- Hey there, Dan Martell here,
serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator.
SaaS got me in this episode,
I'm gonna share with you the who, not how strategy
for growth and be sure to stay to the end.
We're going to tell you how to get access
to my Silicon Valley Secrets training.
Literally five years immersed in Silicon Valley,
learning the best growth strategies
from the top marketers and entrepreneurs.
I'm gonna share with you how to get access
to that at the end, but let's get into it.
(snappy music)
So the idea of the who, not how is essentially
asking you the question if you have something
you want to accomplish, not how do I do it,
but who do I need to bring into my life
to help me do that sooner, better or faster, okay?
So I'm gonna tell you a quick story.
When I moved to San Francisco back in 2008
I wanted to build a software company,
but I knew that I wanted to also take some time off.
I'd, at that point, been building companies
for literally 14 years nonstop,
a hundred hour weeks, really felt like, okay,
I just exited my company, financially,
I was incredibly in a good spot,
and I'm not gonna rush to do anything else.
But I had aspirations and motivation
to do a startup company, to build a software company.
And it wasn't until I met Ethan that I realised
that this is the who that might unlock
the potential to do this.
So instead of me rushing to build this company,
I actually gave all the idea,
the code I built up to that point
'cause I had a full-time dedicated CTO working for me,
Scott, and I gave the code and said,
"Ethan this is your idea, run with it,
and let me be a business partner with you."
And it was through that process of him CEOing the company.
I didn't want to be CEO.
I wanted to be building something,
but I didn't want the responsibility.
I found Ethan, we partnered on, 50/50 partners.
I brought the capital and the experience,
he brought the tenacity, the obsession and the focus,
and the team management and all things operations as CEO,
and we ended up building this incredible company,
raised venture capital and eventually exiting
for a lot of money about two and a half years later.
And I share that because, even today, I've always known
that I learned this back in the day, that building teams
and finding the right bench strength,
that's the real unlock.
For a lot of us, we think we need to know and do everything,
and the truth is is that if you can find the right person
that will allow you to unlock strategies
that you might've thought were three, four, five years
in the future and bring them forward.
So great book, if you want to read
a book on the topic by Dan Sullivan.
It's actually titled "Who Not How."
He may even have the copyright on this,
but Dan I just read this a few months ago.
It inspired me to shoot this video
because I've always thought through this.
I mean, another quick story.
I'm on the board of a company called Pela Case.
I invested with Jay-Z, the hip-hop guy.
And I sit on the board with this incredible team,
Matt and Brad are the founders.
And one day I remember asking Brad,
because they had so many different initiatives going on,
and I said, "Aren't you worried
that we're doing too many things?
Death by a thousand paper cuts, or not being focused."
And he says, "I understand why you're saying that,
but the truth is is we keep asking ourselves
the who question, not the how question."
So every new strategy that they were sharing
they could literally point to the driver, the GM,
the entrepreneur that they partnered with
to execute that into the market.
And because of that they had somebody
that could spearhead it so that they
didn't get bogged down by those new initiatives.
And it allowed them to create
bench strength and management bandwidth.
That's the power.
Here's what I got for you and how to do that for yourself.
Number one, big projects.
So the truth is, is you got to have a big project, why?
Because if you're gonna find somebody that's the who,
it needs to be big and interesting enough
to be exciting for them to want to be part of it.
Most people try to have who questions on small little tasks.
That's not gonna get the juices flowing.
That's not gonna get you excited.
That's not gonna get you thinking about a bigger vision.
I want you to think about what is possible for you
over the next three years and what are projects
that if you had the right person to drive that,
to spearhead that forward, that you would start today
if you had that person.
I want you to just start imagining, collaborating,
envisioning that project kicking off now,
not three years in the future
'cause it may take you a year to find that person.
But that who question, not the how question.
A lot of people go down the path of getting the trainings,
and the books that I'm a big fan of that.
But at a certain scale, if you have the resources
the brand stature, and potentially the finances,
finding the who is going to be way more strategic for you
than learning the how, and trying to manage
another thing amongst your busy workload.
Number two, bench strength.
I've mentioned this earlier, but like one of the most
powerful things that you can start to develop today
are the people, the talent.
Where do you find that talent?
How do you get good at recruiting?
Well, the reality is as a CEO,
there's three things you need to be good at.
Number one, setting the vision;
number two, managing the money;
and number three, finding the right people.
And to me, it's something you need to put
in your calendar, invest in it.
If you want to find the easiest way, just go up on Upwork.
One of my favourite ways to find the right who
is to go up and find freelancers.
Upwork.com, incredible resource.
It's got a tonne of different freelancers
that you can reach out to because they have the expertise.
They have the experience.
So finding people, freelancers that you know, referrals,
just find folks that are talented
that you jive with and build that list,
and say, "Man, wouldn't it be amazing to work
with these people one day,"
and just write their names down, okay?
These incredible talent.
I have a handful of friends that I'm just waiting
for the opportunity for us to collaborate.
And when we do, I know it's gonna create magic.
I don't even have the specific project yet
for us to work on, but I know their talents,
I know their skillsets, we jive on a value basis,
and once those two things come in
and I'm just gonna keep envisioning it,
I'm telling you magic will be created.
But the key is to build that bench strength,
to start sourcing and recruiting candidates
for the who position, not the how.
Number three, partner with experience.
This is going to be the most important thing.
Do not find somebody that's doing nothing,
and give them something to do to take,
especially a big project, off your plate.
Find the people that are already
doing the thing successfully.
That's why I recommended freelancers,
people that have the skillset that have the experience.
Real-world example, a few months ago I was thinking
of potentially starting to look at buying
other software companies outside of the portfolio
that I'd already invested in,
and I didn't have the bandwidth
in my calendar based on the commitments that I made
and my family and my business partners.
So I just kept thinking about that problem,
who could I partner with?
'Cause I had this asset,
I had this audience, I had this community.
A lot of people are reaching out to me saying,
"Hey, I'm looking to sell to you,
can you recommend somebody for me to talk to?"
And I'm like, "Man, if I had somebody
that could support me on evaluating deals
and presenting to me the best ones, that would be amazing."
Well, turns out, creativity started going.
I actually work with, one of my coaching clients,
is a guy named Kevin from SureSwift Capital
Kevin actually has a whole team dedicated
to sourcing deals, evaluating them, negotiating them,
and doing all the due diligence, et cetera.
And I just called them up one day and said,
"Hey man, I got this crazy idea.
What if we partner together?
I will bring you a bunch of opportunities.
You let me get first right of refusals
for the ones that I want.
I'll pay you a finder's fee for doing all that heavy lifting
and distracting your team a little bit.
But if I don't buy them and you buy them,
you pay me that same fee."
So it's win-win, they get more pipeline,
I get resources to do all the work, everybody wins.
It doesn't cost us anything 'til we find something amazing,
and it just allowed us to take something
for me that was maybe next year and bring it forward now.
'Cause I'd seen an opportunity in the market,
so partner with experience.
And number four, make it win-win.
I think one of the biggest challenges
for entrepreneurs to get their mind wrapped around
is creating scenarios where both people feel like owners.
See the problem is that if you create a scenario where
somebody is the owner and the other person's a renter.
So that's what employees kind of typically can feel like.
They don't feel like they have
any ownership of the business.
If you're starting a new project
you want to make it so that it's win-win, right?
So for example, I'll give you a real-world scenario.
One of my sales guys, Chris,
is an incredible sales person, okay?
But he's also just as good, if not better, a marketer.
He understands our customer's pain
'cause he's talking to them, he's chatting with them.
But he's also an incredible copywriter
and Facebook ads-person.
So the way I see it, it's like, "Hey man, like, yes.
I need somebody taking sales calls,
but at the same time, you've got a unique skill
that could allow me to create new campaigns
and new offers that allow me to scale that up
that could be done independently,"
because he's got this unique skill set
which is the full stack, which is kind of like a unicorn,
but yet I've got him focused on doing this one thing.
So I said, "Hey dude, what we're gonna do
is we're gonna bring somebody on,
take care of 80% of your workload today
so that you still stay doing the part
that you love to do the most
that generates the most economic upside,
which is closing in the sales process,
and with that free time I'ma get you to focus
on coming up with creative ideas to design offers
that will serve our customers stuff we already have
that we just haven't put together
and put out there to the world.
And you're gonna manage all of it,
and we're going to do a rev share on all of that revenue.
So that way the more successful this is the more you make,
and the more we obviously collect
as a business and revenue."
And that to me is about making it win-win
it's trying to be creative in the incentive process
so that you're not taking capital and just spending it.
Like the way I structured it, essentially,
I went over here and, well, we both went over here
and we both went over there.
And if you can figure out creative ways to do that
in your business with freelancers, partners,
like I did with Kevin, people on Upwork, maybe your friends,
people in your world, that is how we will get
to the who questions and the solutions faster
than continuously going down this path of the how.
Because if you do this, and in the book Dan Sullivan wrote,
"The Who Not How" he actually hired
and works with a writer that wrote the book,
so he didn't even write the book.
It was his strategy, it was his IP,
it was his outline, it was his clients that were
the stories were told in the book,
but he wasn't even the writer.
Imagine that, that the book itself
was a perfect example of the who not how.
I hope this inspired you today to start asking
that question a lot more often.
So quick recap, four key strategies
to using who not how to grow strategically.
Number one, identifying big projects;
number two, bench strength;
number three, partner with experience;
and number four, make it win-win.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode,
I want to share with you one of the most powerful trainings
I ever did called the Silicon Valley Secrets.
Literally, the top lessons I learned
about company growth that has never been written about
in business books that is a hundred percent pulled from
and copied from the world of technology
and innovation in Silicon Valley.
The smartest minds, the mentors that I've had
extracted into this masterclass.
The link is below.
You can click that to get access to this exclusive training.
And if you liked this video, be sure to leave a comment,
subscribe to the channel and like and share it with a friend
that you think it might serve.
And as per usual, I want to challenge you
to live a bigger life and a bigger business,
and I'll see you next Monday.
(Dan singing)
Is that good, we're here?