Scaling your business is not about working harder. It is about building a set of systems that allow your company to grow without relying on the founder doing everything. Dan Martell teaches that you scale your business by installing six phases that move you from chaos to predictable growth. When these systems are in place, your business becomes easier to run, easier to manage, and easier to grow month after month.
Key Takeaways
- Businesses fail to scale because the founder gets stuck doing everything
- Scaling requires six phases: buying back time, clarifying strategy, building predictable growth, systematizing delivery, installing leadership, and scaling culture
- You can only scale past your ability to let go
- Predictable revenue comes from inbound, outbound, and partner systems
- Culture becomes the invisible force that drives the business when you are not in the room
Table of Contents
What the Six Phase Scaling System Is
To scale your business, you must escape reactive decision making and operate from strategy instead of urgency. The Six Phase System gives founders a roadmap that removes bottlenecks, eliminates founder dependency, and builds processes that support sustainable business growth. Dan Martell explains that most entrepreneurs do not fail because of a lack of effort. They fail because their companies depend entirely on them, blocking growth, efficiency, and predictable revenue.
The system solves the biggest problems entrepreneurs face: inconsistent sales, broken operations, low team performance, unclear offers, weak delegation, and a culture that cannot support growth. Each phase reinforces the next, creating a scalable business model.
Your business is capped at the speed of your delegation.
Phase One: Buy Back Your Time
This is the foundation. You cannot scale your business if your calendar is filled with low leverage tasks. Buying back your time increases founder capacity, improves decision quality, and creates space for long term strategy.
Many founders stay trapped doing admin tasks, client communication, invoicing, scheduling, and operational firefighting. These activities block revenue growth, prevent leadership development, and destroy strategic focus.
The buyback loop is built on three steps:
- Audit: Track everything you do for two weeks. Sort high value tasks from low value tasks.
- Transfer: Delegate work using the camcorder method, recording your screen while completing tasks and passing the recordings to an assistant or team member.
- Fill: Replace low value work with revenue producing actions like selling, content creation, offer optimization, and improving customer experience.
Dan explains that your growth is constrained by your delegation skills. When you remove repetitive work, you increase your ability to scale your business, build systems, and create the time required for strategic decision making.
Phase Two: Clarify Strategy and Offer
You cannot scale confusion. Businesses stall when they sell too many services, build custom projects for every client, or lack a repeatable offer. To scale effectively, you must streamline what you sell and eliminate low profit work.
Scaling becomes easier when you focus on a single high profit offer that your team can deliver consistently. This increases margins, improves client outcomes, strengthens marketing, and allows you to build a predictable fulfillment system.
The criteria for a scalable offer include:
- High demand
- High margins
- Repeatable workflow
- Easy to deliver without founder involvement
- A clear promise with measurable results
When you cut low margin services, your team gets focused, your operations simplify, and your ability to scale your business increases significantly. This phase improves pricing, improves customer clarity, and removes operational chaos.
Phase Three: Build a Predictable Growth Engine
To scale your business, you cannot rely on luck or referrals. You need a reliable, repeatable, and predictable system for generating leads and closing customers. Dan calls this the Growth Engine Triangle.
It includes three systems that must run together:
Inbound Marketing
- Content that builds authority
- Case studies and testimonials
- Educational posts that pull people in
- A clear digital presence that converts visitors
Inbound creates long term demand and positions you as a trusted authority in your industry.
Outbound Prospecting
- Cold outreach
- Volume based lead generation
- Consistent follow up
- Clear messaging and value proposition
Outbound helps you scale faster by giving you proactive control over your pipeline.
Partners and Referrals
- Affiliate relationships
- Collaborations with other brands
- Speaking opportunities
- Webinars and cross promotions
Partners accelerate scaling because they give access to warm audiences without additional advertising costs. The combination of inbound, outbound, and partner channels ensures that your business does not rely on one risky source of new customers.
Why This Predictability Matters
Predictable revenue stabilizes cash flow, improves hiring decisions, lowers financial stress, and gives your team confidence in long term planning. It is one of the most important steps to scale your business effectively.
Phase Four: Systematize Delivery and Operations
Growth means nothing if you cannot deliver. If delivery breaks, your business cannot scale, no matter how many customers you acquire.
This phase focuses on creating systems that deliver consistent results, reduce client churn, and free the founder from daily operations.
Dan teaches the Three Ps of Delivery:
• Playbooks: Standard operating procedures that guide repeatable work
• People: Team members who own outcomes, not just tasks
• Platforms: Automation tools that streamline onboarding, support, communication, and scheduling
Operational efficiency increases capacity, reduces errors, and improves retention. When retention improves, lifetime customer value increases, making your scaling efforts more profitable and stable.
Phase Five: Install Leadership and Management
A business cannot scale when every decision requires the founder. Leadership systems empower the team to solve problems, make decisions, and own results.
Without leadership development, the founder becomes a bottleneck. Projects stall. Decisions slow down. Growth becomes limited by one person.
The Leadership Tools Include
- The 131 Method: One problem, three solutions, one recommendation
- Daily Standups: Improve alignment and uncover bottlenecks
- Weekly Meetings: Review metrics, scorecards, KPIs, and issues
- Quarterly Planning: Set goals, priorities, and strategic projects
- Decision Ladder: Empower team members with spending and decision authority
Leadership systems improve communication, increase accountability, and give the founder freedom to focus on scaling instead of micromanagement.
Phase Six: Scale Culture and Vision
Culture is the hidden force that drives performance when the founder is not in the room. If culture is weak, your best people leave, morale drops, productivity slows, and toxic hires spread negativity.
Dan explains that culture must be intentionally designed. It does not happen naturally.
The Core Elements of Scalable Culture
- Values: Used for hiring, inspiring, and firing
- Vision Narrative: A clear five year picture of where the company is going
- People Systems: A structured approach for attracting, developing, and retaining talent
A strong culture increases retention, improves productivity, and builds an environment where top performers thrive. Without culture, scaling becomes unstable and stressful.
Chaos Builder vs Empire Builder Table
| Chaos Builder | Empire Builder |
|---|---|
| Constantly puts out fires | Builds repeatable systems |
| Revenue is inconsistent | Revenue is predictable |
| Delegation is weak | Delegation is structured and effective |
| Team waits for instructions | Team owns outcomes |
| No SOPs or automation | Documented playbooks and processes |
| Founder does everything | Business scales without the founder |
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I start scaling my business if I feel overwhelmed?
Begin by buying back your time. Remove low value tasks first so you can focus on strategy, revenue, and leadership.
What is the biggest mistake founders make when trying to scale?
Trying to scale without systems. They add more clients, but delivery breaks because operations are not prepared.
How long before these six phases show results?
Most founders experience relief in 30 to 60 days and measurable business growth within 90 to 180 days.
Why is predictable revenue important?
Predictable revenue gives financial stability, allows better hiring decisions, and ensures consistent month to month growth.
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Full Transcript
00:00:00.000 No text
00:00:00.080 How do you actually scale a business? Right now, you’re in one of two groups. Group number one, the chaos builder. You
00:00:06.799 wake up every day reacting to what happens around you, and your business runs you instead of you running it. Now,
00:00:12.240 group number two is the empire builder. This is where you’ve built a machine that builds your business. A business
00:00:18.000 that grows whether you’re in the office, on vacation, or even sleeping. If you’re in group number one right now, this
00:00:23.439 course is going to get you into group number two and save you years and millions of dollars worth of mistakes.
00:00:28.880 And if you’re in group number two, you’ve probably hit a ceiling where your business has stalled out. And this
00:00:34.320 course is going to help you break through that ceiling and actually scale your business to the next level. This course isn’t about theory. It’s built
00:00:40.719 from real experience in 28 years of scaling businesses. So, here’s what we’ll go over.
00:00:50.879 Phase number one, buying back your time. Phase number two, clarifying your strategy and offer. Phase number three,
00:00:58.000 building a predictable growth engine. Phase number four, systematizing delivery and operations. Phase number
00:01:04.400 five, installing leadership and management systems. And phase number six, scaling culture and vision. And
00:01:11.040 look, don’t skip ahead because the concepts we talk about in each phase are needed to understand the one after that.
00:01:17.360 I really want to ensure that you can use this process to get what you need out of it. So, I put a whole PDF together
00:01:23.840 covering everything that we’re going to go over in this course. So, click the link in the description to download it and follow along at home. Let’s get into
00:01:30.799 it. Starting with phase one, buying back your time. Broke people spend time to
00:01:31.000 No text
00:01:36.159 save money. Rich people spend money to save time. You can’t build a multi-million dollar company off $10
00:01:43.040 tasks. It’s impossible. You can’t outwork the fact that per hour you have
00:01:48.560 to create more value. You have to get better. And if you’re not learning how to get more time back, you’ll always be
00:01:54.079 stuck. The buyback principle states you don’t hire to grow your business. That’s what everybody else does. You hire
00:01:59.600 people only if it buys back your time. Because if you get the time back out of your calendar, then you, the most
00:02:06.479 valuable resource in the business, can reinvest that time in things that make you more money. I need to get out of the
00:02:12.640 doing and have other people do. And when they bring me their work, I get to edit. I call it being the editor, not the
00:02:18.000 author. What’s cool is we’re going to touch on a framework that’s going to teach you exactly that in a second. Here
00:02:23.200 are some of the symptoms that you’re at this stage. Most founders are still touching every part of the business.
00:02:28.640 You’re approving invoices. You’re jumping on sales calls. You’re answering customer tickets at 10 p.m. I get it.
00:02:34.319 Somewhere along your life, somebody told you that you have to do whatever it takes to be successful. You got to be
00:02:40.000 willing to take out the garbage. You got to be willing to roll up your sleeves and work till 2 in the morning. Yes. A
00:02:46.400 little bit. not forever. If you’re running the company and it’s 2 3 4 years later and you’re still doing this, it’s
00:02:53.040 a flawed strategy. Here’s the truth. Your business is capped at the speed of your delegation. Imagine this. You’re
00:03:00.239 trying to drive a race car with one hand on the wheel while trying to fill it up
00:03:06.239 with gas. Changing the tires, what with your foot? I don’t know. Checking the oil pressure. That is what happens when
00:03:13.440 you try to be all things to all people and you get stuck in the business. So here’s the framework that I need you to
00:03:19.280 consider. Anytime you feel stuck when you’re building and more opportunity would create pain in your calendar, come
00:03:26.239 back to this framework. It’s called the buyback loop. So you’re growing, you’re building, you have a little time at the
00:03:31.440 beginning, but eventually you start getting a few clients and it starts to hurt. The moment there’s pain in the
00:03:36.799 calendar, do the first step. It’s called audit. We need to look at everything you’re doing in your calendar and track
00:03:43.599 everything for a two week period. The reason it’s two weeks is because it gives you enough variety in your week to
00:03:50.480 understand how the rhythm of your life looks today. So what we do is we set up a timer that goes off every 15 minutes
00:03:57.200 and you write in your journal what you did in that 15 minutes. And if you scrolled Facebook, write scrolled
00:04:02.480 Facebook. If you talked to your friend for an hour and 15 minutes, write talk to my friend. Talk to my friend, talk to
00:04:07.920 my friend. I need you to get a sense of what you’re doing with your time. See, most people don’t need to buy it back.
00:04:13.280 They just need to stop wasting it. So, once we audit all those different tasks, activities, places we spend our time,
00:04:20.320 then we go through and we highlight in green things that we enjoy doing and red things that zap our energy. And I mean,
00:04:27.440 it could be meetings with your team, zap your energy. It could be doing sales calls for you, zap your energy. For me,
00:04:33.120 those are green. I love talking to people. Maybe for you doing accounting, that’s green. Guess what? Hate it. It’s
00:04:40.080 bright red in my life. But once we have that, then we go through and we rate each task by a cost to pay somebody else
00:04:47.040 to do it. $1 sign to $4 signs. It’s not scientific. We’re not trying to over complicate this. I go through everything
00:04:53.360 and I say, is that a $4 sign? Really expensive. Essentially paying somebody to do my job. Or is it $1 sign? Somebody
00:04:59.199 to do the work because it’s administrative in nature. Obviously, somebody to help do the work, that might be two or $3 signs. Manage the work.
00:05:05.680 That could be $3 signs. You get the drift, right? Now that we have that, we put all the things that zap our energy
00:05:12.080 or we don’t like to do that would cost very little one or$2 dollar signs into a bucket. And if you’re going to buy back
00:05:18.560 any time, it has to come out of that bucket. At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Well, how can I afford to pay
00:05:23.840 somebody else to do something when I’m just getting going?” Here’s the way I look at it. Everyone should know their buyback rate. The buyback rate is how
00:05:31.039 much money you’re willing to invest to buy back an hour of your time. So, here’s what we do. You take last year’s
00:05:36.720 income, okay, all the money you made, maybe dividends from your business, profit from your business, your salary
00:05:41.919 that you paid you, then what we do is we divide that amount. If it’s $100,000 into the amount of hours worked on
00:05:48.080 average, for most people it’s about 2,000. Once we take weekends away and vacations, and I know as entrepreneurs, we don’t get those, but let’s just say
00:05:53.759 it’s 2,000. That gives us a number per hour. And because we want to get a four
00:05:59.680 times return on investment or a return on buying back our time, then we take a
00:06:04.960 quarter of that amount. So $100,000 worth of income or value divided by
00:06:10.000 2,000 is $50 divided by a quarter is $12.50. When I look at my bucket of stuff I
00:06:17.039 don’t want to do anymore, I have to find people that can pay less than $12.50 to
00:06:22.080 do or I’m being inefficient. The coolest part about this is there are people in other parts of the world that
00:06:28.319 will work for $3 an hour doing research, processing your email, following processes, getting things automated,
00:06:35.120 literally supporting you in other areas. You just need to get better at letting go and delegating. Then we got to go to
00:06:42.000 step two, which is transfer. Now that you know what your time is worth and you found somebody to take over the work, how do we get it to them so it gets done
00:06:48.479 the way we do it? The biggest fear that people have is somebody embarrassing them or costing them money. And usually
00:06:53.919 I hear, “Well, I’ll just do it myself.” Well, if you just keep doing it yourself, guess what? You will always
00:06:59.120 feel stuck. Does that make sense? Here’s the easiest way to get anybody else to do the work I was doing. I call it the
00:07:05.120 camcorder method. When I’m doing the work, I’m recording my screen and I’m talking out loud what I’m doing. Okay,
00:07:11.440 let me show you an example. I’m processing my inbox. I go on a Zoom call. It’s just me. I share my screen,
00:07:18.400 so it’s recording my screen. I save it to the cloud. So now I have a link to a recording and I process my inbox and I
00:07:25.199 start at the top and I’m going through it and I might be there for 3 hours but I have a three-hour recording of how I
00:07:30.400 manage my inbox, how I label things, who the people are, how I search my inbox to find contacts on who they are and
00:07:37.440 essentially what happens is I have a recording of doing the work. If I’m going to hire an executive assistant to
00:07:43.360 help me immediately when they start having already recorded three or four of those sessions, I can ask them to watch
00:07:49.520 those videos and then they create the document. See, that’s the big mistake people make is thinking I got to sit
00:07:56.479 down for an hour or two to create a document to train somebody when you just need to do the work, record yourself
00:08:01.520 doing the work, talk about it, and then have them watch the video and create the document in the process. The coolest part about this is after they do that,
00:08:08.319 you can use the document as feedback to you if the person got it or not. Think
00:08:13.440 about it, right? Cuz now they’ve been trained themselves and tried to create an outcome that you can go, “Oh, they
00:08:19.039 got what I was saying or they didn’t.” And you can fill in the blanks. And I know you want to plug it into Chad GPT and say, “Hey, create the document for
00:08:25.440 me.” But then you missed the feedback loop of the person processing the video to see if they got it. Now, if they’re
00:08:31.919 smart, they’re going to do that themselves and then they’ll 100% get it. and that’s a great person to hire. Essentially, this becomes the easiest
00:08:39.039 way to get the highest ROI on your dollar. If you’re going to spend money to get time back, you have to get a
00:08:45.440 return. So, you can’t be spending $100 to buy $100 hour. Does that make sense? Now, the big unlock for a lot of you is
00:08:52.880 getting out of telling people what to do. And to do that, I have this principle called the 108010 rule. The
00:08:59.360 way it works is when I sit down with somebody, especially a creative project like this video, I want to sit down on
00:09:05.040 the first 10%. Okay? And I call this the ideation step where we talk about the concept. Here’s what I want to talk
00:09:11.040 about. Here’s the outcome. Here are some highle steps. What do you think? We create agreement on the road map. Then
00:09:17.200 the next is the 80% of the doing. It’s the execution. I let them put together the draft and the outline and the whole
00:09:23.680 thing. That way they’re the author. The last 10% is them coming back and us
00:09:28.959 working together to integrate. So we go ideation, execution, integration. When
00:09:34.880 they come back, that’s where I get the chance to refine, to put my magic fingerprint on it. When you think of Steve Jobs and Johnny IV, right? Steve
00:09:41.600 Jobs, you know, the past CEO and founder of Apple, he would go into the design studio with Johnny IV, his head of
00:09:47.440 design. They would ideate, they would talk about product ideas. Johnny would go back to his design team, try to find
00:09:52.880 materials that they could use that would innovate like the translucent cover on the iMac. And then only at the end once
00:09:59.279 they found a product they want to bring to market does Steve sit down with Johnny and his team where they create the deck where Steve gets on stage and
00:10:06.160 presents it to the world. That’s the integration. That is his magic. So that’s how we transfer things on our
00:10:12.640 plate to somebody else without losing control. So we did audit, we did transfer. The last step is Phil. This is
00:10:19.360 where most people miss the boat and they don’t get the loop, right? That last part creates a slingshot for growth. So,
00:10:25.760 if you know that your time is worth $100 an hour, you actually have to start telling yourself that it’s worth 150 or
00:10:32.800 200. You got to fight for that time cuz you don’t want to buy back your time and then just slide backwards doing a bunch
00:10:38.399 of stuff that you shouldn’t be doing. Now that we got your time back, what do we do with that time? First off, we want to look at things that make us money
00:10:45.200 immediately. If you’re a programmer, write code. Whatever the client’s paying
00:10:50.959 you to do right now, you buy back all that admin stuff, go do more of the thing they’re willing to pay you for,
00:10:56.399 cuz that’s guaranteed income. See how that works? Then if all of a sudden your calendar gets full of all the stuff,
00:11:02.399 doing the work. Now, we have to look at tasks within that and start hiring people to do the work for us. See, the
00:11:07.760 mistake most people do is just filling their time with nothing, right? Talking to their friends, watching Netflix,
00:11:13.440 listening to podcasts. to get all high onopium. Like that is not what we do here. We try to find leverage in our
00:11:19.200 time. I look at three things. One, I ask myself, what are the habits that I need to stop or add to get to my new level?
00:11:26.160 Because every new level is going to require you to fight a new devil. Then I look at the beliefs. What are the world views that I have about how the world
00:11:32.880 operates that might be holding me back? If you believe rich people are evil, you’re going to have a hard time getting
00:11:38.800 rich. Those are beliefs. The third area I think about is your character traits. When I think about success or making
00:11:44.959 more money, it’s about being the person who acts like the person at that next level. If you want to get to a million
00:11:50.560 or five million in revenue or 50 million in revenue, ask yourself, how does that person act? Act that way today. Start
00:11:58.079 investing in seminars, coaching, training, programs for you to evolve, to become that person today before it ever
00:12:05.040 shows up in your bank account. those activities of where you invest in you to get better, more valuable is what you
00:12:12.000 have to keep in mind to fill your calendar back up with so that you don’t start sliding backwards. So, here’s a
00:12:17.760 quick recap. Until you buy back your time, you’ll always be capped. You essentially hit your complexity ceiling.
00:12:23.360 Too much complexity, you can’t get past it. That’s why we have to buy back our time to become more. You can only scale
00:12:29.200 past your ability to let go. It’s scary. It’s going to give you anxiety. You’re
00:12:34.320 going to be worried. Trust me, it’s never as bad as you think because fear is nothing more than false evidence
00:12:40.639 appearing real. It’s not there. Go create some problems first. Go let go a
00:12:45.680 little bit and see what happens. You’d be surprised how when you let go, magically it happens. It gets done. If
00:12:52.399 you don’t value your time, nobody else will. And the people who don’t value
00:12:57.839 their time will go out of their way to waste yours. So, now that we freed up all this space, let’s point your energy
00:13:05.200 at the right strategy so you’re not just running faster in the wrong direction. That brings us to phase number D.
00:13:09.000 No text
00:13:11.440 Clarify strategy and offer. Here’s what this means. See, you can’t scale
00:13:16.560 confusion. Simple scales, complex fails. Early growth in any business is because you
00:13:23.360 say yes to everything. You’re trying to find opportunities. But at this phase at scale, saying yes to everything becomes
00:13:30.399 the very thing that breaks you. When I started, I was worried I wouldn’t have any business. So anything that sounded
00:13:36.320 like an opportunity was like, I can help you with that. I can help you with that. And then what happens is you wake up and you got a lot of work, but it’s a lot of
00:13:42.720 different work. There’s no process. There’s no structure. Everything is very bespoke and boutique and it makes it
00:13:48.240 incredibly hard to actually grow. This is what you will feel at this phase. you’re probably juggling too many
00:13:54.240 offers. Or every new client feels like a custom deal. There’s no repeatability in
00:13:59.279 it. Or the revenue looks good on paper and everybody’s like, “Oh, wow. Congrats.” But your margins are razor
00:14:05.440 thin and you’re exhausted and profit is non-existent. So, if you feel any of
00:14:11.600 these symptoms, we have to get you out of this phase. Here’s a simple metaphor to help you really understand this. If
00:14:17.040 I’m cutting down a tree and I start attacking it from every direction and I’m just super mad and I’ve got my axe
00:14:23.600 and I’m hitting a tree, but I’m hitting it up here and I’m hitting it down there and I’m hitting on the other side and I’ve got no strategy. There’s zero
00:14:29.839 chance that tree is coming down. It’s going to look like somebody attacked it, but it’s not going to fall over. That’s what we need to fix here. So, here’s
00:14:36.399 what we need to get you so you can get to the next phase. First off, you need a sharp, irresistible offer that scales.
00:14:43.680 Essentially, we need to look at everything you’ve done, figure out what’s the one thing that actually makes
00:14:49.600 you profit, that you enjoy doing, that the market wants, that you can sell easily, and do just that. If we can
00:14:57.279 figure out that and create a system that we’ll talk about in a bit, to deliver on that, that is how we scale. A couple
00:15:03.839 years ago, I was working with a client and they were running a 3 million a year agency doing everything, you know, SEO,
00:15:10.000 PPC, branding, PR, even podcast, but the founder was drowning. The whole team was
00:15:15.199 frustrated. They were trying to do great work, but everything just seemed all over the place. So, I ran an offer audit
00:15:21.680 with them and I found that 80% of profits came from one service, paid ads for SAS companies. So, we cut the rest.
00:15:28.800 And then in 18 months, surprise, surprise, revenue doubled six million with less clients and way higher
00:15:35.680 margins. This is the big idea. Most businesses don’t need to do more. No,
00:15:41.360 no, no. They need to do less and focus blinders on on the right thing. This is
00:15:48.160 the simple framework that’s going to get you there. I call it the value creation ven diagram. There’s three parts. The
00:15:55.120 first part is what do customers value most? Not necessarily what you want to do. Not necessarily what they’re asking
00:16:01.120 for. What are they going to pay for? See, a lot of you say, “Well, everybody’s asking me for this. Are they paying top dollar for it?” No. They
00:16:07.120 nickel and dime me. Not a good fit. See, what do they pay for? What are they going to pay the most for? What is the
00:16:13.519 most demand for? That’s number one. Number two is what do we do best as a
00:16:18.880 team? When I look at my capacity and I look at my capability, what is the thing that we do better than most? And some
00:16:25.600 people call it an unfair advantage. When I look at the structure and the team and the consultants and what we do better
00:16:31.360 than most people, what is that? And then the third part is, and this is my favorite one, is what’s the most
00:16:36.639 profitable? When I look at it, what can I charge the most for higher dollar?
00:16:41.759 What makes me the most profit? Usually a product or service with high margins. And that is the sweet spot for most
00:16:48.160 profitable. And the middle, that overlap, that’s your scalable offer. And some people get confused between number
00:16:54.399 one and number three. Here’s the deal. Number one is what does the customers want? What is the market saying right
00:16:59.519 now? AI super hot. Number three is what’s the most profitable? Like of the stuff you sell, where are you making
00:17:05.760 your most profit? One time, one of my best friends, he’s struggling his business. He wants to grow, but he’s doing too many things. I said, “Hey man,
00:17:12.160 all I need from you is a print out of all the things you’ve sold in the last 30 days.” And we went through all the
00:17:17.760 bottom 20% lowest dollar amount things. Okay? Then I went through the high dollar amount stuff and I made them go
00:17:24.400 through the whole list and I said, “What are your margins for each one of those products?” And then I looked at it and I said, “It’s very simple. We cut the
00:17:30.799 bottom low ticket amount stuff that have no margins. Tell the sales team, sell more of the high dollar amount, high
00:17:37.600 margin stuff and that will give you the profitability to reinvest in solving your problems, aka buying back your
00:17:44.400 time.” Once he saw the math, he couldn’t unsee it because he knew what the customers wanted. He knew where he was
00:17:50.400 making his money. He knew what his team was good at. He just didn’t look at it and was ruthless with the assessment.
00:17:56.320 Everything else is just noise, stealing your attention, your focus, distractions, convincing you you should
00:18:02.960 keep doing it. People are going to be mad at you. I get it. You’re scared. If you want to be successful, you have to
00:18:09.440 be willing to be disliked. You may have to fire some customers. But if you trust
00:18:14.480 me on the back side of that decision is going to create a business that can scale. Okay, now we have clarity. The
00:18:20.559 next step is build the machine that sells this thing on repeat. That brings us to phase three, building a
00:18:24.000 No text
00:18:26.640 predictable growth engine. Here’s what I mean. Companies that can scale don’t gamble on growth. They build a machine
00:18:35.120 that is predictable. They build a system that makes it inevitable. There’s no
00:18:40.960 hopeium involved. There’s no like, I wonder if next month’s going to be better than this month. They create a
00:18:46.559 system for growth. Here are some symptoms that you might be feeling that means you got to get out of this phase
00:18:51.679 ASAP. One, revenue feels like a roller coaster. Okay, it’s spiky. It’s up. It’s
00:18:58.000 down. It’s unpredictable. You have a good month. You have a bad month. You get pissed off at your team. You apologize for getting pissed off. Like
00:19:03.840 it’s just up and down. Or maybe one big client leaves and the whole business starts to panic. Maybe you have to lay
00:19:10.240 off 20 30% of your team because you didn’t plan for it. Or another symptom is you might be overrelying on referrals
00:19:16.480 or a single marketing channel. It’s kind of like flying a plane that’s got four engines but only using one. And if that
00:19:23.280 engine gets cut off, you there’s no growth and it’s gambling. That is not how we build predictable revenue. That’s
00:19:30.320 why predictable growth is like flying on autopilot with all four engines. You want revenue that’s steady, scalable,
00:19:37.360 and not dependent on luck. A couple weeks ago, I’m chatting with a founder on Instagram and he’s telling me about
00:19:42.960 his revenue and it literally looked like a theme park ride, a roller coaster. He closed one deal and then his revenue
00:19:49.280 spiked. Cuz I’d be like, “Hey, what happened there?” And then all of a sudden he lost two clients and then all of a sudden his revenue spiked again.
00:19:54.880 And I was like, “Dude, you need to change your process.” So I shared with him the process for doing outbound. Then
00:20:01.280 we layered in paid ads and then we added a simple upsell. The whole roller
00:20:06.799 coaster flattened. The investors leaned in. This founder finally found time to sleep at night. And it’s not
00:20:13.760 complicated. You can do this. Here’s a simple framework to solve this problem. It’s called the growth engine triangle.
00:20:20.960 When I think about the center, which is predictable growth, it comes from three repeatable systems that compound
00:20:27.919 together to create the predictability. The first one is inbound. Essentially attracting demand. How do I get
00:20:33.919 customers to know who I am, to trust me, to lean in, to fill out a form, to reach
00:20:39.039 out to me? That’s through our content marketing. That’s through social proof. I know so many people. They’re the
00:20:45.120 bestkept secret in their industry cuz they never tell anybody about the results they’ve gotten for clients. They
00:20:51.520 literally have worked with the top people. It’s so wild. The best of the best. Nobody knows because they’re
00:20:57.600 insecure about asking because they’re worried the person won’t say yes to a testimonial. Come on now. Okay. And they
00:21:03.360 haven’t really built out their organic channels, meaning that if there is a lead that comes into the world and they Google their name and they look at
00:21:09.039 what’s been written about that person, there’s not a lot there. They go to their Instagram account, there’s 12 followers. They go to their Twitter,
00:21:14.480 there’s 126. It’s all their family members. You have to become a magnet in your market. Pulling people out of it
00:21:22.320 without manual effort. They literally lean in because of the quality of the messages you put out on the social
00:21:28.799 media. If you just look at what I’ve created, okay, the fact that you’re here and you’re listening to this, I generate
00:21:34.799 hundreds of thousands of leads every month. I know it sounds crazy to partner
00:21:39.840 with people at Martell Ventures, my AI venture studio, to work with me in one of my programs, to literally do cool
00:21:47.120 things, have me speak at their events every month, hundreds of thousands of people, all by creating content that
00:21:53.360 pulls them in, by building that inbound engine. The second part is outbound, essentially creating demand. And this is
00:22:00.159 an area where a lot of people think it doesn’t work anymore. Cold emails, cold calling. These are still strategies that
00:22:06.559 many companies have perfected, repeated, created, iterated against that generate
00:22:11.919 predictable leads. And the last one, number three, is partners and referrals. See, when I think of referrals, these
00:22:17.919 are people that went out of their way to talk to somebody, to convince them, to reach back out to you, to maybe do work
00:22:24.000 for them. When I think of partners, it’s kind of the same thing. A partner is somebody that has a massive audience of potential clients that you could serve
00:22:30.400 for them that’s non-competitive. And you figuring out how do I incentivize them to tell their clients about you, it’s
00:22:36.799 kind of like a referral program, but for an audience that doesn’t know you yet. If you build that out, find one, two,
00:22:43.280 three people that have massive audiences of people you can serve and give them a piece of the business that they bring to
00:22:49.520 you to incentivize them to tell other people about you, you will create massive amounts of demand. The analogy I
00:22:55.760 like to think about is the effort it would take if I wanted to build a train track or a railroad that goes from one
00:23:02.480 city to another. Like just to have that, I’d have to, you know, plow through the forest and then create tunnels through
00:23:09.360 the mountains. Then I’d have to lay down the track. Then I’d have to build the train that has the engine and a caboose
00:23:16.720 and carts and all my stuff and it’s pulling my products or service through the mountains. Or I could find somebody
00:23:23.760 that’s already done all the heavy lifting, all the work, and laid down that track and then build a big hook and as they come by, I just hook on to the
00:23:30.880 train because they’ve done all the work. That’s what a partner does and it is the most powerful way to get customers. So,
00:23:37.919 here are some examples. Podcasts, incredible way. Stages, speaking at
00:23:43.840 people’s event, incredible way. Webinars, where you co-host a webinar, somebody else markets your webinar and
00:23:49.760 you get on there and you add value and then you ask them if they want help and if they buy, you give them a piece of the action. Or creating a referral
00:23:56.080 program where you incentivize your customers when they get a win. Hey, you ask them, do you know one or two other
00:24:01.360 people just like you? Then we might be able to serve same way we did you. And if they end up buying from us through
00:24:07.679 your referral, we’ll give you a discount on your service. Such a simple framework to create massive amounts of demand
00:24:14.159 that’s predictable. So, quick recap, we have inbound, which creates a magnet of people aware of who you are. Number two,
00:24:20.720 we got outbound, where we’re tapping people on the shoulder and saying, “Do you have this problem?” And we have number three, partners. We have people
00:24:27.039 that have access to our customers promoting us to them. When you run all
00:24:32.080 three in parallel, growth becomes consistent, not random. Because maybe
00:24:38.400 one month inbound’s working really well, outbound’s not. The next month outbound’s down, partners are up. And
00:24:44.480 that’s what creates consistency in your growth engine. If you get anything out of this, understand hope is not a growth
00:24:51.760 strategy. systems are. We’re building systems to get you customers without
00:24:57.279 worrying. But here’s the problem. We have to dial in your delivery for this next one. That brings us to phase four,
00:25:01.000 No text
00:25:04.080 systematized delivery and operations. So here’s what it means. If right now when
00:25:09.120 you take on a customer, if there’s issues, there’s mistakes, you can’t scale mistakes. I had a friend and he
00:25:14.880 has defects in his business, 30% of their work comes back. That means there’s a broken process that they
00:25:21.279 haven’t stopped to slow down to fix so they can actually grow. And at scale, a broken delivery becomes a death
00:25:27.360 sentence. This is what you’re probably feeling. You got a support inbox. It’s piling up. You can’t stay on top of it.
00:25:33.440 Customers, they’re coming and they’re slipping through the cracks. Scheduling conflicts. The work that you were promised doesn’t show up on time. You’ve
00:25:40.000 got people slowly churning out, essentially coming in and quietly leaving your business as you spend more
00:25:46.159 money on ads trying to replenish all the people that left. You’re essentially a professional firefighter trying to put
00:25:52.480 out fires. To get out of this phase, we need to create simple, clear, and
00:25:58.400 airtight systems. Because without a checklist for somebody else to follow to do the work, you’re never going to be
00:26:04.559 able to grow. Here’s a crazy story. I had a friend a few years ago go from zero to $27 million in 3 years. He
00:26:13.279 figured out how to market. He figured out how to sell better than anybody had ever figured it out, but he didn’t have
00:26:18.559 a process to deliver the fulfillment. Well, what happened? All the people that
00:26:23.600 bought didn’t get what they thought they were going to get and immediately started complaining. And it took a
00:26:29.520 while, 18 months, 24 months and it kept going. Why? Because the whole business was focused on selling. The whole
00:26:36.559 business was focused on growth. Nobody stopped to say, “Hey, how much time are we spending on actually delivering what
00:26:43.360 we sold? What are we doing from a systems point of view, from our team point of view? How are we tracking,
00:26:48.960 monitoring all these new clients, literally thousands per month coming into the business?” And instead, word
00:26:54.799 got out. See, if you use a scorch earth strategy to growing, it doesn’t take
00:26:59.840 long for everybody to hear how shitty you are. You’ve built this foundation in your business, but it’s a house of cards
00:27:05.760 and you keep trying to add more cards on top and it keeps falling. It has to be able to withstand the weight of the
00:27:12.320 growth. And that’s why we had to build SOPs. So that’s when I talked to my
00:27:17.360 buddy and like he had to rebuild the business from almost scratch. We started with the delivery. We started with the
00:27:24.159 simplicity. We started with the people to make sure that he didn’t scale and cause the same thing. 6 months later, he
00:27:31.840 almost got back to half the revenue. Turn dropped. People were happy. It was a way easier business to run. This is
00:27:37.919 the big idea in this phase. Retention, which is how many people stay in your business. That’s the hidden growth
00:27:43.840 lever. Everybody wants to talk about Facebook ads or content marketing or social media. How about I got a
00:27:50.880 customer, I keep a customer. So, I want to teach you a very simple framework. I call it the three Ps of delivery. The
00:27:56.880 first is playbooks. We have a document that talks about how somebody learns the
00:28:02.000 skill, executes the work, how they measure their progress, how they’re trained on it, what frequency they need
00:28:08.960 to do certain tasks, and how to report any issues if they come up. Essentially, make decisions. If you have one document
00:28:15.279 that covers all of that, then you have something you can give to somebody else and they can learn how to deliver on
00:28:22.320 that promise. Think about it. Just like in football, they execute a play and all the players understand their position
00:28:28.559 and what they got to do so that they get a touchdown. And the cool part is because there’s a playbook, it doesn’t
00:28:34.240 matter who’s running the play, the different players could come and go and change on teams and they’ll still get
00:28:39.440 the same result. Essentially, every client gets the same experience. It doesn’t matter who’s running the play.
00:28:44.880 There’s no issues, there’s no surprises, there’s no mess ups. Number two is the people. And this is where we have to
00:28:50.559 find people that are accountable to their role. Meaning that if I hire somebody to help with onboarding, help
00:28:57.760 with customer success, operations, marketing, not only do they need to do
00:29:02.799 the work, but they actually have to be accountable to the results. See, too often people hire folks and then tell
00:29:08.799 them what to do. I like to hire people and have them tell me what to do. And I know this might feel slow, but the
00:29:14.240 upfront investment to slow down, to have them think, to present a plan means they won’t fight the plan. When they help
00:29:20.720 build the plan, they don’t fight the plan. And that way, when you bring them on to be consistent for your clients,
00:29:26.720 you’re buying back your time. See how we tie that back to the first step? What you want to ensure happens is clear
00:29:32.880 ownership because that ensures nothing falls through the crack because there’s honestly no way you could possibly write
00:29:38.720 down all the scenarios that somebody would have to do to make sure that something doesn’t happen. You have to say, “Look, I’m not going to tell you
00:29:44.640 how to do your job. I’ve trained you. I’ve coached you. I’m going to support you. There’s tools to use, but I need
00:29:50.159 you to own this outcome.” If your job is customer success, it means the customer
00:29:55.520 needs to feel successful with us. Ask them, check in, look at what they’re
00:30:01.440 doing within our world. Make sure that you feel confident that they would say, “Yes, I feel successful with your
00:30:08.159 business.” If they don’t own it, there’s no level of like structure you could create other than they just have to
00:30:15.039 understand they own it, which means they’re going to look at it through that lens and they’re going to realize that nobody’s there to tell them how to do
00:30:20.159 it. They’re expected to step up and solve that problem. You could hire somebody to manage your Instagram account and you can give them an SOP and
00:30:26.399 all the steps and checks or you could say you’re accountable to grow our Instagram account. See the difference?
00:30:34.000 You tell me what you think you should do. We can negotiate it. But at the end of the day, if you feel confident in
00:30:39.039 your plan, go execute the plan. I’m going to hold you accountable to the growth of the Instagram account. I can
00:30:44.559 give you a playbook of what’s worked for us in the past, but I also expect you to come in and innovate and grow that and
00:30:50.080 make it better. So the ownership is the growth of the Instagram account, not did you schedule a post on Thursday at 2
00:30:56.640 p.m. That’s on you to choose to do or change. Number three is the platforms, right? These are the tools, the
00:31:03.279 automation, the systems, the software. Think about it. If you have onboarding where somebody buys and you want to
00:31:08.799 onboard them into your business, is it manual or do we automate it using like a type form and maybe some kind of
00:31:15.200 automation with like Zapier? The way I like to think about it is that technology becomes the glue that keeps
00:31:22.240 the delivery together and scales without ballooning your headcount. See, if every
00:31:28.080 time you want to grow, you got to add people to grow and you’re not looking to make it more efficient, then you’re going to eat into your profit. If you
00:31:35.200 force yourself to operate with the same people but get the people more efficient using the platforms that exist, AI,
00:31:42.559 automation tools, software, that’s when delivery becomes scalable. Most people
00:31:49.120 should just start with two areas. One, scheduling, right? Customers come in, they have to schedule their first
00:31:54.720 onboarding call, they got to schedule some other stuff. Have that done through the software. The second one is support
00:32:00.640 using a tool like intercom.com where you can set it up. It’s literally click, click, configure, done, and it’ll
00:32:08.240 respond to all the customer inbound requests to email or chat on your website so that you can spend your time
00:32:14.240 actually getting new customers and ensuring they’re happy. The first P, playbooks. The second P, people, the
00:32:21.840 third P, platform. So, what I need you to take away from this phase is one,
00:32:27.440 revenue without retention is a treadmill and you’re not going anywhere. Revenue is vanity. Retention is sanity. Even if
00:32:35.440 you have all the systems in the world, you’ll still be the reason that things stall if every decision flows through
00:32:41.840 you. That brings us to phase five, installing leadership and management. This is why this phase matters so much
00:32:42.000 No text
00:32:48.480 is businesses don’t scale through the founders. The only way they can actually scale is through leaders. Here’s how you
00:32:55.120 know you’re stuck at this phase. Every decision in the business keeps coming back to you. You’re literally the
00:33:02.000 bottleneck in moving any project forward. Your team’s getting pissed off. They might be a little frustrated
00:33:07.840 because they’re drowning and you’re not available to help them or when they offer feedback, you shut it down. The
00:33:15.120 analogy I like to use is kind of like you’re the you’re like the architect and
00:33:20.159 a construction worker at the same time. You’re doing a little bit of architecture, but a lot of construction
00:33:26.000 working. And that means there’s not enough of the blueprint or the decisions on the conflicts within designing the
00:33:31.600 architecture resolved and everybody’s trying to be really helpful and they’re putting up the wall here and they’re pouring cement there, but because they
00:33:37.360 don’t have a plan and even the plan probably has issues, but there’s no way for them to talk to you about it cuz you’re just heads down doing the
00:33:43.200 construction work, you end up building a building that isn’t complete. And if you’re feeling this, this is the reason
00:33:49.519 the building isn’t rising. This is what you need at this specific phase. You need leaders who own outcomes. You
00:33:56.640 cannot tell people to do enough things for them to do it. You just got to give them the outcome. That way, you can
00:34:01.679 finally step in to being the CEO. The reason I’m so intimate with this specific pain is that it was my story.
00:34:08.639 Essentially, when I built my company, Spheric, when I was 24 to 28, I did everything. I ran around, spun plates,
00:34:15.280 didn’t know how I was doing it, had a bunch of people that are willing to work really hard because they didn’t have direction, then I was always fixing
00:34:21.119 mistakes, and it just felt heavy. Like it almost killed me. I’m not even joking. Like I had anxiety attacks. I
00:34:27.679 had adrenal fatigue. And then I had to go see a doctor because I had like this pain, bruise, rash thing on my back. And
00:34:33.839 he’s like, “Bro, are you stressed out?” I’m like, “No.” He goes, “Well, take this.” I said, “What’s that for?” He
00:34:39.040 goes, “You got shingles.” My own body was saying, “You I’m not doing this.
00:34:45.679 Please don’t wait to get to this point to solve this problem.” And then once I figured out a completely different way
00:34:51.359 of running businesses, not only did my companies literally triple in growth, but I found a different way of being
00:34:58.880 inside my business that felt almost like too easy. Like I felt guilty because it was not hard anymore. And that’s what I
00:35:05.760 want to share with you. Here’s the big idea. Your capacity doubles the moment
00:35:11.440 you stop making every decision. So, here are three very tactical frameworks you need in this phase to get free from the
00:35:18.560 decision-m. The first one is my favorite. It’s called the 1 31 rule.
00:35:24.160 Essentially, if somebody comes to you, I want you to ask them this question. What’s the one problem we’re talking
00:35:30.320 about? Cuz I’ve been in so many conversations with people. They’re like, “This is broken. This is broken. This is broken.”
00:35:36.880 What’s the problem? Like, what is the one problem we’re trying to solve? That’s a writer downer. You might want to save that one. what’s the one problem
00:35:42.960 we’re trying to solve? Then ask them, what are the three ideas or solutions you’ve considered to solve that one
00:35:49.359 problem? Often times they’ll go, well, I haven’t. That’s why I’m coming to you. And I said, I understand. Why don’t you try? And then the third one is the one
00:35:56.400 recommendation. I remember a long time ago, a guy named Adam came to me. He was the director of HR and he was struggling
00:36:02.560 because he had to hire 11 people in 90 days and he’s freaking out. I said, Adam, what is your 131? Well, I don’t
00:36:09.680 know. How long would it take you to figure it out? I don’t know, like a day. I said, “Cool. How about you just come
00:36:15.920 back tomorrow, same time, and let me know what your 131 is.” He’s like, “All right.” Next morning, I get a text message. Ping. I’m good. I thought so.
00:36:24.400 Like, once people understand, they’re empowered to make a decision, they’ll make it. 98% of the time, they come to
00:36:31.119 me with the problem, three solutions, with the recommendation, I go, “Sounds good. Winner winner chicken dinner. Do
00:36:37.200 that.” It’s so funny how the entrepreneur feels the need to have to be involved, to want
00:36:43.359 to be involved, to feel needed, and that creates a dependency their team have on
00:36:48.960 them. Then they get pissed off that the person can’t make a decision without them, but you taught them to do that
00:36:55.520 every time they’re stuck. So use the 131 rule to avoid all that. The second one is a leadership rhythm. See, a business
00:37:02.960 is the byproducts of its meetings. It’s the only tool we have as entrepreneurs. Essentially, there’s meetings, there’s
00:37:09.200 goals of those meetings, and there’s people on that meeting. And the conversations that happen on those meetings will dictate if you grow the
00:37:15.359 business, if you have consistency, if you can scale. So, I always ask myself,
00:37:20.400 what are the daily rhythms every day to create awareness and alignment for my
00:37:25.520 team? For most people, it’s just a daily standup. Takes 15 minutes. Everybody talks about what they did yesterday, the
00:37:31.200 top three things, what are the three things they’re planning on doing today, and if they’re stuck. That way, as a leader, my only job is to take all the
00:37:37.920 stucks and make them unstuck throughout the day to help my team, and then they keep building. The weekly meeting is
00:37:44.320 ideally at least a sync meeting where everybody comes together and they talk about the goals, how they’re doing to
00:37:51.040 those goals, and any issues that are holding them back. So that we have a focused meeting on solving problems. Not
00:37:56.720 got a second meetings, not three-hour meetings, not Saturday night phone calls, a structure to solve problems.
00:38:03.359 Then we want to think about quarterly. Ideally, a meeting once a quarter, end of year, where you sit down and you
00:38:09.920 plan. You review the performance of the previous quarter, the goals for the next quarter, where are the projects getting
00:38:16.240 stuck, what needs to be resolved, what does the hiring look like? You sit down, you plan once, and then you decide and
00:38:22.400 you execute for the next 90 days. That leadership rhythm is a winning strategy
00:38:27.839 to get unstuck. So, we want to do a daily standup where we figure out where we’re stuck to help your team. We want
00:38:33.119 to do weekly meetings to make sure everybody’s aligned with their goals and discuss any open issues. Quarterly is
00:38:38.560 for planning and alignment and yearly is for strategic reviews and focusing on the big picture. The final one is a
00:38:45.119 decision ladder. See, if you don’t create a framework for other people to make decisions, they’re always going to
00:38:50.880 come back to you. What’s got two thumbs and likes to make decisions? The founders. Stop that. In every one of my
00:38:57.359 companies, I have these rules. It’s 50 to fix it. Anybody on the team that runs into an issue with a customer in the
00:39:03.599 business can spend up to $50, no questions asked, to solve a problem. All I ask is they tell their manager or
00:39:08.720 leader that they did it. They expense it. We pay them no matter what. Managers can spend up to $500, no question asked.
00:39:15.359 directors $5,000, executives $50,000. And the reason why is that I want to
00:39:22.000 empower everybody on the team to make decisions on their own. If they got to stop, wait, review, plan, it slows
00:39:29.200 things down. The biggest thing that makes a founder go bananas in their mind
00:39:34.560 when it comes to growing the business is seeing it slow down as you grow. But you have to design the machine so that
00:39:39.760 people make decisions so it doesn’t slow down. And all of this ties back to the phase of ownership in people so that it
00:39:46.240 never gets to that point in the first place. So if I can give you one thing in this phase to summarize everything is
00:39:52.000 give your team ownership and they’ll go from great players to great leaders. And
00:39:57.200 again, if every road leads back to you, you’re not a CEO. You’re a [ __ ] traffic
00:40:02.960 jam. But even the best leaders need glue. And that glue is culture. Which
00:40:08.000 No text
00:40:08.480 brings us to the final phase to scale your business. scaling culture and vision. Here’s what you need to know.
00:40:14.640 Culture is the ultimate growth multiplier. If you ignore it, it becomes
00:40:20.240 the silent killer. If you don’t have a vision for where you want to go, you’re only going to attract people that are
00:40:26.960 looking for safety and a job. Nobody’s going to show up willing to put in the extra work because you haven’t told them
00:40:32.800 why they should. If you don’t design the culture, how people participate, get
00:40:38.320 rewarded, support other people, then you’re just going to have people acting by default, and that doesn’t create a
00:40:45.119 strong culture. It doesn’t create a place that people want to work. You know, this morning I had a buddy of
00:40:50.320 mine. He’s like, “Hey, found somebody who wants to work.” And I’m thinking to myself, “Bro, you just became somebody
00:40:55.760 that people want to work for.” Like, there’s no lack of people that will work. It’s do they want to work for you?
00:41:00.800 Here’s how you know there’s an issue. Team morale, it’s slipping. People
00:41:06.160 aren’t excited and jumping to work. You’ve got toxic hires. Somehow they
00:41:11.280 made it on your team and they’re poisoning the company. And the worst part is your best people are quiet
00:41:18.480 quitting. They’re still there, but they’re not showing up the way they used to because that extra effort is just
00:41:24.240 being eroded by the crappy people that you’ve got. The best way to think about culture, it’s like gravity. If it’s not
00:41:31.440 strong, people just float away. The best people. If it’s really strong, it retains them. It attracts them. It
00:41:38.720 creates like a magnet pulling them into your orbit. See, you can’t see it just like gravity, but it actually pulls
00:41:46.160 everything in one direction towards growth or destruction. Here’s an
00:41:51.680 example. This coming Monday is a stat holiday. Somebody mentioned it in the office. Half the team didn’t even know
00:41:57.599 why. They don’t care. They’re more excited about coming in to create and build the future together than worrying
00:42:04.720 about getting that extra stat holiday. Got my time off. That’s not the kind of culture that creates something magical.
00:42:11.440 But it starts with you. Here’s the benefit of doing this right. A strong culture fuels customer retention, right?
00:42:17.839 Why? Because there’s a players on the team that show up and care about your customers. And all of that compounds
00:42:23.119 your growth. Maybe you’ve never heard this, but there’s a company called Zapos, and they sell shoes online, many
00:42:28.319 other things. They were bought by Amazon for a billion bucks. But they had a culture that was so strong. People would
00:42:34.079 fly in all over the world just to go study it, to be toured around it, to learn from them. Even to the point where
00:42:40.160 when employees were leaving to go do something bigger or better, they would cry. It was like they were breaking up
00:42:45.440 with their best friend. That to me is the gold standard. I’ve also seen the opposite. founders that thought culture
00:42:51.920 schmaltzer like they didn’t invest in it. They thought it was fluff. So surprise surprise, toxic management
00:42:57.920 spread across the company. Customers churned and the company collapsed under the weight of people that didn’t care.
00:43:05.200 The big idea that I want to leave you for this phase is that at scale culture
00:43:10.880 isn’t optional. It’s the oxygen for your growth. So here are three frameworks
00:43:16.000 that you need to design your culture and vision. First off, core values. And trust me, when I started, I was like,
00:43:22.319 what does this even mean? Words. You see it at these companies. It’s like integrity and do the extra work. And
00:43:30.160 they’re just words on a wall. And guess what? That’s what they are if that’s how you treat them. This is the way I want you to think about core values. I want
00:43:36.400 you to be so specific what it is you are and what you’re not that you use it to
00:43:41.520 hire people. Meaning, it’s a filter. Meaning, you test against it. Meaning that if you think going the extra mile
00:43:46.800 is important, I want you to ask them when you interview somebody, explain to me the last time in your work you went the extra mile and how did that look? If
00:43:53.119 you say personal growth is a core value and you don’t ask them what book they last read to help them in their job or
00:43:58.560 their life, and they don’t have a book that they can mention, then why would you bring them on your team? Values are
00:44:03.839 things you’re trying to filter people for, not try to get them to take them on. They either have them or they don’t.
00:44:09.280 That’s higher. Inspire. Use them to celebrate. I call this catching people
00:44:15.119 doing right. Find folks that are embodying the value and acknowledge them, celebrate them. Like go wild. Like
00:44:22.960 literally scream, “Oh my god, Bob is the best.” He literally went above and beyond. I don’t know. Nobody else knows
00:44:28.800 this. Bob stayed up last night till 11:00 p.m. to empty out the inbox cuz he knows we’re doing the new launch and
00:44:34.000 there was a bunch of support tickets and he wanted us to make sure that there was nothing left. So, he stayed here and he did the work. Go crazy. Okay, that’s how
00:44:41.920 we inspire other people to adopt them. And then the most important part is you have to fire against them. Meaning that
00:44:47.680 the values aren’t what you say they are. They’re what you accept. And if somebody continuously misses and refuses to adopt
00:44:55.200 that value, they can’t stay on your team. For example, at Martell Media, I keep it really easy. We have three. One,
00:45:02.319 simple scales. Remember the values? Simple scales. How many values I have? Three, not five, not seven. See how I
00:45:09.280 just did that? Two, be the example. We will never teach you to do things we
00:45:14.400 don’t do ourselves. I think that’s reallyed up and some companies unfortunately are okay with that. So, we are always the best example of what we
00:45:20.560 teach. And three, build the people. If we build the people, the people build the business. I wake up every day and
00:45:27.280 ask myself, how can I make these people richer? How can I develop them? I think honestly the point of a business is to
00:45:33.359 have a place where you can develop people. That’s a big idea. It’s also culture. So we use these three to hire,
00:45:40.160 inspire, and fire. The next framework to help design your culture is to have a
00:45:45.839 vision narrative. Essentially, what you want is to paint the 5-year future. And
00:45:51.119 I’m talking visual, a diagram, an image. Make it visual. Put it on the wall. I
00:45:58.560 have one here. It’s right there. It’s literally I can see it. It’s right there. That five-year vision is so
00:46:05.760 visual clear that anybody with their eyes closed could hit the target. It’s kind of like that game where you got to
00:46:12.079 like flip something open and see it and then it closes and you got to figure out where it was hiding again. If people don’t see clearly what it is they’re
00:46:18.560 trying to hit, they won’t be able to hit it again. And you’re pissed off because nobody sees your vision. Well, you haven’t shown them a picture of it. Now,
00:46:25.680 the key is is to repeat it until their eyes roll. My rule is if they can’t make
00:46:31.760 fun of you behind your back around the vision, oh my god, Dan is always like, “Oh, we’re gonna get five years and
00:46:37.200 we’re gonna look like this.” You know what I mean? Like, they got to make fun of you because of the amount of times
00:46:42.480 you repeated it. You think they get it, trust me, repeat it. You think they heard it, trust me, repeat it. You think
00:46:49.280 they see it, they don’t, repeat it. And the last one, people systems. In my
00:46:55.280 world, I think there’s two major things to focus on. We already did the first one which is customers. How do we get
00:47:00.640 customers into our world? The other part is talent. It’s the people, right? How
00:47:06.079 do we attract, hire, develop and retain top talent? And the way we do that, how
00:47:13.440 we select people, our process for doing that, how we develop people, our process for doing that, how do we retain people,
00:47:19.839 our compensation program, our development programs, all of that. the values, those aren’t just things that we
00:47:26.960 say we do to attract the people. That’s what we do to build the people. Those people systems is what makes your
00:47:33.200 business unstoppable. The best way to explain this is hire for the soul, train
00:47:39.119 for the role. Hire the person that embodies the values, the character traits, and the kind of person that you
00:47:44.560 think you want to pour into. You can train those people. Hire somebody that’s great at the skill, like a world-class
00:47:51.680 video editor, world-class salesperson that has the worst values that screws people over all the time that aren’t fun
00:47:58.160 to work with. That’s cancer inside your business. I don’t care how much money they’re making you, you have to cut it
00:48:04.240 out and move on. To summarize this whole thing, culture is the invisible hand
00:48:09.440 guiding your business when you’re not in the room. It’s how people make decisions when nobody’s looking. Have a strong
00:48:15.920 culture of accountability, of performance, of execution. Watch people
00:48:21.040 make really good decisions when you’re not around. Not design that, not have a vision that’s big enough for their
00:48:26.640 dreams and goals to fit inside of. Watch people sit on their hands and wait for you to show back up to actually start
00:48:32.160 working. And now you know all six phases. But the real question is this.
00:48:37.359 Will you stay stuck as a chaos builder or step in the role of an empire
00:48:42.880 builder? And if you’re there, are you going to elevate and fully step into the role of CEO? That’s my question to you.
00:48:51.119 Why not you? Whoa. I mean,
00:48:56.640 all right, that was a lot, but that’s exactly how to scale your business. I
00:49:02.800 was thinking of a dozen people when I shot this video. People I care about, people I know that are struggling,
00:49:08.240 people that I think have the potential to create something magical. I wanted to share that. So there was no confusion as
00:49:14.640 to what to do at what stage. Now I don’t want you to just watch this, feel
00:49:20.319 motivated, but actually do nothing with it. My question to you is leave a comment below and make a commitment to
00:49:26.960 me. What’s the one thing you’re going to do differently after watching this video? It could be small, but it needs
00:49:32.960 to be done. Commit below. Let me know. I’m excited to read your answer. So, as
00:49:38.240 I mentioned at the beginning, if you haven’t done this yet, please go download the full PDF. It’s linked in
00:49:43.839 the description below. Download it and go through this video, re-watch it, and fill it out. I really want you to walk
00:49:50.319 away with a plan to attack your growth. This is a lot to take in, but I think
00:49:56.720 the mindset for how you approach your business is more important to what to do in your business. And this one changed
00:50:03.680 my whole life. the belief that I will acquire what I desire for others. The
00:50:10.559 moment I stop making business about me and start making it about other people, my team, my customers, my whole world
00:50:16.720 changed. If you do that, not only will this feel effortless, it’ll actually get
00:50:21.760 really fun. Now, if you want to learn how to get ahead of 99% of other people using AI, click the link and I’ll see
00:50:27.599 you on the other