the only 3 skills you need to get rich...

I went from hating the place I worked at to not only changing the whole culture and loving the place, but working my way out of being involved or running the business. And it continues to grow every month and make more money than when I was actually CEO. But I want to share the three things that changed everything for me. Welcome to the Growth Stacking Show. This is Dan Martell. If you love to read, my new book is out. Buy back your time. You can get it on Amazon or any other retailer where books sold or buybackyourtime.com it's going to help you build a business you don't grow to hate. Buy back your time. If you read it. I would love, love, love a review on Amazon so it could help it get in front of other people just like you. So let's get into this episode. I built a company called SaaS Academy. It's the largest coaching organization in the world for software C CEOs. We grew it to almost, you know, I think 12 million in four years or something crazy like that team of 65 people doing incredible thousand plus clients. Everybody calling. Tony Robbins called and asked us, hey, how'd you guys do that? Like, literally we were on top, you know, Cloud nine. And I realized I had a culture problem because I didn't even want to go on meetings. Has anybody ever been in that position where they work with somebody and they only want to talk to them? All right, cool. So you guys can at least resonate with that. Well, it confused me because I'm the guy that has built and exited companies and no leadership and all this stuff. And I started figuring out there were some people on the team that shouldn't have been there. It's always my fault. I'm just gonna tell you guys all everything I'm about to tell you. 100% this guy's fault. First thing I realized, I made a mistake in hr because, you know, HR is responsible for hiring people. Does that make sense? Well, I hired me a doozy of an HR person. Does anybody want to guess what her name was? Her name was Karen. I know I'm not that clever. Sign number one that maybe you shouldn't hire. You can't make this stuff up. I hired a Karen I in my business. And it was frustrating me so much. Cause I love going to work. I don't know about you guys. My dad told me a long time ago, if you find something you're passionate about that you love to do, you'll never work a day in your life. And it started to feel heavy, like And I was, I remember like I was talking to my wife and I'm like, I don't know, like I don't get. I'm trying to be like accommodating, but this is happening. And this happened. And then there was an issue with one of the leaders that didn't report to me but was on my team. And I just like, I. There was like several things that happened and I just freaked out. And I decided out of frustration to go on Slack. I opened up the app general chat channel and I wrote out a chat post. And I know, I know you guys are like, you should have slept on it. Nope. And I'm writing out the chat post and in that moment I essentially tell the whole company, okay, 65 plus people, this is my vision, this is what we're doing. We're making about the customers. And if you're not on board, I will pay you $15,000 to quit immediately. And I hit post. My directors immediately called me and said, dude, I've been fielding calls for the last hour, what the f are you doing? And I was like, I'm sick of this, I'm sick of it. If people have issues with the way we're operating, get off the team. Here was the problem. Some of the people we wanted on the team took the offer. And I'll tell you why. Because they were just fed up with the drama. You know what's crazy is your C players that are causing you issues will sacrifice your A players. Write that down. C players will cost you your A players. And it kept going on. I thought, okay, this is going to be a brush fire. It's going to clear everything and we'll be good. Then I find out my chief, my head of sales essentially who had been like, I'm on board with you, Dan. We got this, we'll fix this, blah blah blah. I decided to do skip line meetings, which is you kind of like do one on ones with people that are further down the organization. And it turns out this ding dong, my fault though, okay? 100% this guy. Turns out I let a ding dong onto my team that not only had not done a one on one or sales training for months, he had taken some of the IP that we had been that we delivered to our customers and started a side hustle coaching. I know other people that broke my heart, somebody I really admired. And I was like, oh geez. And it kept going on. I think we lost through the posts and the back and forth. Have you ever had people issues with one person? You're on the phone all the time, right? I was on vacation. This lasted for about six months, and it put me into a tailspin. I was having. I was sad. I'm not a sad person. I was having anxiety problems. I was a little depressed. And I'm on vacation in Costa Rica with the family. It was kind of hard because I was dealing with so much. My wife wanted to support me, and she had to watch me on my phone, pacing on the patio, pacing up and down the pool area. Anybody else ever have to go through something like that where you're just a little distracted? And I just got to a point where I remember I was talking to my coo, Nancy, and I was just like, Like, Nancy, you're on board, right? She's like, yeah, for sure. Like, Dan, what we're doing here is incredible. Our customers are awesome. Like, they're happy. Blah, blah, blah. Like, I'm in it to win it. And I was like, okay, cool. Because, like, I can deal with issues. I just need to know what I'm dealing with. Does that make sense? A week later, she resigns. I know. So after losing more than 30% of my team and just feeling absolutely depleted and my ass kicked and just why is this happening? I finally called my business partner, Matt, who him and I own a venture capital firm called High Speed Ventures. Okay. Matt runs the company. He's my partner. And I was coming back from a trip, and I remember exactly where I was in that moment. And I call him up and I said, hey, dude, is there any world potentially that you would kind of come over to SaaS Academy for the next six months and maybe help me fix this? And his response was, I was wondering how long you were going to wait before you asked me that. Luckily, he said yes. Before we get back to the episode, if you actually want to know what my real life looks like and see the people and the businesses and the companies I buy and my family and just like, how I make it all work? Go. Follow me on Instagram. Dan Martell 2 Elsa Martell on Instagram. It's where I show the behind the scenes, the real deal, real time. I'd love to see you there. Have an amazing day. And what we did, he did, I learned over the next. Honestly, four months didn't take that much time is what I want to share with you. Because it allowed us to build the company to almost 20+ million in the next 12 months, build one of the highest culture NPS scores we've ever done. We started tracking employee net promoter score, highest score and you guys want to hear something crazy? I'm no longer in the business. I know. Well, you. Clap it up. Still hurt my feelings, but, yeah, let's clap that up for the team, not me. Clap it up. We can talk about that, but I want to share the three things that really changed everything for me. Some of it I knew, but oftentimes we need to be reminded. Does that make sense? All right, so first thing is I want you guys to write this down, is know their dreams. Know their dreams. Okay? Because that doesn't matter what stage you're at. You're about to hire your first person or you've got a team of. Honestly, I coach people that have, you know, 14,000 employees. The key is for the people that report to you. You need to know their dreams, because here's what I've learned. And everybody want to hire great people. Yes. Yes, Perfect. Well, great people need to be able to see that they can create their dreams within yours. So the rule is that if you don't have a vision big enough for your team's dreams and goals to fit inside of, you're thinking too small. Write that down. Draw a circle. You can say vision, My vision. My team's vision and goals inside of that. Because you won't be able to attract and retain top talent if you don't have that. So my rule is very simple. This is your prescription. This is my invitation for you to consider. Is every person you interview. I just interviewed a bunch of people yesterday for a bunch of cool positions in my life. And every interview, I always end with the same thing. Pretend we can't work together. So we take that option off the table. Okay? Can't hurt my feelings. In five years from now, you wake up and magically you wave a magic wand and you're living your perfect life. Where are you living? What are you doing? How much money are you making? Who are you hanging out with? Feel free to brag, to dream. I'm all for it. For example, one of the ladies I interviewed yesterday for. She's going to be the assistant to my assistant. Sounds crazy. Very. Like, if you don't think. If you've never considered that a. If you don't have an assistant. An executive assistant's key. It's what my book's all about, really. But we needed to hire her another. Because she's that busy. And what was cool, she was from Brazil, and she said her two goals or dreams are one. She wants to live in Florida on the beach. Currently, she lives in Brazil. Okay, put that in the back of my mind, Kate, she wants to live in Brazil. Got it. Number two, she wants to have a business, okay. Selling patterns on the Internet. You guys know what those are like, pattern design people. Okay, well, good. I didn't either. It turns out I actually coach one of the top women. Her name is Bonnie Christie. And this is how niche you can be as a coach. She teaches people how to create designs and patterns that then companies buy for T shirts, fabrics, wallpapers, that kind of stuff. Now does that make sense? Perfect. So I'm all excited because A, I have an immigration lawyer. I have a real estate agent in Florida, and I know the top person in the world. Now, I don't tell her this. I now know that I can help her achieve her dreams and goals. Does that make sense? So here's the key and why it's so important is that you need to be able to map their desires to your desires. See, all of us want people to show up for us, and I think that's actually dumb because it's better for them to be selfishly, inherently wanting to drive towards their goals, not ours. As long as we show them how they're aligned, this stuff is going to change the game for whatever business you're in. This is the stuff that will change the way you. Because I just think most entrepreneurs end up building companies that grow to hate. Is that lame for some of you guys? It's not the economy. It takes us a business. It's because we ended up building the business in a way that. That we grew to hate. As an example, I do this exercise with everybody. My direct reports. I got a guy on my team named Sam. He's very important part of my new media company. He's my creative director. He's my business partner. I've been working with him for six years and he's just showed up every day to help me create my vision. So I wanted to bless him up a little bit. He's the kind of guy that every time I'd say, hey man, I need you to be rich, he's like, or I'm here to learn, not earn. Super great, dude. Every time I. And I'd say, well, I want to give you more money, he said, give it to the team, right? And he's so financially responsible. When I was like, hey, man, I know your dream is to do all these cool things or whatever, you should do that. Instead, he decides to buy a house. He's 22 years old, buys his first house, Million dollar home. At 22, he's been saving since he was 15. Is that like crazy? So I had the opportunity to do what I love best. And about two weeks ago, we land back home. He's with me. He's always with me. And I lie to him and I tell him I gotta go stop in at the dealership to go look at some cars. And as we're walking through the dealership, I. I look over and I see that he sees his dream car. A Porsche GT4. Oh yeah, you guys know who I'm talking about. White. We called it project White Monster as a team. We all got involved in it. And we walk around the corner and he sees it and I'm so nervous. I'm like, damn, I'm so nervous. I want to make. I had some stuff I want to say. I want to surprise him. And he's looking at me and he's looking at the car and he's looking at me. And I said, dude, isn't that on your phone? Because that's one of the things I teach people. If you want to know what your team's dreams are, help them develop it and then make them put a wallpaper and put it on their phone. And I said, pull out your phone. He pulls out his phone. It's the exact same car. Well, I know. I said, that's crazy, man. He's like, that's so nut. And we're standing there and I get a little teary eyed and I just tell him how much he means to me. And I pretty much say, I know you wouldn't do this for yourself. So I did. And I pull out the keys and I give it to him. Thank you. And it was so much fun. He let me drive it. The next day I showed him what the car could do. I think he's gone through 50 tanks of gas and two sets of tires since then. Two weeks. But that's just an example. Like. And look, he. This is not. I don't buy people cars all the time. Okay, everybody. The next day when I went to work, everybody showed me their phones. Got a G wag. Just like, guys, calm down. You're not Sam. Like, let's just, let's just get clear and. But I just think step one, it's important to know your team's dreams and goals. So can you guys make me a commitment that if you have anybody on your team, especially if they report to you, can you help them develop their five year dreams and goals? Because they won't know. Okay. Help them. Yeah, clap that up for your team. I'm pouring into you so you can pour into them foreign. Before we get back to this episode, if you prefer to watch your content, then go find me on YouTube. I have this episode on YouTube. I'm Dan Martell on YouTube. Just subscribe to the channel, turn on the notification bell because then you'll get notified in real time. It'll tell YouTube to tell you got a new episode so you'll never miss anything. Now let's get back to the episode. Step two, second that we had to fix. We had to craft the culture. Write that down. Craft the culture. Here's how we crafted the culture. I want to remind you all that this business is your business. And unfortunately some of us forget that. And because we want to be accommodating, we make accommodations. And honestly, they're not even accommodations. You lower your expectations for greatness from other people or another way to say it is you lower your standards of what you expect of other people. And the challenge with that is that you end up coming to work at a company that you eventually will fall out of love with like I did. And some of you guys have gone through this once, twice or thrice. Here's what I'm going to remind you. It's your business and if you don't love the company, it's at risk for everybody at the company. So that's why I always tell team members at the end of the day, you need to make sure that the person who's at the head of the table, the CEO, that you support them because to the degree they want to show up and drive every day, if they're a good person, you're dependent on them. And I learned this big idea because some of you guys are allowing team members on your team to be a certain way or underperform or whatever it is, is that you teach people how to treat you. Write that down. You teach people how to treat you. People will only rise to the level of your expectations of them if you don't hold them accountable for it. It's really tough. Now the key with that is that you have to go first. So if you ask them to show up on time and you're always late for meetings, they're not going to listen to you if you ask them to be growth minded. But you haven't changed and evolved in front of them in a meaningful way that they can see they're not going to be growth minded. And the people that are that, that are good. Because people meet my team and they go, how do I find a Sam? I go the truth is, is unfortunately, I don't know you well, but he probably wouldn't work for you. It's just true. Because if I act like some of the stuff I see, my clients that I coach act like my team would run, they don't need to work for me. They get job offers every day. They can go work anywhere else. Does that make sense? So here's the deal. You have to be good enough for the good people. You got to be good enough for the good people. And some of you guys are frustrated with people that aren't good because you're not good enough yet. So that's the good news. You know, just like in that moment, I had to develop, I had to grow, or I had to deal with what I ended up with. Here was the exercise that we went through. First off, I reset my values at the company based on what I needed. Okay? So we went away from this, like, lovey dovey family culture that Karen built. Okay? You can just imagine what kind of culture a Karen would create. And here was crazy. She did it on her own. I woke up one day and realized that she put candidates forward not because they were the best, but because she wanted them on the team. So I will tell you, and hopefully you guys got the point. Whoever's running your HR department, they need to be a business partner. They need to be somebody you trust. You need to audit their process. Because when I found that out, I can only blame one person. This guy right here. Now, once we figured out what the values were, then we had to reset them with the whole team and say, this is what we're about. We're about high performance teams and the whole, like, family vibe, that's not going to work anymore. At the end of the day, every person shows up and they demonstrate through their actions that they, they are here to win. We win championships. That was the new cultural mantra. We're championship winners. The way we did that is we took an XY axis. Everybody just draw big boop boop. X and Y. You guys got that? Okay, left side, effective. How effective are they? The bottom, do they embrace the values? Okay, so now you get a quadrant. You got effectiveness and values. And then I made everybody left on the team to plot every person that they thought and we argued over it. Does that make sense? Because some people are like, hey, this person rocks. I'm like, don't really agree. Let's put them in the middle. Or it's like this person bleeds our values. It's like, really? Tell me how. Right? And here's the deal. People in the top right quadrant, these are people that are very effective and embrace your values. Awesome. Figure out how to give them compensation structure that keeps them around those. I call that the golden handcuff quadrant. The people that have high effectiveness, low values. Okay. Cancer, get them off your team. Cancer. Get them off your team. People that have high values, low effectiveness. You got to find a different seat on the bus. Okay, you're going to write this stuff down. What did he say again? The seat on the bus means you coach them up or you coach them out. They may not be able to stay, but you got at least give them another shot on a different spot. On the. Because they might be in the wrong seat. The people that are obviously low effectiveness and low values. You had 60 days to get them off the team. And that's just the way we did it. That's called the people analyzer. If you're struggling, you have a bigger team. It's a beautiful way to look at it. Or if you're working with another leader and you have people that are underperforming, it's a really great tool to get on the same page about kind of where they think people are on the team. Is that awesome? Yes or yes. It's powerful. It'll just make that whole process easier. So I had to craft the culture. Here's the question. Some of you guys are like, I like everybody. I'm like, okay, cool. Let's pretend that I paid and forced you to put all your employees on vacation for six months. They're going to Bali on Dan. Cool. They're gone to Bali. You don't have to work. They're gone. The question I would then ask you, out of all those people, could be one person. It could be 15 people. Could be a thousand people. How many of those people would you enthusiastically rehire in six months? If you don't have one or two names that come to mind, then you probably got to go find some other people. 6. See, you know what sentence has never been said in the English language? I wish I would have never listened to my gut. Isn't that funny? That sentence has never been said in the history of humanity. I wish I would not have listened to my gut. You already know. You know if there are people that you want around or not. And you just gotta know that and then just make a decision to transition them. I don't call it firing. It's transition them. Cause I think it's selfish to keep them around. Cause you know they'll never be great with you, and you're stopping them from being great on another team. Let them go. Cool. That's number two. Are you guys loving this? Yes or yes. All right. I'm baring my soul. I'm giving you the best of the best of the best. Third thing is this simple concept that will change everything from a leadership point of view for you and how you build high performing teams. Write this one down. We build the people, the people build the business. We build the people. The people build the business. Before we get back to the episode, if you're enjoying it so far, could you go ahead and do me a huge favor and leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify reviews Help us get up in the rankings, which gives us credibility to reach out to bigger and bigger guests. We can bring them to you. It would mean so much. Let's get back to the episode. One day I was talking to one of my clients, and he was a bit negative that day, a little frustrated with his team, and he was going off about this and that, and I was like, okay, Mr. Negative, let's do this. I want you to write down all the things that you're telling me are frustrating you about your team. Like, just be detailed. He's like, what are you talking about? I said, like, write it down. What did you just say to me? He's like, well, my team doesn't come collaborate in our meetings when we're doing, like, strategy stuff. Cool. What else? I just don't feel like they are really in it. Part of the mission. Cool. What else? Some of them don't know how to manage their fricking time. Cool. What else? And he made a list. This is the exercise you guys are all gonna have to do, so just take notes. So we made a list of all the things that frustrated him. And then I said, okay, you got that list? There's like 13 things on there. He's like, yeah. I said, okay, now show me where you have a playbook teaching them how to do that first one. Well, I mean, thank you. Clap it up. That's actually, like, that'll change your life. Because I believe if we have issues in our business, we either have a process problem or a people problem. But I can't immediately go to people until I see if I have a process problem. So once he heard that, he's like, well, okay, Dan, I have nothing for any of this. I said, cool. Good news is now we have your hit list. Rank them by things that frustrate you the most. And every week for the next 13 weeks, you're going to create a training for 60 minutes and you're going to teach your team how you do that thing. How do you collaborate in a meeting? What information do you prep for? How do you let people ideate? How do you prioritize the ideas that come up? How do you manage your time? Have you ever taught your team how you are so productive? He's like, no. I said, cool, now we're going to create it. Because my philosophy since then, this is what I missed, is that I stopped as a CEO training my team, and it was such a missed opportunity. I didn't ask my leaders to do it. I didn't make sure it was being done. Yeah, we had an unlimited budget for education and you can have a library and book clubs and all that crazy stuff. But at the end of the day, kind of awesome, because what you're doing is saying, here are the weak parts of my business and my team. Boom, boom, boom. And every week you can literally see light bulbs get turned on. And within 13 weeks, his business was on fire. And here's the. Here's. You guys want to know the secret? Secret? Nah, you don't? Alright, do you want to know the secret? Secret. All right. Record the sessions, put it into the employee handbook, and all new employees have to go into it and watch them before they jump on the team. So that way I call it dry. I'm a software guy. Dry stands for do not repeat yourself. So you want to be dry, meaning that I want to teach it once. I never want to repeat myself. I want to know that every new person I hire is going to know that thing about how I do that thing, and I start to build the core culture at our team. That was the third thing. So in real brief recap. Okay. I went from hating the place I worked at to not only changing the whole culture and loving the place, but working my way out of being involved or running the business. And it continues to grow every month and make more money than when I was actually CEO. Would you guys like to learn how to do that? All right, here's what I want to share as we land the plane. I believe that every person on earth is here to do two things. The first one, I'm assuming I have some people of faith in the room. I personally believe that I was created in the image of my creator. Awesome. Well, here's the deal. He had a big vision for my life. When I was 17, I decided to try to take my life. He showed up and he stopped that situation. And I Didn't know. I didn't know God the way I know him today. But I will tell you. Yes, thank you. But he showed up and he had plans for me. So my philosophy, the first thing I think everybody here on earth is here to do is to become the people best version of themselves, become the 10.0 version of yourself, Become the person God created you in his image. I believe your job is to become the person you needed most in your darkest days. Every day I wake up and I honor that journey. I don't think I'll ever be able to stand up to that, but I strive for that. Second part, as you're on that journey, is to share what worked with other people. Just tell your story. I'm not going to stand up here and teach you stuff I read in a book. I can only teach you what worked for me. Me. I'm going to tell you how, where I started the journey, and my desire is to help other people through that process. Why? When we help other people, we help ourselves. It's a beautiful thing. I think a lot of people in the concept of tithing, they get confused. They think it's about money. I actually think it's about time. And I think what's really impressive is the people that decide to put their fears to the side and step up into their courage and. And take those lessons learned and not diminish them and think, well, everybody knows this. Everybody's doing this. No, they're not. And regardless if they are, the world needs to hear your version of it. And if you do that, here's what will happen. That vision board that you've helped those team members create, that hopefully they now have on their phones, your reputation, being a great person that strives, and your reach by helping other people will make all of their dreams come true. Guys, thanks for having me. Appreciate you. Awesome. Thanks, man. You guys, thanks for listening to the Growth Stacking show. If you get to the end of this podcast, could you do me a huge favor and leave a review? Having lots of reviews allows us to reach out to even bigger guests to bring them to you or get access to special events or activities that most people wouldn't get access to. So if you could leave a review, it would mean the world. And I'll see you in the next episode.