Inside This $1 Billion Company Headquarters
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Summary
What if I told you building a billion-dollar company doesn t require a genius idea or getting money from investors? Instead, it comes down to this boring word, culture. Most people think culture is ping-pong tables, pizza parties, and work from home. It s not. I m going to take you behind the scenes at First Form HQ and share with you 5 things that I observed with my own eyes at this billion dollar company, and how you can apply them in your business today.
Transcript
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What if I told you building a billion-dollar company doesn't require a genius idea or getting
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money from investors? Instead, it comes down to this boring word, culture. Most people think
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culture is ping-pong tables, pizza parties, and work from home. It's not. I'm going to take you
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behind the scenes at First Form HQ, the billion-dollar supplement brand, and share with you
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five things that I observed with my own eyes this billion-dollar company do. Oh, and how you can
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apply them in your business today even if you don't have a team. Let's start with step number
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one. Design not default. You have to define your company values. Most people have these words they
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put on a wall and they like look at them and sometimes they recite them in meetings. But to me
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hires are only integrated into the business by how you hire how you inspire and how you fire
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if those three things are not considered in all parts of your value integration then the culture
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can't possibly work what's wild is getting to know andy and sal and watching their approach to their
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own life apply in the business so one thing to note i mean just so you can kind of see
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the place is not clean because you guys are here this is a standard in which we operate
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so this is what the expectation is for you to look into and walk into every day there's not
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the desk are not cluttered the trash cans are not full there's not things on the ground the
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chairs are pushed back this is a standard in which we operate every single day somebody doesn't push
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your chair in like a good little party party trick is a take it put in my office then they
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gotta walk in and you gotta have a conversation of why you didn't put your chair back in so
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it's this is the standard in which we operate our building's five years old you would look at it
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probably think it's six months old. Three years ago, I woke up in my own company and realized I
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didn't want to come to work. I didn't enjoy the people I work with. I used to get annoyed by the
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conversations they were having. But that started a process that taught me that your business should
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be 100% reflection of you. I discovered that I had hired somebody in HR that had an opinion
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here's why we do what we do here are the customers that we want to serve here's what we're about
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and if for whatever reason you're not on board I will pay you $15,000 to remove yourself from the
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team and I will be happy about it and we'll remain friends it'll be no issues because there is so
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much turmoil going on some of my best people decided to take the offer not because they didn't
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want to be there because they didn't know what the future was going to look like the worst part and
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I didn't even think to call my executive leadership team
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because then I know who I can fix this problem with,
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build the business with, build the people with. I just need to get some sense of what this monster
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looks like. And she goes, of course, Dan. Like, I'm in. We're doing this. Three weeks later,
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she quits. If you think about it, values are an extraction of the founding team. Values are the
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process of communicating to other people how you think. The whole reason you're successful is
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because of those things. So you want to ingrain them into the culture. If who you are is how your
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business operates, then you'll love to go to work. Your standards are not what you say they are,
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they're what you accept. You teach people in your company how to treat you. If somebody does
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something that wasn't up to standard and you accept it, even if it's little, you've just told
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them that it's okay. I think if you have a strong culture, you don't need an HR department. Sure,
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somebody has to manage benefits and all that fun stuff. People build HR departments when there's
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problems and it's usually with a small amount of people and they change the whole culture of the
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business for a few people. And that's what happened to me. I had a few people in my business that were
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causing all the commotion. Once I cleared things up, reset the culture, set my standards, the
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business turned around. Which brings us to step number two, train, don't tell. What I love most
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about being at First Form was that they built a dedicated training room where they get together
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as a team often throughout the week to just elevate people, to remind people, to teach people,
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to support them when there's a problem in the business most people default to blame the person
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this person did this this person did this this person's not good enough i like to ask was there
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a checklist and a system that they followed to create that outcome that they didn't follow and
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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
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go okay well if you have a process show me where in the calendar you train them on that process
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oh well you know they i hired them to do a job they should know how to do the job people need
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to be reminded just like we all do so like we need to also train them now if you have a process
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and you train them and then they don't perform now you have a conversation about people the core
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philosophy that i saw executed to build that business is they build the people the people
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build the business i want to share with you a few leadership and culture philosophies that i think
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allow me to scale my empire first off most people get stuck in the tell check next doom loop where
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they wake up in the morning and they have a dozen people to report to them and they tell them what
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to do they check that it got done and they tell them what to do next the challenge with that is
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that they'll always be the bottleneck for the person understanding what they should work on
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next billion dollar companies don't tell them what to do they train them what to do and it was crazy
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watching how they've integrated this concept of teaching training mentorship across the company
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i mean they took it to another level they even have the first form app which is a mobile app
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that everybody gets access to and it's designed with all the sops in there the training the
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communication protocol ways to connect with each other features that get questions answered i mean
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it is integration into their culture essentially they have a process for everything and i loved it
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sal called it a culture system not our culture a culture system why because a system has routine
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it has rhythms it has structure and it's always moving and improving which brings us to step
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number three understand their five-year goals most people treat strangers way better than their
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own team it's funny because it's also in relationships your parent is going to get
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the worst version of you more than the person you just meet walking down the street and what
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i saw is billion dollar companies understand their team's goals and more specifically how
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to motivate them and align to theirs when you connect the internal motivation to the external
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needs of the company then they will propel themselves forward once i get them to tell
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me what their dream is i ask them to visualize it and put it as a wallpaper on their phone
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Why is this super duper cool? Because when I walk around the office, I just tap the phone.
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I literally just tap the phone and I look at what they have and I remember. So when I'm about to go
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up and talk to them about like performance, I say, hey man, you know that thing you wanted to create
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or you want to go live on that yacht? I want you to live on that yacht. Work with me. You're not
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showing up the way somebody that lives on a yacht shows up, just so you know. What would you do
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and put their own personal life essentially on pause
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And he would just like keep getting more responsibility,
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one amongst a handful of others that I never had to worry about was that person and when I decided
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after I got through that pain to then go start my media company to support the book that person was
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the person I called to help me create that way and he lived 4,000 miles away and I said hey man
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if you want this opportunity the only thing is you're gonna have to move here 10 days later he
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shows up at my door knock knock knock open the door he's standing there we're early day startup
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trying to figure it out we were built we had to find a studio space we were like committed to
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doing this and he started building and showing up and doing this stuff with his team and I would
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tell him along the way I was like hey man I need you to be rich I literally say that to him I need
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you to be rich I want to give him a raise you know what he says to me give it to the team
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I said, dude, I think that car, it's about time.
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I talked to my wife about it, and I said, we're going to surprise it.
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And we called it Project White Monster, okay?
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so that he would never figure it out because the whole team drinks energy drinks right
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they thought we were just buying a pallet or something and when we land I said hey man
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um Loan's gonna meet us at the car dealership because the you know the team there wants to
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show me a new car because I buy a lot of cars and he's like they want me to buy another car so
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can you just come with me I want your opinion he's like cool so we're walking and I looked I was like
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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
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sales guy goes no that's a gt4 and we walk over and we're walking around
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and i said isn't it white the one you wanted and he pulls out his phone he shows it to me
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and i tell her what i just told you guys about how much it meant to me that i never have to
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think about him that he always does for the team and i took the keys out and i said i know because
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you'll never do it for yourself i did it for you i will tell you this buying cars are cool
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His name is Sam Gaudet, and he's standing right there.
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If you think about it, there's only four ways to motivate a person.
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Some people wanna know like, hey, if I do this work,
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They wanna be in a position to grow, to develop,
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but I wanna talk about it in detail in the next step,
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Which brings us step number four, show them the future.
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to do this with their teams, which is go visit,
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see with their eyes what other great companies are doing.
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so that they can have a physical reaction to this space.
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And I will tell you, I brought seven CEOs of First Form
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into the container that they believe in their mind
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what other people are doing at the highest level,
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And the cool part is once you expand, you can't contract.
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First off, show your team what best looks like.
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talk about their industry and their business as a team
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The other thing is to inspire them through other people.
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And I'm like, yes, that's what I'm talking about.
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And I mean, I remember Andy talking about this,
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because they hear it and see it all around them.
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that I immediately integrated into all my companies
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first form gives a $2 an hour raise to everybody that reads three recommended books and then give
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a verbal book report to their leader and they have a whole library with copies of these books
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anybody can get them and the philosophy is just so simple if i invest in my people and they make
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better decisions and they learn how to show up for the team better than the whole business wins
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the roi is like 20x these are three ways that you can start investing in your team just like first
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for. The first one is just knowledge investment. It's more than just books. I mean, there are so
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many online courses that you can have people research and buy for them. You can also get them
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coaches. I think that's one of the moves that most leaders don't consider is actually getting people
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mentorship for their teams, especially if the person has a lot of potential. The second one is
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health investment. I have a rule in my life and I have an unlimited budget for two things. One is
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investments in my mind and my growth. And the other one is investments in my health. What did I see?
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I saw that they had a kitchen with healthy food.
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a CrossFit course, a full-size basketball court.
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They believe that healthy teams are strong teams
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The more you can put your top leaders in places
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so I think of like events they need to identify for their industry I help them create masterminds
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to me that's a pro move like if I know one of my leaders doesn't have the network to actually
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learn and grow I'll support them by introducing to people I know that could help them I did this
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last night I was at a dinner and one of the guys top guys was looking for some advice I connected
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with somebody on my team and I said hey you guys should connect you should create an internal
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mastermind you can encourage them to host roundtables with their peers and they're the
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facilitator because then they're going to be the one learning from everybody else when they bring
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them together. After the trip was all done on the flight back, I sat down with everybody and I asked
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them to write down their three biggest takeaways. We went around the plane. There was about eight of
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us. Everybody listened to what they took away and the why. The why was so important because that's
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the integration. It's I heard this. This is why it's important to me. And other people were like,
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oh yeah, I didn't consider that. And then we locked those in. We just asked everybody to say,
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what's the one action item you're going to integrate in the next two weeks based on that
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experience and that's it some people overwhelm themselves when they learn new things i'm all
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about just get one percent better you've been inspired you'll take that knowledge with you
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for the rest of your life so you'll be able to pull on it when it's needed but don't get
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overwhelmed for me the big thing was have a crystal clear picture of the future andy told
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this incredible story where in 2009 he presented the vision for the building we were in 180 000
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square foot hq and there was 30 people on his team at the time how long did you think of building it
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before you got to building it building this yeah like like knowing this i gave a meeting in 2009
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where i drew this on the board right up the road about a quarter mile there's a there's an
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interchange at 141 and 44 and there was a open lot there i didn't have any money so i started
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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
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to make it happen you know buy now pay later yeah and i drew it out and i went so far it was pretty
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cool because tom young who drew our original supplement super stores logo which was i paid
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him 50 bucks for it it took me three years to pay him the 50 bucks back yeah dude when i said we were
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were broke yeah and broke the best stories ever yeah so it took me three so the same guy i paid
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him to make a sketch of the outside of the building and the inside of the building so that i
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could show my team that's where we're going and uh we did the meeting there was like i don't know
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30 people there at that time and i think three are still here yeah most everybody you know kind
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of thought i was full of shit you see it in your head way before it actually happens to hold it
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You gotta understand, not everybody is gonna be on board,
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that you're gonna integrate into your business or your team
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If you wanna learn how to build a business that runs itself,
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click the link and I'll see you on the other side.