What Spending a Weekend with Dan Martell Taught Us About Setting Higher Standards

In order to be the happiest, most fulfilled version of yourself, you really have to hold yourself to a high standard. But even on top of that, you have to hold the people around you to a very high standard. I'm not going to let you play small. Like, I'm not going to let you keep sinking down to this place that isn't serving you that, you know is making you unhappy. Like, you're going to need to come up here to stay in this culture, in this community, foreign, She said.

And babe, we are literally back from one of the best trips of our life. Like one where we came back as brand new people. As a matter of fact, this episode is like a thank you to Dan Martel and his wife Renee Warren for saying, come up here and let us treat you to a few days that will blow your mind and uplevel you. And, you know, I don't know if their intention was to set a new standard for us, but they absolutely set a new standard for us. You know, I know it was just to connect and have fun and get to know each other more, but we have left that trip as entirely different people. And by the way, I still can't wrap my head around this, but they listen to our episode. I don't know why in the world, like, mind blowing, but Dan Martel and his wife Renee Warren listened to, you know, this he said, she said episode. So if you guys are listening, this is our thank you episode to you, where we actually get to explain the difference that people like you make in the lives of other people so that all the listeners can rise to the occasion and do the same for the people in their life.

So I got invited to speak at the Pink Skirt Project, which is Renee's event, and it was her very first time she ran this event. And I can tell you, you that she absolutely knocked it out of the park.

Awesome.

There were 300 women there and the women, like some of the most incredible women that I've gotten to meet. I went to one of the VIP dinners after the event and got to really, really just sit down with groups of women who attended and get to know them. And this is like such an incredible group of women and such a great experience. If you have not gone to that event, if you didn't go to this last one, I highly, highly recommend it. But she knocked her out of the park. So that is where this little couple's mastermind came from afterward is they were like, you know, would you guys come up and speak with some other women? And we'll have this couple's mastermind afterward. And so I'll tell you that I had. I mean, I had no idea what I was expecting. But, you know, when somebody like Renee and Dan asks you to go somewhere, you just say, hell, yes. And you buckle up and you just do whatever. Because they are people who are living the type of life that we want to be living. Not just the lifestyle, but who they are in the world and what people say about them and what they do for their communities. So we got invited to Dan's headquarters. And I would say this was like the. The first moment of just getting my mind absolutely blown outside of, obviously, Renee's pink skirt project event. And the whole team was there. He's got two different levels and of this particular building. And he was introducing us all the team and what they all do and everyone there. Immediately, from the second we got there, we could just feel like this culture and this radiating of just happiness and these super high standards.

Top notch energy.

Yes. Incredible. Incredible energy. And so, you know, Dan started really talking about the standards that he holds at the office. And this will give an example right down to. He makes everyone meal prep for the day because he wants you to feel good and be healthy and show up in your most energetic, most powerful way. And that starts within his mind, obviously, and what I believe as well, the foundation of food. And I just thought that was so incredible that he actually required people to meal prep.

Required. Like, let that sink in. It's not a recommendation. It's not. If you're gonna work here, One of our standards is that you're going to meal prep so you feel great and you're healthy. Because when you feel great and you're healthy, your life is better, but you're also gonna perform better. And if you don't want to meal prep, then you're out. And that blew my mind because most people would be afraid to kind of do that type of real high standard, except it shows. Everybody was vibrant, everybody was happy, everybody was healthy. And when you opened the fridges with all everyone's meals in there, it was amazing. They were all there, right? And so right away that. That shocked me. I was like, oh, man, we need to make sure that we are holding our teams to the highest standard. Personally, on top of from a business standpoint, matter of fact, I was like, oh, my God, if his standard is here, mine must be down below the earth somewhere.

So the next one for me was just all of the different things he set up for his community. I can't even begin to tell you how much this human being, wherever he goes, is recognized for doing something good for the community. He has something called the Kings Club, which is about empowering young men. And it just. He dedicates so much of his time. And I know Renee is a big part of all of the things that we're talking about too, where it's so important to him to help the youth in his community and set an example and show them what's possible. Because of what he went through as a young kid and his story, which, you guys, if you don't know his story, I did an incredible podcast with him on the earn your happy podcast. You can just search his name and go and check it out. It was one of my favorite podcasts, but I think that he sets aside time every single week to give back to these kids on top of an already busy schedule and running a massive team.

Well, and it showed. So this was a really neat little incident, if you will, that happened, that just demonstrated the impact he's making on his community. So we went and toured the facility where he keeps all of his cars. He's got a beautiful car collection. And so we're there touring the facility and it's incredible. If you guys have ever seen me around auto car club, it kind of looks like that. And all the cars in a giant warehouse, and they're all collector cars and beautiful cars and high end cars. And there was another guy in there with his son. And Dan did not know the guy or his son, but he went up and he said, hey, do you love cars? You know, to the kid, the kid looked like maybe 7 or 8 years old. And the kid's like, yeah, I love it. And the dad's like, I like to bring him here so he can dream. He likes being around cars. And Dan's like, well, here, come see some of mine. And he let him start up his Ferrari and all this other fun stuff. And the kid was just so excited. And the dad says to him, he says, hey, thank you not only for what you did for my son right here, but I want to thank you for what you do for the community. And Dan's like, what do you mean? He's like, well, I'm the chief of police for the Royal Canadian State Police, and it is very abundant the impact that you're making for us in our jobs, in our community. And I just wanted to personally thank you. Now, this was just sheer happenstance that this guy happened to be there bringing his kid through to see the cars at the same time that Dan was bringing us there to kind of see the car collection and all that stuff. And it was such a neat moment to see that type of impact and to see Dan be thanked by the chief of Royal Canadian State Police, not even knowing it was that guy. And here he was just showing his son a really cool experience because they just happened to be there at the same time. And that's neat. It shows the impact that when you focus on helping the community or people around you, people at the highest levels notice, and it makes their lives and their jobs easier as well.

And then, you know, we got to our very last day. We just had this beautiful dinner at Renee and Dan's house. And just the intention that Renee put into having us go around and answer questions at dinner and just get really intentional and drop in and vulnerable and talk about, you know, exactly where we're at or really bond over true. Like, just real, authentic things, like the way they are as a couple and as a family, and just getting to see that glimpse inside of their lives and how important that is and how intentional they are with family. I think that just really leveled up what is possible when you live with such high standards and such high intentionality in your life. Like, we're not even painting, like, a quarter of the picture of the standards that this family holds, you know, so.

What does this have to do with the listener? Well, I came away with this thing realizing that they haven't built companies, they've built communities, meaning the very people they hired were people from their community. The standard they set is affecting their community. When you walk into their offices, it feels like a community built, a culture. It's not a team, it's not a business. It's not employees. It's a true community. Here's another example. We went to the gym on Saturday. You know, it's a regular public gym, except half of that place in there on a Saturday morning was their team, their community, working out, all the employees, working out, having fun on a Saturday together and coming up and introducing themselves. And they were just the kindest, happiest people on the planet. That is real cohesiveness. And so it's no wonder that you see him everywhere and everything is just working so well and hitting on all cylinders because everyone is rowing in the same direction and having fun doing it.

I walked away with knowing that in order to be the happiest, most fulfilled version of yourself, you really have to hold yourself to a high standard. But even on top of that, you have to hold the people around you to a very High standard to the standards that you have. Because if you don't hold people to a standard, it's not a service to them, it's not a favor to them. In fact, the more that he held a really high standard for people, that was maybe to some people kind of harsh. Like, yay, if you don't do this, if you don't meal prep, if you don't do this, you're out. Like, what was happening is that the people who, you know, were around him were literally coming up to that standard. And we're so grateful. I've never met a group of human beings and young guys that were so grateful to have a place where someone saw them and saw their greatness and said, I'm not gonna let you play small. Like, I'm not gonna let you keep sinking down to this place that isn't serving you, that you know is making you unhappy. Like, you're gonna need to come up here if you wanna be in this group. And what happens is that it pulls you up to this level of yourself that you didn't even know was possible. And you get to experience this pride and confidence and almost swagger. Like all of these kids were young kids on his team, like truly like 20s. Some were even. We met this 18 year old kid who was just like so insanely grateful for what he was able to not only do, but like the person that he was becoming by hanging out with these people. And they all said, you know, we want to be like them. We want to be like Renee and Dan. We want to be, you know, this incredible man in the community. And the only way we're going to do that is to be around these people. And so we'll do whatever it takes to stay in this group, in this culture, in this community. And so I think for Chris and I, we were like, wow, it is a total disservice to kind of let people play small or let them not, you know, let them get away with not really showing up or not doing their job very well. Like, that's not a service to people and it's also not a service to myself to not hold myself to the highest standard or hold other people to them too.

I'd say one more thing you could borrow from our experience. If you're looking to have an optimal team and an optimal life is.

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The surprising amount of stuff that he trusted his team members with and held them accountable to. So all over the walls are screens full of KPIs and names next to those KPIs. And so every team member, they're looking at all these screens on the wall real time and they see their KPI real time and their name. Whoever owns that KPI right up there for the whole team to see. And that type of accountability and responsibility is what makes them really show up bigger than they would otherwise. And it's not just about displaying the KPIs and saying, hey, you own this. But it's about trusting those people, giving them full autonomy. So I, I asked him, I said, well, who is the tiebreaker when you're making this piece of content? Who gets to decide we're doing it this way or we're doing it that way if you guys are divided? And he said, it can't be me because then I can't hold them accountable to the KPI. So it's them. And you know, they get up just, just a couple of strikes, but they are the tiebreaker, not me. And that was a great wake up call because usually as a leader you're like, well, I'm going to be the tiebreaker or the buck stops with me or I know what's best or something like that. And this was the opposite. This was the team members are going to live and die by the responsibility that they were given. And he's not going to override it. In a situation where they have a kind of a opposing view on something, should the content be this way, should the content be that way, he's going to let them be the tiebreaker. And if they win, they get to celebrate that KPI going up. And if they make the wrong decision, they get to learn from it. And they only get a couple chances to learn from it.

So we're, we're so grateful. It was just a really amazing eye opening weekend. Like we left, we, we went for a really long walk before our flight and we were just like vibrating and really talking about some hard stuff too, to be honest, because when you hang out with people that are that high level and have such a high standard. You kind of have this mirror put in front of your of like, how am I being and where do I want to change? So Chris and I had a really beautiful long walk just talking about what does this look like? What are the conversations we have to have? What do we have to personally change? You know, where are we totally letting ourselves slack off in our life and our standards, which also means we're not holding people to those either. And honestly, Chris and I both have been feeling like we're not where we want to be. We're not living up to everything we know that we can be. And so I think just implementing a few of these things that we, we saw that really inspired us already. We feel different and we're super excited about it.

Well, and that right there is what happens when you hang around people that are doing what you want to be doing at the level that you want to be doing at. You know, Lori and I knew we were frustrated because we wanted to step into a new level and we were working our tails off and doing all the things that we thought were correct. But just seeing a few examples of, hey, you could do this differently this way, or seeing it modeled, hey, you could do it differently that way. All of a sudden it makes sense. Oh, I see where my gap is. Oh, I see where we're doing it wrong. Oh, I see where we let ourselves off the hook, or oh, I see where we're letting somebody else off the hook, or I see where we're not letting them fully own this one thing. Right? And it's those little nuances that will bring us to the next level as individuals. So, like, watch out, because you, whether you think we're doing well or not well or whatever, that's all subjective. You're about to see us continue to step into a much higher level because we, we didn't just walk away inspired, but we walked away with tools and reflections of here's how it could look a little bit different.

So, you guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that this just sparked even just a next level of a standard for you. Like something that, you know you're not doing that is, you know, just making you frustrated in your life. Because once you get that standard, then you can also hold other people who are in your life consistently accountable to that. Because it's really going to take both in order for you to get to where you want to go. You having that higher standard and you also enforcing and holding people to a higher standard in your business. So thank you guys so much for tuning in, and we will talk to you next week. Bye, everyone.

Thanks for listening, Sam.