Dan Martell - Inside This $1 Billion Company Headquarters

00:00:00.000 What if I told you building a billion-dollar company doesn't require a genius idea or getting

00:00:05.500 money from investors? Instead, it comes down to this boring word, culture. Most people think

00:00:10.840 culture is ping-pong tables, pizza parties, and work from home. It's not. I'm going to take you

00:00:15.900 behind the scenes at First Form HQ, the billion-dollar supplement brand, and share with you

00:00:21.380 five things that I observed with my own eyes this billion-dollar company do. Oh, and how you can

00:00:27.600 apply them in your business today even if you don't have a team. Let's start with step number

00:00:40.900 one. Design not default. You have to define your company values. Most people have these words they

00:00:46.940 put on a wall and they like look at them and sometimes they recite them in meetings. But to me

00:00:51.240 hires are only integrated into the business by how you hire how you inspire and how you fire

00:00:57.720 if those three things are not considered in all parts of your value integration then the culture

00:01:02.860 can't possibly work what's wild is getting to know andy and sal and watching their approach to their

00:01:09.640 own life apply in the business so one thing to note i mean just so you can kind of see

00:01:13.860 the place is not clean because you guys are here this is a standard in which we operate

00:01:18.380 so this is what the expectation is for you to look into and walk into every day there's not

00:01:23.940 the desk are not cluttered the trash cans are not full there's not things on the ground the

00:01:27.460 chairs are pushed back this is a standard in which we operate every single day somebody doesn't push

00:01:31.940 your chair in like a good little party party trick is a take it put in my office then they

00:01:35.140 gotta walk in and you gotta have a conversation of why you didn't put your chair back in so

00:01:38.700 it's this is the standard in which we operate our building's five years old you would look at it

00:01:43.080 probably think it's six months old. Three years ago, I woke up in my own company and realized I

00:01:49.040 didn't want to come to work. I didn't enjoy the people I work with. I used to get annoyed by the

00:01:52.680 conversations they were having. But that started a process that taught me that your business should

00:01:58.700 be 100% reflection of you. I discovered that I had hired somebody in HR that had an opinion

00:02:07.980 about what kind of people we should hire

00:02:10.580 that was completely different

00:02:12.140 than what I would have done.

00:02:13.900 Guess what her name was? 0.92

00:02:17.520 Karen.

00:02:18.300 I can't even make this up.

00:02:21.420 And out of inspiration and desperation,

00:02:24.720 I pull up Slack.

00:02:26.540 And I go to the general channel

00:02:28.140 and I write essentially a call to arms.

00:02:32.180 I said, here's why we exist as a company.

00:02:34.580 Here's what we're going to go create.

00:02:36.020 here's why we do what we do here are the customers that we want to serve here's what we're about

00:02:41.520 and if for whatever reason you're not on board I will pay you $15,000 to remove yourself from the

00:02:50.240 team and I will be happy about it and we'll remain friends it'll be no issues because there is so

00:02:54.820 much turmoil going on some of my best people decided to take the offer not because they didn't

00:03:00.960 want to be there because they didn't know what the future was going to look like the worst part and

00:03:04.460 just in case you guys decide to do this,

00:03:06.580 I didn't even think to call my executive leadership team

00:03:09.160 and tell them I was going to do this.

00:03:10.420 That made things worse.

00:03:12.900 Every day was a fire.

00:03:15.140 I'm in Costa Rica with my family,

00:03:18.180 and I walk outside the coffee shop

00:03:20.140 where we're having breakfast,

00:03:21.020 and I call my COO at the time,

00:03:23.240 and I said, if you're not in, that's fine,

00:03:25.260 and it's my fault, and I'm so sorry

00:03:26.580 that this is not going to work out,

00:03:27.680 but if you're in, I need you to know you're in

00:03:30.520 because then I know who I can fix this problem with,

00:03:33.400 build the business with, build the people with. I just need to get some sense of what this monster

00:03:38.160 looks like. And she goes, of course, Dan. Like, I'm in. We're doing this. Three weeks later,

00:03:44.420 she quits. If you think about it, values are an extraction of the founding team. Values are the

00:03:50.540 process of communicating to other people how you think. The whole reason you're successful is

00:03:56.240 because of those things. So you want to ingrain them into the culture. If who you are is how your

00:04:02.120 business operates, then you'll love to go to work. Your standards are not what you say they are,

00:04:07.160 they're what you accept. You teach people in your company how to treat you. If somebody does

00:04:11.760 something that wasn't up to standard and you accept it, even if it's little, you've just told

00:04:16.240 them that it's okay. I think if you have a strong culture, you don't need an HR department. Sure,

00:04:20.960 somebody has to manage benefits and all that fun stuff. People build HR departments when there's

00:04:24.960 problems and it's usually with a small amount of people and they change the whole culture of the

00:04:29.060 business for a few people. And that's what happened to me. I had a few people in my business that were

00:04:33.500 causing all the commotion. Once I cleared things up, reset the culture, set my standards, the

00:04:38.580 business turned around. Which brings us to step number two, train, don't tell. What I love most

00:04:44.460 about being at First Form was that they built a dedicated training room where they get together

00:04:49.620 as a team often throughout the week to just elevate people, to remind people, to teach people,

00:04:54.960 to support them when there's a problem in the business most people default to blame the person

00:04:59.520 this person did this this person did this this person's not good enough i like to ask was there

00:05:04.720 a checklist and a system that they followed to create that outcome that they didn't follow and

00:05:10.080 if so show it to me most of the time they can't show me that so they don't have a process and i

00:05:14.480 go okay well if you have a process show me where in the calendar you train them on that process

00:05:19.360 oh well you know they i hired them to do a job they should know how to do the job people need

00:05:23.120 to be reminded just like we all do so like we need to also train them now if you have a process

00:05:28.160 and you train them and then they don't perform now you have a conversation about people the core

00:05:32.560 philosophy that i saw executed to build that business is they build the people the people

00:05:38.000 build the business i want to share with you a few leadership and culture philosophies that i think

00:05:42.320 allow me to scale my empire first off most people get stuck in the tell check next doom loop where

00:05:48.880 they wake up in the morning and they have a dozen people to report to them and they tell them what

00:05:51.920 to do they check that it got done and they tell them what to do next the challenge with that is

00:05:56.080 that they'll always be the bottleneck for the person understanding what they should work on

00:05:59.840 next billion dollar companies don't tell them what to do they train them what to do and it was crazy

00:06:05.520 watching how they've integrated this concept of teaching training mentorship across the company

00:06:10.560 i mean they took it to another level they even have the first form app which is a mobile app

00:06:14.720 that everybody gets access to and it's designed with all the sops in there the training the

00:06:19.680 communication protocol ways to connect with each other features that get questions answered i mean

00:06:24.720 it is integration into their culture essentially they have a process for everything and i loved it

00:06:31.040 sal called it a culture system not our culture a culture system why because a system has routine

00:06:37.440 it has rhythms it has structure and it's always moving and improving which brings us to step

00:06:42.000 number three understand their five-year goals most people treat strangers way better than their

00:06:49.200 own team it's funny because it's also in relationships your parent is going to get

00:06:53.440 the worst version of you more than the person you just meet walking down the street and what

00:06:57.120 i saw is billion dollar companies understand their team's goals and more specifically how

00:07:01.920 to motivate them and align to theirs when you connect the internal motivation to the external

00:07:07.760 needs of the company then they will propel themselves forward once i get them to tell

00:07:12.800 me what their dream is i ask them to visualize it and put it as a wallpaper on their phone

00:07:19.040 Why is this super duper cool? Because when I walk around the office, I just tap the phone.

00:07:27.520 I literally just tap the phone and I look at what they have and I remember. So when I'm about to go

00:07:31.480 up and talk to them about like performance, I say, hey man, you know that thing you wanted to create

00:07:34.780 or you want to go live on that yacht? I want you to live on that yacht. Work with me. You're not

00:07:39.620 showing up the way somebody that lives on a yacht shows up, just so you know. What would you do

00:07:44.180 for somebody that showed up for you for years

00:07:49.480 and put their own personal life essentially on pause

00:07:53.020 to help you build your dream.

00:07:56.100 I have somebody like that on my team.

00:07:58.220 And I would talk to people he reported to

00:07:59.640 and they would all say great things.

00:08:01.520 And he would just like keep getting more responsibility,

00:08:04.720 keep stepping up, keep doing it.

00:08:07.240 And when I went through that storm of a life

00:08:10.280 in that company three years ago,

00:08:12.240 one amongst a handful of others that I never had to worry about was that person and when I decided

00:08:19.100 after I got through that pain to then go start my media company to support the book that person was

00:08:27.300 the person I called to help me create that way and he lived 4,000 miles away and I said hey man

00:08:34.100 if you want this opportunity the only thing is you're gonna have to move here 10 days later he

00:08:38.600 shows up at my door knock knock knock open the door he's standing there we're early day startup

00:08:45.360 trying to figure it out we were built we had to find a studio space we were like committed to

00:08:49.720 doing this and he started building and showing up and doing this stuff with his team and I would

00:08:57.460 tell him along the way I was like hey man I need you to be rich I literally say that to him I need

00:09:01.620 you to be rich I want to give him a raise you know what he says to me give it to the team

00:09:06.540 And I'm like, you know, hitting his phone.

00:09:11.000 I said, dude, I think that car, it's about time.

00:09:16.060 Instead, he buys himself a house.

00:09:19.600 22 years old.

00:09:21.720 I went down to Cabo for an event.

00:09:23.700 He was with me.

00:09:24.860 I was flying back.

00:09:26.360 I talked to my wife about it, and I said, we're going to surprise it.

00:09:31.320 And we called it Project White Monster, okay? 0.50

00:09:34.020 so that he would never figure it out because the whole team drinks energy drinks right

00:09:37.500 they thought we were just buying a pallet or something and when we land I said hey man

00:09:41.780 um Loan's gonna meet us at the car dealership because the you know the team there wants to

00:09:47.700 show me a new car because I buy a lot of cars and he's like they want me to buy another car so

00:09:50.980 can you just come with me I want your opinion he's like cool so we're walking and I looked I was like

00:09:56.100 hey man it what what's your dream car and he says a porsche gt4 i said isn't is that a gt3 gt and

00:10:06.580 sales guy goes no that's a gt4 and we walk over and we're walking around 0.51

00:10:13.060 and i said isn't it white the one you wanted and he pulls out his phone he shows it to me

00:10:19.300 and i tell her what i just told you guys about how much it meant to me that i never have to

00:10:30.240 think about him that he always does for the team and i took the keys out and i said i know because

00:10:33.480 you'll never do it for yourself i did it for you i will tell you this buying cars are cool

00:10:42.520 giving people cars is way cooler

00:10:44.960 His name is Sam Gaudet, and he's standing right there.

00:11:05.740 That's why this is so important.

00:11:07.940 If you think about it, there's only four ways to motivate a person.

00:11:11.820 The first one is money.

00:11:13.560 Some people wanna be rich.

00:11:15.140 Some people wanna know like, hey, if I do this work,

00:11:17.620 if I show up, if I invest myself,

00:11:19.520 if I give you my best years of my life,

00:11:22.020 tell me how I'm gonna get rich.

00:11:24.200 The second one is title.

00:11:26.100 People want to have teams.

00:11:28.160 They wanna be in a position to grow, to develop,

00:11:31.380 to be part of strategic conversations

00:11:33.380 and titles matter to them.

00:11:34.700 And the third is have more responsibility.

00:11:36.340 Just see what their potential is.

00:11:38.540 Number four is growth,

00:11:39.580 but I wanna talk about it in detail in the next step,

00:11:41.660 Which brings us step number four, show them the future.

00:11:45.800 The reason I went to First Form

00:11:47.600 is because I was doing a benchmarking trip.

00:11:49.440 This is a strategy I learned 20 years ago,

00:11:51.480 and I encourage all the CEOs of my companies

00:11:53.660 to do this with their teams, which is go visit,

00:11:56.640 see with their eyes what other great companies are doing.

00:12:00.040 What I've learned is some things

00:12:01.360 can only be caught, not taught.

00:12:03.140 You need to put the person in the room

00:12:04.920 so that they can have a physical reaction to this space.

00:12:08.500 And I will tell you, I brought seven CEOs of First Form

00:12:10.940 and all of them had the same experience.

00:12:13.120 They were like, wow, there's another level.

00:12:15.100 We have to operate there.

00:12:16.740 The reason why is because people can only grow

00:12:19.440 into the container that they believe in their mind

00:12:21.800 that's possible.

00:12:22.580 And when you bring them into a space,

00:12:24.400 into a physical location and show them

00:12:26.640 what other people are doing at the highest level,

00:12:28.940 they now have this new reference point.

00:12:30.600 And the cool part is once you expand, you can't contract.

00:12:34.160 Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

00:12:36.880 This is how I integrated into my companies.

00:12:38.660 First off, show your team what best looks like.

00:12:41.660 Show them.

00:12:42.440 Show them reports, show them operations,

00:12:44.740 show them people, have them watch videos.

00:12:47.160 Like if you can't pay to go fly somewheres,

00:12:49.660 just go online and watch the best people

00:12:51.900 talk about their industry and their business as a team

00:12:54.600 and then share notes.

00:12:55.860 The other thing is to inspire them through other people.

00:12:58.200 My favorite thing was one of my GMs

00:12:59.800 wanted to build a relationship with Sal

00:13:01.580 because he's such a great operator.

00:13:03.020 And he's like, man, I really need somebody

00:13:04.360 like that in my life.

00:13:05.200 And I'm like, yes, that's what I'm talking about.

00:13:07.360 be inspired by the other people

00:13:09.480 and actually look at ways

00:13:10.820 to build relationships with them.

00:13:12.180 Here's my philosophy

00:13:13.160 and I tell this to my team all the time.

00:13:14.940 If you're only learning

00:13:16.400 from everybody else in this room, 0.99

00:13:18.540 we're all screwed. 0.97

00:13:19.720 You need to be outside of these walls, 0.98

00:13:22.040 talking to people in other companies,

00:13:24.200 learning from people doing your job

00:13:26.160 in those companies

00:13:27.120 to try to understand what's working for them

00:13:29.120 because we don't have the answers.

00:13:31.160 The whole point of building the company

00:13:32.640 is to do things you've never done before.

00:13:34.180 So where are they supposed to learn

00:13:35.580 if you don't encourage them to go outside

00:13:37.680 of your own company to get those answers.

00:13:39.780 You see the inspiration all around you.

00:13:42.060 And I mean, I remember Andy talking about this,

00:13:44.060 but First Form got inspired by Nike,

00:13:45.900 but their plan is to be way bigger than Nike.

00:13:48.460 That vision inspires everybody else

00:13:50.500 because they hear it and see it all around them.

00:13:52.700 Which brings us to step five,

00:13:54.240 invest in your people's growth.

00:13:56.500 This is one of my favorite things I saw

00:13:58.260 that might sound simple to a lot of people

00:14:00.000 that I immediately integrated into all my companies

00:14:02.580 that I think you should do as well.

00:14:03.940 first form gives a $2 an hour raise to everybody that reads three recommended books and then give

00:14:10.900 a verbal book report to their leader and they have a whole library with copies of these books

00:14:15.560 anybody can get them and the philosophy is just so simple if i invest in my people and they make

00:14:21.440 better decisions and they learn how to show up for the team better than the whole business wins

00:14:26.100 the roi is like 20x these are three ways that you can start investing in your team just like first

00:14:32.260 for. The first one is just knowledge investment. It's more than just books. I mean, there are so

00:14:37.020 many online courses that you can have people research and buy for them. You can also get them

00:14:41.580 coaches. I think that's one of the moves that most leaders don't consider is actually getting people

00:14:47.120 mentorship for their teams, especially if the person has a lot of potential. The second one is

00:14:51.480 health investment. I have a rule in my life and I have an unlimited budget for two things. One is

00:14:56.320 investments in my mind and my growth. And the other one is investments in my health. What did I see?

00:15:00.560 I saw that they had a kitchen with healthy food.

00:15:03.700 I saw a gym that was world-class.

00:15:06.100 They have literally like a high rocks course,

00:15:08.880 a CrossFit course, a full-size basketball court.

00:15:12.420 I mean, this place was fricking beautiful.

00:15:14.940 They believe that healthy teams are strong teams

00:15:17.460 and that's how we build culture.

00:15:19.200 The third is networking events.

00:15:20.760 Think about this.

00:15:21.380 The more you can put your top leaders in places

00:15:24.120 where they're gonna interact and interface

00:15:25.740 with other people doing really cool things,

00:15:27.840 you're gonna win.

00:15:28.480 so I think of like events they need to identify for their industry I help them create masterminds

00:15:33.980 to me that's a pro move like if I know one of my leaders doesn't have the network to actually

00:15:38.740 learn and grow I'll support them by introducing to people I know that could help them I did this

00:15:43.080 last night I was at a dinner and one of the guys top guys was looking for some advice I connected

00:15:47.740 with somebody on my team and I said hey you guys should connect you should create an internal

00:15:51.500 mastermind you can encourage them to host roundtables with their peers and they're the

00:15:56.020 facilitator because then they're going to be the one learning from everybody else when they bring

00:15:59.380 them together. After the trip was all done on the flight back, I sat down with everybody and I asked

00:16:03.800 them to write down their three biggest takeaways. We went around the plane. There was about eight of

00:16:07.960 us. Everybody listened to what they took away and the why. The why was so important because that's

00:16:13.560 the integration. It's I heard this. This is why it's important to me. And other people were like,

00:16:18.080 oh yeah, I didn't consider that. And then we locked those in. We just asked everybody to say,

00:16:22.240 what's the one action item you're going to integrate in the next two weeks based on that

00:16:26.140 experience and that's it some people overwhelm themselves when they learn new things i'm all

00:16:30.320 about just get one percent better you've been inspired you'll take that knowledge with you

00:16:34.780 for the rest of your life so you'll be able to pull on it when it's needed but don't get

00:16:38.220 overwhelmed for me the big thing was have a crystal clear picture of the future andy told

00:16:44.340 this incredible story where in 2009 he presented the vision for the building we were in 180 000

00:16:50.720 square foot hq and there was 30 people on his team at the time how long did you think of building it

00:16:56.960 before you got to building it building this yeah like like knowing this i gave a meeting in 2009

00:17:07.280 where i drew this on the board right up the road about a quarter mile there's a there's an

00:17:11.600 interchange at 141 and 44 and there was a open lot there i didn't have any money so i started

00:17:18.400 talking to the guys who owned it and i'm like there's a yeah i'd like to see if there's a way

00:17:22.720 to make it happen you know buy now pay later yeah and i drew it out and i went so far it was pretty

00:17:29.760 cool because tom young who drew our original supplement super stores logo which was i paid

00:17:36.480 him 50 bucks for it it took me three years to pay him the 50 bucks back yeah dude when i said we were

00:17:42.400 were broke yeah and broke the best stories ever yeah so it took me three so the same guy i paid

00:17:48.380 him to make a sketch of the outside of the building and the inside of the building so that i

00:17:54.300 could show my team that's where we're going and uh we did the meeting there was like i don't know

00:18:01.140 30 people there at that time and i think three are still here yeah most everybody you know kind 0.96

00:18:07.940 of thought i was full of shit you see it in your head way before it actually happens to hold it 0.98

00:18:12.000 and just hold it and hold it and hold it. 0.99

00:18:14.180 You gotta understand, not everybody is gonna be on board,

00:18:17.800 but the ones that are, are the people

00:18:20.080 that are gonna build the business with you.

00:18:21.840 So now that you've watched this,

00:18:23.120 I want you to write down three takeaways

00:18:25.720 that really resonated with you,

00:18:26.920 but make a commitment to one action item

00:18:29.400 that you're gonna integrate into your business or your team

00:18:31.800 and leave a comment below.

00:18:33.060 If you wanna learn how to build a business that runs itself,

00:18:35.660 click the link and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - June 10, 2025

Inside This $1 Billion Company Headquarters

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