Hey there.
Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor,
and creator of SaaS academy.
In this video, I'm going to share with you the five
meetings you need to have in your software business
to truly grow.
And be sure to say the N word.
We're going to share with you how
to get access to my weekly sync agenda, which
is one of the five meetings.
And I'll walk you through that to make sure you
get the most out of your team.
Let's get going.
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A long time ago I was building a company called Sphere.
I was 24 when I started the company,
and it grew like crazy, 150% year over year.
We started hiring people.
I think we were about 20 folks when I finally
realized that I was running around
like a chicken with its head cut off.
I was trying to do everything.
I was being involved in the sales meetings, the marketing
meetings, the delivery, talking to clients, doing the work,
accounting, processing, picking up mail at the p.o. box,
doing everything and not truly with any structure.
And what I've discovered I read a book called Good to Great
by Jim Collins, which really sent me down the path of like,
oh, great companies actually have a operating model.
I call it the company OS.
They have an operating system for how
they grow their business.
And if you study the highest performing companies,
they all follow similar patterns in regards to the way
the communication flows and how they schedule
and they run their meetings.
And that set me down this path of reading a bunch of books
like Scaling Up and Traction by Gina Wickman and Double,
Double by Cameron Herold.
And literally, if there's been a book written around operating
models, High Output Management by Andy Grove,
et cetera, et cetera, I've read it.
And Meetings Sucks, another one by Cameron Herold
that will give you a lot of color into meetings.
But I really believe that there's
five meetings that if you implement,
it will transform your business.
These are non-negotiables.
When I start companies, we implement.
We instruct.
I give the guidance on how to do these things,
because they are the 80-20.
These are the five meetings you add them to the way your team
communicates, and you will build consistent, repeatable
momentum.
If you don't, you will be floundering and struggling
and feeling like nothing's getting done to your standards.
And once I implemented these meetings in a sphere,
it allowed us to continue our growth curve over a four year
period to eventually building one of the fastest growing
companies in Canada and getting acquired by US firm
when I was 28.
And the reason why is because you build a company as well
managed, and people will see the value in that.
So I want to walk you through those five
meetings in this episode.
Number one, daily stand up.
So the way this works is you may have heard of daily huddles
or stand up meetings, et cetera.
I got this from building software in the Scrum model,
but the way to do this is really simple,
OK, is you ask what are the three things you did yesterday.
So everybody stands up.
That's why it's called a stand up.
Everybody stands up.
And you ideally want to do it at the department level
if you have a big company and then roll that up
into the exact leadership teams of each one,
but it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds per team member.
What did you do yesterday?
What are the three big rocks you accomplished?
What are the three things you're going to accomplish today?
What's on your list?
What do you want to do today with your time?
And then third are you blocked?
Are you stuck?
Is there anything you need to move forward?
And that's it.
So they said, OK, yesterday, I did this.
I did this.
Today, I'm planning on crushing this, this, and this.
And I'm blocked because I'm waiting on this person
to get back to me for this template,
because I can't move forward on that.
And what happens is as a leader, as a founder,
your job is to listen to the blockers.
A, make sure that they're working on the right things.
So sometimes people are pulling on the rope
in the same direction meaning that like you could
have one piece of rope that splits off
to five people on your team, and they're all
pulling different direction, which means nobody's really
moving in the right direction.
So you want to make sure everybody's aligned,
and that if there's anything slowing down, creating friction
that you unblock and unstuck.
That is the role--
one of the many roles of a founder
as a leader for your team.
So number one is the daily stand up.
Number two, the weekly sync, so this is a framework I created
and a structure.
But it's a weekly meeting.
At the end of the day, you want to do a few things really well
but you want to synchronize your team towards the bigger vision.
So you want to make sure that you're
looking at your scorecard, your understanding how
the big rocks that you've designed for the quarter
are moving forward.
And you want to make sure there's
any issues that have come up that you discuss them
in those meetings in context.
Too often people, individuals are
having debates and discussions around challenges,
but they don't have all the information.
They don't have the right people in the cubicle or in the office
or in the meeting room to actually have
that proper conversation.
So it's better to just add it to the weekly sink
and create that space for everybody to discuss,
solve, and move forward.
So that's the weekly sync.
It's for the team to synchronize on a weekly basis
around the metrics on a weekly basis, the big rocks
that they're moving forward in the quarter
and ideally the issues.
There's more elements to the agenda.
I'll share more at the end, but that at a high level
is the purpose of the weekly meeting.
Number three, monthly reviews, so
if you've done things properly in your planning we'll
talk more about that in a second,
then every month you should be doing a monthly review
to just see how things are going.
Double click.
Dive into the projects.
Dive into the status, kind of, like a show and tell.
Like, if people are moving forward,
and they're like-- let's say something is migrating
your Google Docs to Air Table, for example, is a big project,
show us what you've created.
If it's a two month long project,
like, I'm a big fan in those monthly reviews
is just share with the team what's going on.
How does that look?
If you're a customer success and you're building new case
studies for your marketing team or for your website,
show us what you got.
Let's see-- like, don't wait.
I think too often people want to wait till things are perfect.
I think in the monthly review, yes, you
want to review the previous month,
how are you guys doing, what's planned for the next month,
is everything green, red, or yellow.
I agree, but I also say take the opportunity
to just do a little show and tell on a monthly basis
so that everybody in the organization
can, kind of, be proud of the work they're doing
and proud of the progress they're making.
And everybody else feel like, oh, I actually
understand what that department's doing
or this person is doing.
I understand how this project's going
to fit into the work I'm doing.
I think it's just a really great cadence
on a monthly basis to reset and share,
kind of, how the company's doing.
Number four, quarterly planning, so one of the things
that I think is very important is on a 90-day sequence,
my buddy, Todd Hermann, says he has a program called
the 90-day year.
That really the truest fidelity or ability to plan
is about 90 days.
After 90 days, sure you can be directionally
focused on what you want to get done,
but you really can't tell.
You have no clue how the stuff that you're doing right now
is going to--
what the impact's going to be and how
that's going to materialize into momentum
into the following quarter.
So every 90 days, I think it's really important
to step back, look at the previous period,
see how you've done, take those lessons learned.
If there's anything that didn't get done,
move them forward into the next quarter.
And then with that knowledge, reset and re-evaluate
the 90 days going forward and lock those in, set the metrics,
and move forward.
But it's just really healthy to ideally off site, OK.
Go outside of your office every 90 days
for one day minimum as a team and just reset the plan,
reset the vision, reset the quarter
for the following one coming up.
And make sure that you take everything
you've learned from the previous 90 days
and bring those forward in the following 90 days.
And that on a quarterly basis is a must.
And some people are like, well, I'll do it every four months.
You can.
I'm just telling you you're not going to grow as fast.
The teams that pulse together faster grow the faster, OK.
And pulse means more often they're communicating
and realigning strategy.
More often they're connecting talking about strategic vision
and aligning everything to make sure that it's making sense.
90 days for me is the absolute best time
to make sure that that happens, and every four months
just feels a little slow and could be a little faster
if you go every quarter.
Number five, yearly strategic planning.
So the yearly plan is way different than the quarterly,
because a quarterly is looking at what you've already
design in your yearly planning to get done in that quarter
and understanding the sequencing of projects
and why they're designed in that order.
Sure you can move them out of sequence,
but in regards to throwing away a full big project
or changing product strategy, you're
not going to do that on a quarterly basis.
On an annual basis, on your yearly strategic planning,
you're going to look at the previous 12 months,
take all the lessons learned moving forward,
then you're going to look at a 10 year target, a three year
vision, and one year goals for the business.
And using that kind of vision for where
you want to end up in 10 years and being really clear what
are the five to seven things that you're
going to want to accomplish, then you can work backwards
and really set a one year plan that's
going to align with the three year
and eventually the 10 year.
That shouldn't be done.
See what happens is too often when
you're having meetings with your team
you're talking about stuff that are
very strategic and long-term out of context
for when those conversations should be happening.
So anytime I'm talking to a team member,
and they're like we should really
consider getting into this line of business,
I go that sounds like a great strategic discussion
at our annual planning site so that everybody
can understand your perspective and, kind of, why
you think it's important.
But unfortunately it's just not a now thing.
Does that make sense?
They go, yeah, perfect.
Let's add it to the strategic planning documents.
We just have a document for our strategic plan.
We have the quarters, and then we have an annual.
And they just add it to the discussion list.
Why is that awesome?
Because then they feel like they've been heard.
They don't bring it up in another meeting.
They don't try to politically get
the project started, kicked off, R&D research outside
of the right timing for it.
And you just you end up talking about projects
that are now things, not later things.
And I think too often as a leader
we need to explain to people like, hey, we
have a strategy for a reason to get everybody aligned
with that strategy.
If you come in and you keep adding stuff that is totally
a right turn or left turn, then we're
going to slow ourselves down.
The right time to do that is maybe in a quarterly meeting
or in an annual strategic review, but it's not now.
And I think creating that annual off-site two days
and spending time really looking over the numbers
for the previous period and then looking at the next 12 months
with a three year horizon and a 10 year horizon to make sure
that everybody is aligned with that vision
and then building a plan against that, that's how we move fast.
That's how we create momentum, and that's
how we avoid wasting time today talking about things
that are not now conversations.
So quick recap, five meetings you
should be having to grow your software business-- number one,
your daily stand-ups, number two, weekly syncs, three,
monthly reviews, four, quarterly planning, and five,
yearly strategic planning.
So as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I want to share with you my exclusive weekly sync
framework in it.
I talk about the agenda structure
that I use to run my companies.
The most unique parts that are never discussed--
and you can click the link down below to get your copy--
is things like the announcements, the customer
headlines.
Go check out my framework, because I
think it'll give you more breath for what might be missing
to really create excitement and motivation amongst your team
and not just make it all about trying to check in
and hold people accountable.
We want to celebrate as much as we want to resolve issues.
So you click the link below to download
your copy of the weekly sync.
If you like this video, be sure to lightly tap the Like button.
Share this video with anybody you
care about that you feel that they could 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.