

00:08:51.280 is the rhythm of a great leader. 0.99

00:08:53.320 Bosses only show up to help you when shit's on fire. 0.99

00:08:56.400 Leaders go, I'm showing up all the time 0.99

00:08:58.500 because I'm investing in you

00:08:59.880 because I know I'm getting you ready

00:09:01.120 for the big opportunities.

00:09:02.600 And that prevents the fires.

00:09:04.280 They become fire preventers, not firefighters. 0.99

00:09:07.300 I used to be that shitty boss. 0.98

00:09:09.160 They used to hide behind my keyboard. 0.97

00:09:11.480 I didn't want to talk to anybody,

00:09:12.920 never coached anybody,

00:09:14.320 never talked to anybody about like doing things better.

00:09:16.640 And then I'd wonder why my business didn't grow.

00:09:18.820 Today is completely different.

00:09:20.440 Now, minimum every week,

00:09:22.000 I'm doing a 60 minute leadership training

00:09:23.640 where I look at the top challenges,

00:09:25.720 is my whole team is having that if I help them unblock it,

00:09:29.340 we create the most value for my business.

00:09:31.200 I believe that's how we build momentum.

00:09:32.840 Success is all about the rhythms.

00:09:34.360 If you have a rhythm for investing in people,

00:09:36.800 the people will grow.

00:09:37.760 You use rhythms to build the people,

00:09:40.260 the people build the business.

00:09:42.100 You have to create rhythm, not chaos.

00:09:44.860 Rule number nine, implement sensors for decisions.

00:09:48.940 Bosses rely on gut, leaders rely on sensors.

00:09:51.880 A sensor is something that will catch an output or an activity before it becomes fatal.

00:09:58.520 A sensor in business is a survey to a customer, is some kind of report from your CRM solution,

00:10:04.180 some kind of financial analysis, but essentially it's proactively asking,

00:10:09.260 how is this person or department doing so I can get a feedback loop and get proactive, not reactive.

00:10:15.060 A simple example of this is I get a daily cash report

00:10:18.980 on every one of my businesses sent via email

00:10:22.020 to my inbox that I scan every morning.

00:10:24.660 Having that daily report creates a sensor

00:10:27.200 that gives me peace of mind to know

00:10:29.000 I'll never be surprised with the financials.

00:10:30.860 Another example is to have a scorecard design

00:10:33.420 where everybody's metrics are loaded in

00:10:35.660 and that creates trend lines.

00:10:37.520 So if you know you have a goal for the quarter

00:10:39.060 and you're already the first month into the quarter,

00:10:41.220 30 days in, if the trend line's off,

00:10:43.260 That's a sensor for you to get involved.

00:10:45.360 Great leaders know how to design great sensors.

00:10:47.920 And the best part is that if you do it right,

00:10:50.120 your team will correct the problem

00:10:51.440 before you have to say anything.

00:10:52.840 Stop running your business on gut feeling

00:10:55.120 and start running it on real data.

00:10:57.380 And by the way, if you want my CEO scorecard template

00:10:59.980 that I use the exact one to track all the key metrics

00:11:02.960 across all my businesses,

00:11:04.000 just click the first link below in the description

00:11:05.900 and I'll send it to you.

00:11:06.820 So remember, implement sensors for decisions.

00:11:10.060 Rule number 10, words matter.

00:11:13.260 Bosses speak loosely. Leaders speak with intentionality. Language is leadership

00:11:18.820 infrastructure. Your team will echo what you repeat to them. And if you use a lot of words

00:11:24.540 off the cuff and you're inconsistent, they won't be able to echo anything because nothing's

00:11:28.600 memorable. It's like when I hear my team repeat phrases like default to trust or outcomes over

00:11:34.480 effort. That's when I know culture is scaling. The whole point is you use language to program

00:11:40.300 the culture within your teams that's what a leader does a boss has no idea there's no intentionality

00:11:45.500 and they just work off the cuff a great way to think about this is how do you codify maybe five

00:11:51.100 culture phrases and repeat them over and over and over again until your team starts saying them

00:11:56.540 without you and here's the big one if you don't give a story for your team to tell they will make

00:12:02.780 up their own and usually it's less interesting negative full of self-doubt because they don't

00:12:08.860 have a brighter star to focus on words matter rule number 11 your energy sets your frequency

00:12:16.940 bosses who they spread chaos leaders set the tone leaders provide clarity it's kind of like

00:12:24.300 your team will adopt your leadership nervous system if you're a chaotic leader always coming

00:12:30.620 in after an event or reading a book and be like oh we're changing this we're changing that and this

00:12:33.580 is up and i'm gonna fix that blah blah blah and you're just like mr chaotic be zero surprise if

00:12:38.460 if that's how your company is.

00:12:39.760 I remember one time I was working with this leader

00:12:41.280 and I noticed every Monday he had like this chaotic approach

00:12:44.940 to running his team meetings,

00:12:46.420 but I think it's because it mirrored

00:12:47.840 his sloppy weekend resets.

00:12:49.720 He would like go off Friday night, get drunk,

00:12:51.760 Saturday, get drunk, Sunday, lay in bed.

00:12:53.640 And I was just like, you do realize that your energy

00:12:56.380 on the Monday meeting is affecting your team.

00:12:58.880 Here's the cool part.

00:12:59.720 He fixed himself first, his team got fixed.

00:13:02.460 Here's a great thing you can do.

00:13:03.800 Start every Monday with a leadership mirror.

00:13:06.680 Write down exactly how you wanna show up for your team

00:13:09.560 before anybody sees you and commit to that.

00:13:12.360 Write them down no matter what.

00:13:13.940 And then ask yourself, did I show up that way for my team?

00:13:17.020 Because guess what?

00:13:17.920 They'll react to the way you show up.

00:13:19.880 Your energy is like a frequency wave

00:13:22.960 that impacts everybody that comes in contact with it,

00:13:25.500 like echoes out to your team.

00:13:27.300 So if you're off, they'll be off.

00:13:29.160 Regulate yourself, you'll regulate the room.

00:13:31.680 Your energy as a leader sets the frequency of your team.

00:13:35.240 Rule 12, ask, don't answer.

00:13:38.440 Bosses command, leaders ask.

00:13:41.380 Answers end in thinking, questions start it.

00:13:44.660 If I tell somebody what to do, I don't have them learning.

00:13:47.740 A question gets them to self-reflect.

00:13:49.640 Sounds so subtle, but it will be one of the most

00:13:51.560 powerful tools you can use as a leader.

00:13:53.860 Use more questions.

00:13:55.380 What beliefs would you have to have

00:13:57.100 to do too many things for too many people?

00:13:59.440 No one can do it better than mine.

00:14:01.540 Boom, what else?

00:14:02.660 The other day I was working

00:14:03.580 with one of my private coaching clients.

00:14:05.200 I would ask them, how do you interact in your meetings?

00:14:08.060 Before weighing in and you set the tone

00:14:10.200 and everybody's like, oh, that's what they think.

00:14:11.880 I'm not gonna contradict them.

00:14:13.180 I want you to step back and ask, hey, what do you think?

00:14:16.920 My favorite example of this

00:14:18.440 is a guy named Patrick Bett David.

00:14:20.060 He's actually my coach.

00:14:21.280 And I've watched him sit in a room on his podcast

00:14:24.060 and be surrounded by people that he completely disagrees with

00:14:28.380 at his core from a values point of view,

00:14:29.800 but still has enough foresight to sit back and go,

00:14:32.900 I'm just curious, what do you think about this?

00:14:34.700 and then he gets all their opinions and then using that he can take it and he can kind of

00:14:39.020 shape his answer instead of going there first he uses their feedback to shape it to get them on

00:14:45.020 board with his strategy it's brilliant to watch that's what true leaders do when my client changed

00:14:49.740 his approach by asking other people what they thought it changed his whole autonomy in his

00:14:53.740 business everybody started taking action on their own because he empowered them to think for example

00:14:58.380 in my life if somebody comes to me with a problem i always ask them what their one three one is

00:15:02.860 One is the problem they're trying to solve.

00:15:04.840 Two is the three options that they consider to solve it.

00:15:07.420 And the third is what's their one recommendation.

00:15:09.540 98% of the time I go, sounds good, do that.

00:15:13.200 Questions build thinkers, not doers.

00:15:15.340 You want more people that think and do,

00:15:17.700 not just do because you told them.

00:15:19.360 What I wanna encourage you to consider

00:15:20.880 is there's probably one of these that you went,

00:15:23.880 oh, I probably do that.

00:15:25.760 That one, I want you to write a comment below

00:15:28.060 and let me know what it is.

00:15:29.400 I want you to have a little accountability,

00:15:31.100 a little bit of honesty with yourself

00:15:32.540 because I know that if you can work on that one

00:15:35.220 over the next 30 days and really make it a priority

00:15:38.120 and then you come back and you watch this again

00:15:40.100 and you work on a second one and a third one

00:15:42.320 over the next year, implementing these 12

00:15:45.540 will change your approach to leadership like nothing else

00:15:48.580 but it requires a commitment and a 30-day focused effort.

00:15:52.180 And remember, if you want access

00:15:53.720 to my CEO scorecard template

00:15:55.140 that I use to track all my business metrics

00:15:57.040 across my teams,

00:15:58.100 click the first link in the description below

00:15:59.760 and I'll send it over.

00:16:00.760 And if you wanna learn how to build a business

00:16:02.320 that runs itself, click the video

00:16:03.880 and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - December 23, 2025

How to Lead Like the Top 1%

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript