How to Run a $10M+ Business in 45 mins per Week

You're spending over 60 hours a week juggling all the responsibilities in your business and you still feel like nothing's getting done. I know how you feel because I used to be there too.
I went from being overwhelmed, distracted, burnt out to running a 10 million a year business in just 45 minutes per week using a single scorecard. And I'm going to share with you the easy step-by-step process I took to remove myself from the day-to-day of the business and how you can do it too.
So whether you're just starting your business or already making millions, this scorecard is going to show you how to run your business on autopilot. If you want to copy yourself, just follow me on Instagram and send me a message scorecard and I'll send you the direct link.
I'm Dan Martell, 12s and Martell on Instagram. Welcome to the Martell Method.
I went from rehab at 17 to building a hundred million dollar empire and being a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. In this podcast, I'll show you exactly how to build a life and business you don't grow to hate.
My best-selling book, Buy Back Your Time, is out now. Grab a copy at buybackyourtime.com or at any of your preferred online retailers.
Before you freak out and get overwhelmed, here are some simple rules you need to follow. Number one, every number in the scorecard has a name or DRI, Direct Responsible Individual.
I got this from Steve Jobs at Apple. Many other companies do this.
If you have a number, somebody needs to own it because I believe sunlight sanitizes all. If you have an issue in your business, it's probably because nobody owns the number and every goal has a color.
Is it red? Not on track? Is it yellow? Kind of off track? Is it green? Everything's good to go. See, what I've learned is something as simple as a traffic light system keeps people focused on the right things.
People literally self-adjust if you just put a box red that their name's associated to. Number three, every row has a trend line.
What does this look like? Think about left to right. What's a positive trend line? The graph goes from little bit to a lot.
So everything can actually be measured on a weekly basis. Some kind of net new count that somebody's responsible for.
Here's the way to think about it. Spreadsheet whispers, graphs shout.
If you want somebody to self-correct and have everybody on the team know how well they're doing, design a graph that goes down if they're not doing good and everybody's gonna ask them why. I remember one time I was working with my media team and they were telling me about all their great projects they were working on.
And yet the revenue team is waking up every day and absolutely crushing and hustling. And they have this graph that everybody looks at in the office that goes up and to the right.
And I just asked the team, from a media point of view, what's your graph? What's your up and to the right? What are you measuring to tell you that on a daily basis, you're making progress? Because they didn't have one, it was hard to figure out what was important. Once we designed it, then they self-corrected.
Then they prioritized the projects based on what was going to make that graph go up and to the right. Easy peasy, but needed somebody to do it.
Number four, every week has a reporting meeting, meaning that when you sit down, everybody has to self-report. I'll get into this in a second.
So think about it this way. When a plane leaves New York City, it's heading to LA.
Did you know the whole time the pilot's flying, they're off track, they're off course? What happens is they've got the dashboard in front of them that's telling them how to respond and readjust. See, most businesses are off target on a daily basis, but if they know they're off target, they can make an adjustment.
And that's why it's important to measure on a weekly cadence. And if not daily, right? The more frequently you measure, the less likely you'll get off track.
All of these ideas can be summarized into one simple message. We manage what we measure.
So you have to make sure that you measure what matters. You probably don't want to know how bad it is.
That's why people don't measure. They don't want to know that their bank account is overdraft.
They don't want to know that their lead generation isn't working, that they haven't made enough sales to make their bills because then it gets them down. It's kind of crazy because like the feeling associated to knowing is the reason why they don't know, which causes them to fail even harder.
If you want to absolutely win in business, you have to measure, you have to monitor, you have to set a frequency for review so that you can make adjustments in real time. So it doesn't just add up.
It's actually a self sabotaging behavior that people do put their head in the sand and pretend like they don't know. So don't do that.
I could never run the business remotely without having these sensors in place, these measurements in place, the metrics in place. Financials are after the fact.
They're not real time. So I don't want to find out 45 days later, 60 days later that there's an issue.
I want to find out in real time that there's something wrong with the business and where in the revenue stack is it broken. And if I have these sensors in place and they turn from green to yellow to red, then I also know who's responsible for it.
So I know who to call. So it'd be impossible for me to sleep good at night without having a scorecard in place.
Before we get back to the episode, if you actually want to know what my real life looks like and see the people and the businesses and the companies I buy and my family and just like how I make it all work, go follow me on Instagram, Dan Martell, 2Ls and Martell on Instagram. It's where I show the behind the scenes, the real deal, real time.
I'd love to see you there. Have an amazing day.
Which brings us to number two, which is the weekly sync meeting. I remember one time I was coaching this company.
They're doing about 16 million in revenue, a software company. And I remember asking the CEO, well, how frequently do you sit down with your team to review your quarterly rocks, your planning, your strategy every week? Is it twice a week? And he looks at me, he goes, oh, we meet once a month.
And I was like, once a month? Like, do you understand what? Think about how much changes in four weeks, let alone two weeks, let alone week over week. Some companies that I know, they do it twice a week just because there's so much change and it's so dynamic.
And when he shared this with me, I said, look, you need to install a weekly sync meeting where everybody resets because it's all about having every person on your team pulling on strings in the same direction. There's nothing more wasteful than to find out if you have a small team of five people that each person is pulling on a different string in a different direction and nobody's making any progress.
Well, why? Because the other person's canceling out their effort. So the weekly sync structure helps you align and focus your team on the most important priorities.
So here's what's required to have a great weekly sync structure. First off is who's the meeting owner? I personally don't like to run any of my meetings.
I'd rather be a participant. So what I've done several times in companies is just have somebody else on the executive leadership team own the meeting.
And they might own it for a quarter or you might rotate through different different people, but essentially just as responsible for the agenda. So they move topics, they're the timekeepers, they're capturing things, they're making sure that the meeting is run really well.
The second thing is to review the vision and the mission of the business. And this should be part of your agenda template.
Because at the end of the day, there's two things I know they're going to move businesses forward. Why are they doing it it and who are they doing it with? And both of those things are covered in the mission and the vision of your business.
You want to review it at the beginning of the meeting and make sure that everybody on your team is on the same page. So they're singing from the same song sheet.
You don't want to be out of tune. For whatever reason, you fall out of passion with the vision and the mission, you probably should have a conversation.
Number three is reporting. And this is so important.
Most people get this wrong. Everyone has to update their own numbers.
That's why the scorecard is a spreadsheet. It's not automated.
I do it manually on purpose because I want the person who owns that number to go into the other system, pull the report, validate that it's accurate, and then update the spreadsheet. They update their numbers, not their assistant,

not you, not your assistant, have them do it.

And then the team needs to report back

on how they're doing.

They need to let everybody know,

I'm on pace, I'm below, I'm red, here's why.

Have them tell you the status of their metrics

so that they can be 100% accountable

and let everybody else on the team know

if they're performing or they're not. That way you don't have to be the bad cop.
Number four is discussions. As people are reporting their numbers, that's not the place to have the conversation.
Write down questions you might have for them. Write down any other ideas.
Write down any discussions you want to have. And then what happens is after you do the scorecard review, so everybody's on the same page on how well the business is performing, then you have the space to have conversations.
Look at the problems. Brainstorm with other people on your team for creative solutions.
Oftentimes, something that might help one department would also help another department. So having that conversation as a group in the time allocated for the discussion, so important.
You just want to separate it from when you're reviewing the numbers versus trying to solve the problem. It's a different headspace to be in.
Number five is rate the meeting. Now this might sound silly, but I'm a big fan of rating every meeting.
And the reason why is I want whoever ran the meeting to get some direct feedback on how well they did. If they let conversations fly off into the night and nobody brought it back, they need to know.
If you were on a meeting and you didn't feel like you should have been there, you need a way to give the feedback to the person who ran it. And essentially you want to give the score and then what would have needed to change to improve that score.
It might be that you went

over time or it's that nobody wrote down any notes or that you didn't hold anybody accountable when

they were reporting on their numbers and they just absolutely missed the mark. Whatever your feedback

is, you can give it because my rule is if you don't feel like that meeting was useful, don't

show up. I know that sounds crazy, but in my world, if I feel like I've given the feedback and it's a four and here's why, and it's the same thing the next meeting, I don't show up anymore.
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This is the first time. thing the next meeting, I don't show up anymore.
This is the big idea. Bad meetings waste time, productive ones drive success.
Before we get back to this episode, if you prefer to watch your content, then go find me on YouTube. I have this episode on YouTube.
I'm Dan Martell on YouTube. Just subscribe to the channel, turn on the notification bell because then you'll get notified in real time.
It'll tell YouTube to tell you. You got a new episode, so you'll never miss anything.
Now let's get back to the episode. Which brings us to number three, which is work through your team.
But before we move into that, we've got a goal of hitting 500,000 subscribers. So if you haven't already, click subscribe.
It takes just a second. So the other day I was actually working with one of my leaders and he was frustrated because he had a team member that he just couldn't get the outcomes from them without him getting involved, which is frustrating because you want the business to get better.
It's like, well, if I have to jump in just to solve problems every time, then how am I actually moving things forward? And I sat down with him and I shared with him that we teach people how to treat us. And every time he jumps in to save the day, he's teaching that team member that if they just sit back and create a problem, he's going to show up and fix the problem.
Instead, what I shared with him is a completely different way of leading called transformational leadership. Here's the framework.
The first part is outcome. The outcome is communicating clearly with your team exactly what you want them to do.
Think of it as like the definition of done, the success criteria. When this project's done, when you are completed this work, it should look like this.
It should feel this way. It should accomplish these results.
Make sure you really make it meaningful. I mean, I like to even also add potentially some rewards.
If we do this by this timeline, here are some of the things that are going to benefit the whole team. If we don't, here's the downside.
What are the stakes? Most people need a little bit of carrot and stick to motivate them to move forward. So we focus with outcome.
That's step one. Number two is measure.
Using the scorecard, we have to choose the metric that that work is going to impact. And then we put their name next to it, which means they're accountable for that work.
Think about it. They have a number that's going to be moved or not based on their work and their name is next to it.
And guess what? Everybody can see it. Once we measure and it's public, that person will start self-adjusting the way they work to move stuff without waiting on you to solve problems.
Number three is coach. If they do trip and fall, if they do misstep, if there's an issue, instead of attacking them in real time, write it down.
And then what happens is once a week, you sit down for your one-on-one. And in that meeting, you have a chance to look through all the things that didn't go as well as it could have and coach them up.
And in that moment, you're talking about your own personal story of how you overcame this. You're teaching them the philosophy or the principles that they missed, not the actual behavior or the activity.
And then the third thing is you're getting commitment going forward that they're going to change their approach to never make that mistake again. That's how we develop people.
See, every time you start micromanaging someone, it's usually the beginning of the end. If the trust is gone, then you already know you can't work with them long time.
So don't think that your ability to jump in and solve problems is the right solution. It actually creates a bottleneck and it's called that because it's at the top and it's you.
You probably want to jump in because it makes you feel useful. Sometimes when we get more time back, we hire people and we have less to do.
It makes us feel like a little lazier. We feel guilty for it, but fight against that so that you don't get pulled back into the work that you bought back.
I mean, the big idea is that if you buy back your time, make sure it stays sold. Before we get back to the episode, if you wanna jumpstart your week with my top stories and tactics, be sure to subscribe to the Martell Method newsletter.
It's where you'll elevate your mindset, fitness, and business in less than five minutes a week. Find it at martellmethod.com.
Which brings us to number four, which is to build your leaders. I had a friend the other day, he's in the lawn care space and he had a team member not respond to a customer fast enough.
And when I'm saying fast enough, I mean within 45 minutes and the customer was upset and they texted the owner. He calls the manager and kind of gets upset at the manager.
And why didn't you reply? And once you do, can you please text me and verify they got all done? And he was kind of heated about it. And I sat back and I was intrigued.
Here's why. Was there an agreement that the person should be responding to all emails in real time? Because I know I don't do that.
Do you feel that 45 minutes was too much time for the person to expect a normal response? Does every customer call you when they're upset? It makes it really tough for their leader to actually lead when they're being pulled in different direction instead of allowing them to actually do the work. So my whole philosophy is build the people, the people build the business.
How do we do that? A few things. It comes down to leadership accountability.
First off, you need to have reporting in place. That's why scorecards are so important.
That's why the weekly sync is so important. You have to set up the space for reflection and have a dashboard that reports everything so everybody's on the same page.
Second is you have to have the systems. See, if you're saying, well, you should have known you should have done this better.
Like, why did you make that mistake? But you don't have a documented process for managing sales pipeline, workflows in your business, set up automation to make things more efficient, look at where the bottlenecks are and remove them and have a system for cleaning things up. Then it's hard for people to actually work with you because you're not properly setting up the expectations and creating a scenario where they can actually win.
Number three is strategy. And this is one of the big things that leaders don't do.
Strategy equals sequencing. Right time, right action.
How do I make a decision to solve a problem, make sure it's the right problem to solve right now, deploy the right amount of money towards solving that problem, and do it in the right order and have the right people involved to actually move the business forward. When strategy is missing, it can feel like a game of pinball for your team because every time you read a book or go to a seminar, you come back and you change something.
Number four is people. And I call this HTRT.
Okay. There's four areas you need to focus on when it comes to people.
You need to learn how to hire great people. Most people don't have that skill.
You got to learn how to train them, teach them, scale them up, build skills. Number three is retain your top talent.
That's a skill set that most people don't know how to do in regards to performance bonus and measurements and structure. And the fourth is transition.
Transition up if they're awesome, but most often transition out if they're not able to perform at the standards you need them. But that's the people side.
It's because there's two funnels. You have the customer funnel, which is marketing and sales and getting new accounts.
And then you have the team funnel or the people funnel, which is finding the people to deliver on the stuff that you've sold. So when both of those are happening at the exact same time, the more customers come in and the team is hired and trained and ready to do the work, then your life is awesome and you make a lot of money.
You get rich. If those things are out of sync where you don't have enough customers for the team or you don't have enough team for the customer, then that's where you lose opportunities or lose money because your staff too high or don't have enough people.
So keeping those things in sync is the skill. I believe in Reed Hasing, the CEO of Netflix philosophy, which they have very little systems and they just believe that we hire adults and we don't expect them to behave like children.

So don't treat your team like they're children,

treat them like they're adults and let them do the work.

You'd be surprised what'll happen.

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