40 Claude skills from the stage.
Every repeatable framework a speaker taught — audits, matrices, decision flows, review cadences — written as a skill Claude can run with you. Open one to read it; copy the SKILL.md or download the packaged .skill.
How to install. Download a .skill (a zip of the skill folder) and unzip it into ~/.claude/skills/, or paste the SKILL.md into a new folder there. Claude Code picks it up on the next session; in Claude.ai, upload the .skill under Settings → Skills. Each skill lists its source session, so you can read the notes it came from.
AI-era hiring scorecard
This skill produces a hiring scorecard for one role: the job spec, weighted culture criteria, spoken non-negotiables, evidence questions, filter thresholds, and a side-by-side table every candidate is scored on before anyone discusses impressions. Paul Williams' case for it starts with the resume: "in 2026, every resume you see now, I guarantee, has been rewritten perfectly for that job description ... So the list now is not three to five, the list is 200 on paper, perfect candidates for you" (18:51:34). And the interview does not rescue you: "if you're not asking the right calibrating questions in the interview, then you're really just having a conversation" (18:52:38). The product video played on stage put the goal in one line: "stop hiring the person who interviews best, and start hiring the person that is best for the job" (18:55:05).
The session demonstrated software that does this. The process underneath is what this skill encodes; it works on paper.
Inputs to gather
- The role, and whether it is on-site, hybrid or remote, and where.
- Weekly applicant volume and how many hires the role needs. Mattenga's: about 150 applicants a week across 24 open roles, hiring 10 to 15 people a week (19:00:25, 19:06:13).
- Who screens and who interviews today. Ellsworth's picture of the room: one HR person doing payroll, benefits and onboarding, who cannot also rank 100 resumes (18:54:00).
- The company's stated values, if any. Default: ask the owner to name the three behaviours they praise most and the three they fire for.
- The last 20 hires and who interviewed each, for the bias audit in step 8.
- Any hard requirements the law or the work imposes (certifications, background checks, the ability to lift, drive, or pass a drug test).
Steps
1. Write the job spec in your own words
Williams on how most small companies do it: "You probably find the jobs online, you copy the structure and you paste them in and you post them" (18:56:22). Instead, write four things: what this person will own, what good looks like in 90 days, the two or three skills that cannot be trained on the job, and the size or scale of place they should have worked in before. That last one is Ellsworth's first filter: "technical skills and around the same sort of size of company, same sort of scale" (18:53:20).
2. Pick three to five culture criteria and weight them
Stanfield's discovery was that the criteria could be his own: "each business values things different ... for us is like 25% problem solving or hospitality. Each business has our values, so that was a great filter" (19:04:42). Ellsworth named the families: "performance cultures, delivery cultures, accountability cultures. Every organization has those different things in different percent" (19:07:27).
Choose three to five criteria. Weight them to total 100 percent. The weights force the owner to say what matters most. Example for a restaurant: hospitality 30, problem solving 25, reliability 25, teamwork 20.
3. Write the non-negotiables and commit to asking them aloud
Non-negotiables are pass or fail and sit outside the weights. Williams' examples: on-site versus remote, location (18:56:48). Stanfield's for a restaurant: "they need to be sober with no DUIs and be able to pass a drug test. And unfortunately they lie on the resume and when they check the box, you have to ask them in the interview every single time" (19:05:14).
List them. Then write the exact sentence the interviewer will say for each, so it gets asked the same way to every candidate, every time. A ticked box on an application is not an answer.
4. Write two evidence questions per criterion
Calibrating questions ask for a specific past example, not an opinion. For each criterion, write two prompts of the form "Tell me about a time when..." with a follow-up that asks what the candidate personally did and what happened. The point is that "interview skills are not job skills" (18:52:17); a fluent talker can describe hospitality, but only an example shows it. Mattenga's culture question that cut paycheque-only hires was as simple as "do you care about people?" (19:07:05), followed by evidence.
5. Set the three filter phases and their thresholds
Ellsworth's order: "One, you get all these resumes in, you want to filter them around technical skills and around the same sort of size of company ... Then you want to get into, okay, what are some specific things that I can test for culture? ... This is an on site job. Oh, I'm looking for work from home. How do you filter those out?" (18:53:20). Cheap filters first, so human time is spent only on candidates who have cleared them.
| Phase | Filter | Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Skills and company scale, from the resume and a short screen | Minimum resume score; everyone above it gets to represent themselves (Williams, 18:57:22) |
| 2 | Culture criteria, from evidence questions | Mattenga's live-interview cut: top 40 scoring 80 percent or more (19:06:25) |
| 3 | Non-negotiables, asked aloud | Pass or fail, every candidate |
Funnel target for one HR person, Ellsworth: "we got 100 resumes and these 20 have been ranked and they fit our first criteria of filter, I'm now going to spend my time on these 20 and boss, I'm going to bring you these seven" (18:54:24). Aim for that 100 to 20 to 7 shape.
6. Score every candidate on the same sheet, before discussing impressions
After each interview, the interviewer scores every criterion 1 to 5 with the example that justified it, marks each non-negotiable pass or fail, and computes the weighted total. Do this before talking to anyone. Williams described the target output as "side by side standard scoring" (18:57:06) with a transcript behind each score. A candidate with any non-negotiable fail is out regardless of total.
Weighted total = sum of (criterion score × weight) ÷ 5, giving a percentage.
7. Compare side by side, then decide
Line the shortlist up in one table. The decision goes to the highest evidence-backed total, not the best conversation. When the owner's gut disagrees with the table, write down why. Sometimes the table is missing a criterion; add it for next time rather than overriding this time. Stanfield's before and after: "we had great team members, randomly be a team member that was a little off. Now ... when we walk into stores, when we look at the team, it is noticeably different" (19:05:48).
8. Run the interviewer-bias audit
Stanfield's recruiter was "very soft spoken, quiet. And so if somebody came in with the high D personality, she would get scared and never hire them ... she filtered everybody in the company along that lens" (19:01:10). A restaurant needs extroverts; the filter was removing them. Moving to structured scoring produced "a much bigger variety of people in the company" and a culture that "lifted up" (19:01:37).
- List the last 20 hires and who interviewed each.
- Note each hire's broad temperament and the interviewer's.
- Look for a pattern where the interviewer never hires their opposite.
- If one exists, add a second scorer or the scorecard before the next hire, and check the pattern again in six months.
9. Respond to everyone above the minimum score
Williams: "99.9% of people that apply for a job only get ghosted. They never know why" (18:50:19). Beyond fairness, it is brand damage among the many you do not hire. Give every candidate above the phase-one threshold a short screen and a decision. A two-line message is enough.
10. Count the funnel weekly
For a month, log applicants in, passed phase one, passed phases two and three, live interviews, offers, hires. The stage eating the most human hours is the one to template, delegate or automate first. Stanfield's outcome after systematising: the full-time recruiter role went away and "we've been able to double the number of people we do hire" at roughly the same cost (19:00:51, 19:03:15).
Output format
Fill assets/hiring-scorecard-worksheet.md. It contains:
- Job spec in four parts.
- Culture criteria table with weights totalling 100.
- Non-negotiables with the exact spoken question for each.
- Two evidence questions per criterion.
- Filter phases with thresholds.
- Per-candidate scoring sheet and the side-by-side comparison table.
- Interviewer-bias audit table.
- Weekly funnel count.
Cadence
| Activity | Cadence | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Ask every non-negotiable aloud | Every interview | Speaker-stated |
| Score on the sheet before discussing | Every interview | Our recommendation, from the side-by-side principle |
| Build or refresh the scorecard | Once per role, revisit when the role changes | Our recommendation |
| Funnel count | Weekly for a month, then monthly | Our recommendation |
| Interviewer-bias audit | Once now, then every six months | Our recommendation |
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Believing the resume. In 2026 it has been tailored by AI to your posting, alongside 150 others.
- Mistaking rapport for fit. "You may even have a really great rapport and feel really good about the individual" and still know nothing about the job (18:52:38).
- Hiring people who remind the interviewer of themselves, or never hiring their opposite. One temperament becomes the company's filter.
- Trusting a ticked box on a non-negotiable. Ask it aloud, every time.
- Copying a job spec from the internet.
- Expecting a miracle. Stanfield: "There's no such thing. So in any business you're going to have a percentage of human beings that come and go" (19:08:23). The system improves the average; it does not remove every miss.
When not to use this
For a single senior or executive hire where the pool is a handful of known people, the funnel thresholds do not apply; keep the weighted criteria, the evidence questions and the non-negotiables, and skip the phase-one cut. Do not use the weighted total to override a legal or safety requirement; those are non-negotiables, not criteria. Check local employment law before adding any screening question that touches health, background or protected characteristics.
Companion skill: quarterly-calibration-calendar measures people after they join by the same yardstick logic.
See references/source-notes.md for verbatim quotes with timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/hiring-scorecard-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Audience sovereignty audit
This skill produces a one-page scorecard of rented versus owned audience, a redrawn funnel, one concrete off-ramp per platform, and a monthly owned-audience target reviewed next to views. Bartlett told The Vault (2026-09-01) that "sovereignty" is the word of the next decade for anyone with an audience: "do you own the relationship with your audience?" Platforms now run every post through an AI to match it to whoever will watch, so follower counts matter less every year. Running a large social media company through his twenties he watched organic reach fall about 50% a year, and he says some of the biggest podcasts are now down 60% to 80% and "all wish that their metric of audience was actually how many email addresses and address and credit card details do I have, not followers."
Inputs to gather
- Every platform where the user has an audience, with follower or subscriber counts. Default: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Spotify or Apple podcast followers, Facebook.
- Owned counts: email subscribers, postal addresses on file, paying customers (card on file or repeat transactions), people who have attended a live event, members of a paid community.
- Current off-ramps, if any, per platform (link in bio, end-screen call to action, newsletter mention, event, product).
- Best- and worst-performing piece of content in the last 12 months, with view counts. If available, the same for the previous year.
- Revenue split: what share comes from platform ads or sponsorship versus owned channels. A rough percentage is enough.
- Whether they sell a physical product or have ever mailed customers anything.
Steps
1. Count the rented audience
Write down each platform and its follower or subscriber number. Add them up. This is the number the user has probably been reporting. Note that TikTok already ignores it: "you can have 100 followers, if you make something interesting, you're getting 5 million views" (speaker-stated).
2. Count the owned audience
Count only relationships that survive a platform change (speaker-stated categories):
| Owned relationship | Why it counts | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Email addresses | Existing rail everyone uses for work; "you can't get zucked there as easily" | |
| Postal addresses | "You're always going to need somewhere to have your Amazon parcels delivered" | |
| Card details / paying customers | A transaction is a relationship the platform cannot revoke | |
| Live event attendees | In-person connection is a basic human need that digitisation makes more valuable |
Deduplicate where you can. A person who is on the email list and has bought something counts once, but note them as a deeper relationship.
3. Compute the sovereignty ratio
Owned relationships divided by total rented followers. Most creators are shocked at how small it is (our observation, not a speaker threshold). Then run the stress test from the session's own question list: "If every platform cut my reach by 80% tomorrow, how many people could I still reach directly?" Write that number down; it is the audience the user actually has.
4. Name one off-ramp per platform
Bartlett's rule (speaker-stated): "you have to have a transaction, you have to have an event, you have to have a newsletter." Treat social as the top of the funnel and owned environments as the bottom. For each platform, record the off-ramp that exists today. If there is none, design one this week using this order of preference (our recommendation):
- Newsletter sign-up with a reason to join beyond "updates" (a template, a private episode, a price list).
- A paid or free live event, even a small one.
- A product or transaction, however cheap.
- Physical mail. Bartlett's D2C portfolio brands see some of their best returns from founder postcards with a discount code, and he is testing whether his audience will pay to receive a physical package.
Every piece of content should carry its off-ramp. Add it to the content checklist, not just the bio link.
5. Redraw the funnel
Sketch two boxes. Top: social platforms, labelled "rented, top of funnel". Bottom: newsletter, events, products, post, labelled "owned, bottom of funnel". Draw the arrows from each platform to its named off-ramp. If an arrow has no destination, that platform is currently a dead end.
6. Run the annual variance analysis (every January, speaker-stated)
Divide the view count of the best-performing piece by the worst. Compare with last year's gap. Bartlett does this each January because a widening gap "is the AI being more of an aggressive sorting hat", which means the follower base protects the user less each year. Use the trend to decide how hard to push sovereignty this year.
7. Set the owned-audience target and report it monthly
Pick one owned number to grow (usually email) and set a monthly target. Add owned counts to whatever metrics review already exists so they sit next to views. Our recommendation: report owned growth first, views second.
8. Test physical post once this quarter (our recommendation, speaker-inspired)
If the user has postal addresses, send a founder-written postcard with a discount code or invitation to a segment of a few hundred and measure the return against the same offer by email. Bartlett's reasoning: physical post is a rail that is not going anywhere, and each digital trend produces its opposite (ultra-processed food produced organic, streaming brought back vinyl, screens are bringing back silent retreats and the tactile).
Output format
Fill in assets/audience-sovereignty-audit-worksheet.md. In short:
Rented: platform / followers (total ___)
Owned: emails ___ / postal ___ / paying ___ / event attendees ___ (total ___)
Sovereignty ratio: owned ÷ rented = ___ 80% cut test: ___ reachable
Off-ramps: platform → newsletter | event | product | post | none (design by ___)
Variance: best ___ / worst ___ = ___x (last year ___x) trend: widening / stable
Owned target: +___ emails per month, reviewed on ___ alongside views
Physical post test: segment ___ / offer ___ / result vs email ___Cadence
- Monthly: owned counts reported next to views; off-ramp check on new content (our recommendation).
- Quarterly: one physical-post or event test (our recommendation).
- Annually, in January: best-versus-worst variance analysis (speaker-stated).
Pitfalls
- Treating followers as the bottom of the funnel. Bartlett: "we used to think of social media as the bottom of the funnel ... it should be seen as the top of the funnel."
- Waiting for reach to fall before building owned channels. The shows down 60% to 80% wished they had measured differently earlier.
- Filling the owned channel with information only. Information is being commoditised by AI; the newsletter, event or package should carry lived experience and a human layer or its value will decay.
- Judging the owned channel by short-term money. Two advisers proved to Bartlett with perfect math that his Facebook pages and later his podcast could never make money; "money is a lagging indicator of value."
When not to use this: for a business whose customers are already all direct (a local service firm with a client list and no social audience). The audit is for anyone whose reach depends on a platform they do not control.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/audience-sovereignty-audit-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Bad-decision dissection
This skill produces a scored record of the user's recent big decisions and a one-page analysis of the one that failed, ending in a chosen fix and a recurrence flag. Patrick Bet-David ran it live as "Move Two" of the Day One CEO workshop at The Vault 2026. He calls the underlying ability "processing": making effective decisions with the information at hand and the highest odds in your favor. His argument is that a decision is a bet, so you judge your process by inspecting your track record, not by remembering your wins. When he asked the room to list five decisions, almost everyone listed successes, and he made them add the one that cost money. The growth lives in that line.
Inputs to gather
- The last five big decisions from the past few months, each with a dollar amount at stake. Bet-David's range was $10,000 to $10 million; use the user's own threshold. Ask for hires, deals, launches, purchases, pricing changes, partnerships.
- A score for each, 3, 5 or 10, for how good the decision turned out. Do not offer a finer scale; the coarse scale is deliberate.
- The one decision from the last twelve months that cost money or went against them. If the five are all wins, this is required before going further.
- Roughly how long each decision took, and whether a competitor would have moved faster. Default: "about the same".
- Who was involved in the failed decision, by role.
Steps
Part A: the scorecard (10 minutes)
- List the five decisions with dollars and scores. Write them as a table. Mark the set as all positive, all negative or mixed.
- If there is no loss on the list, add one. Bet-David: "Notice everybody wants all the successful decisions we make because we're phenomenal." Ask: which decision in the last twelve months cost you money or went the wrong way?
- Inspect the track record. Count how many of the five went the way the user wanted. Note speed versus competitors. Rate the gut: did their instinct about the market, the people or the political climate hold up? Bet-David measures all three: how often you are right, how fast you decide, and how good your intuition is.
- For each miss, name the response. Bet-David's three: find somebody to blame, find a safe space to escape, or process it by taking responsibility. Only the third builds a leader. If the user is reviewing a manager's decision, this is the screen to run before any promotion, because promoting a blamer or escaper rewards the behaviour and scales it with the title.
- Write one sentence on the pattern. Too slow, too greedy, skipped diligence, trusted the wrong person, decided alone.
Part B: dissect the failed decision (the workbook page 118 flow)
Walk the user through these in order. Write the answers down as you go.
- Problem at the top. One sentence.
- Repeat issue? If yes, did the last solution work? If no, investigate: was it a money issue?
- Impact and tier. What did it cost, in dollars and in noise? Is it something that must be addressed now? Is it signal or noise? Score its urgency.
- Root cause: five whys. Ask why it happened. Then ask why of that answer. Repeat until you have asked at least five times or reached a cause the user controls. Audience respondents found the first answer was usually an assumption about other people ("podcast hosts rejected my client") and the fifth was inside their control (how the pitch was framed; greed and arrogance when doubling a portfolio; being in a hurry and cutting a 60-day diligence protocol, which cost about $80,000). Bet-David's rule: persistent problems usually trace back to the operator. If the fifth why still points at the market or someone else, keep going.
- Stakeholders. Who could have helped, by role? Was there buy-in, or was it all on the user? Write down who should be in the room next time.
- Top five fixes. List five ideas. Circle the one that solves the problem now. Note which of the other four are worth keeping.
- Share with the team. Draft the one specific lesson (not a generality) the user will tell their team, and one personal decision rule for the next decision of this type.
- Can this happen again? This is the last box in the flow and the one a respondent said would have saved him from selling his expertise at $7 an hour a second time. Answer one of: issue closed and archived; or likely to restart, with the trigger that would restart it and the guardrail that prevents it.
Part C: optional group review
If the user has a team, have each person share their dissected decision in two minutes in groups of four, name the pattern together, and leave with one rule each. Bet-David graded read-outs par, birdie or eagle and cut off anyone who repeated an earlier answer.
Output format
Decision scorecard
| # | Decision | $ at stake | Score (3/5/10) | Time to decide | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | | | | |
... (five rows)
Set: all positive / all negative / mixed
Hit rate: x of 5 · Speed vs competitors: · Gut read:
Response to misses: blame / escape / responsibility
Pattern in one sentence:
Dissection of the failed decision
Problem:
Repeat issue? Last solution worked? Money issue?
Impact: Tier (now / later): Signal or noise: Urgency score:
Five whys:
1. Why?
2. Why?
3. Why?
4. Why?
5. Why? -> root cause I control:
Stakeholders who could help (roles): Buy-in? All on me?
Top five fixes: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Chosen now: #
Specific lesson for the team:
My rule for the next decision of this type:
Can this happen again? Closed and archived / Likely to restart
Trigger: Guardrail:The full worksheet is in assets/bad-decision-dissection-worksheet.md.
Cadence
- Once, this week: the five-decision scorecard and one full dissection (speaker-stated; the room did it in about ten minutes plus two minutes for the flow).
- Every decision above the threshold: add it to the scorecard when made, score it when the outcome is known (our recommendation, from Bet-David's instruction to inspect the track record).
- Quarterly: review hit rate, speed and the pattern of misses (our recommendation).
- At every promotion decision: check whether the candidate defaults to blame, escape or responsibility (our recommendation, from Bet-David's warning).
- Before every acquisition or major purchase: write the due-diligence protocol down and refuse to shorten it when in a hurry (our recommendation, from the homebuilder's five whys).
Pitfalls
- Listing only wins. The exercise does not start until a loss is on the page.
- Stopping at the first why, which is almost always an assumption about someone else.
- Using a fine-grained score. The 3, 5, 10 scale forces a judgment.
- Turning "share with the team" into a general moral. Bet-David asked for specifics and interrupted generalities.
- Skipping the "can this happen again?" box. It was new in the 2026 workbook and respondents called it the box that saves you.
- Confusing a bad outcome with a bad decision. Bet-David judges the process by the odds you had; a well-processed bet can still lose. Record it honestly and look for the pattern across several.
Do not use this skill to assign blame to a colleague, or for a decision so recent that the outcome is unknown. For a live crisis that needs a response today, run the ITR crisis triage first and come back to dissect it afterwards.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/bad-decision-dissection-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Beginner's-mind quarterly score
This skill produces a 1-to-10 score, the evidence behind it, a one-line self-diagnosis and one learning action for the next 90 days. Patrick Bet-David introduced Shoshin, the Buddhist idea of a beginner's mind, with a warning to the wealthy people in the room: "the more money you make, it becomes very hard to have a beginner's mind" (12:25:45). Wealth removes the pressure that used to force learning, so it has to be replaced on purpose with books, conferences, masterminds and peers who push. He gave the room ten seconds to score themselves honestly and thanked the people who admitted a five or less. He pointed to Tom Ellsworth, who at his age "has a bigger beginner's mind than most 20, 30 year olds" because he is always reading and learning. The score matters less than the trend and the one action it produces.
Inputs to gather
- The user's gut score, 1 to 10, given in ten seconds before any evidence is discussed. Speaker-stated method: fast and honest. Do not let them calculate first.
- Books read or finished in the last 90 days, by title or count [default: ask for a count].
- Conferences, workshops or trainings attended in the last 12 months, including repeats.
- Whether they are in a mastermind or structured peer group, and when it last met.
- Three people further ahead of them whom they speak with regularly. Names are not needed; roles and how far ahead is enough.
- Their income or business stage, only so you can note whether the money-versus-curiosity pressure applies.
Steps
- Take the gut score first. Ten seconds, 1 to 10, no evidence yet. Bet-David: "Be honest" (12:26:28). Write it down before moving on so the evidence cannot revise it quietly.
- Gather the four inputs. His questions, verbatim: "How many books do you read? Do you go to conferences? Are you on mastermind? Are you in circles that they give you a little bit positive, you know, peer pressure?" (12:26:31 to 12:26:35). Record a number or a yes/no for each.
- Compute an evidence score. Our recommendation, since the speaker gave inputs but no formula: score each input 0 to 2.5 and add them. Note the gap between gut and evidence. A gut score more than two points above the evidence is the pattern Bet-David was warning about.
- Books, last 90 days: 0 none, 1 one, 2 two or three, 2.5 four or more, or one book re-read with notes compared.
- Conferences or trainings, last 12 months: 0 none, 1 one, 2 two, 2.5 three or more, or one core training re-attended.
- Mastermind: 0 none, 1.5 member but has not met in 90 days, 2.5 active and met in the last 90 days.
- Positive peer pressure: 0 nobody further ahead in regular contact, 1 one person, 2 two, 2.5 three or more.
- Name the attendee type. Bet-David's five types of people who come to a conference (12:24:17): comeback kid, explorer (here to see if it is real), wallbanger (works very hard, will not ask for advice or seek counsel, has plateaued), builder, and the GOAT mindset (wants to be the best of the best in their space). Ask the user to pick the one that describes them today, not the one they would like to be. A low peer-pressure score plus a plateau usually means wallbanger. If so, have them name the adviser they will finally ask, by role.
- Pick one input to raise by one point in 90 days. One action, not four. Examples: join or form a mastermind, book one conference, schedule one book with a finish date, set a monthly call with one person further ahead. Write the date it will be done.
- Schedule the return visit. Bet-David told repeat attendees they would "hear a message that you didn't hear a year ago, six months ago. You're different human being today" (12:23:50). Our recommendation: once a year, re-read one core business book or re-attend one core training, keep the old notes, and write down what stands out now that did not before. The difference is a map of how the business has changed.
- Log the score. Keep the gut score, evidence score, type and action in one running table so the trend is visible next quarter.
Output format
Quarter: <...>
Gut score (10 seconds): <n>/10
Evidence:
Books, last 90 days: <n> -> <0-2.5>
Conferences / trainings, last 12 mo: <n> -> <0-2.5>
Mastermind: <none / inactive / active, last met <date>> -> <0-2.5>
Peers further ahead, regular contact: <n> -> <0-2.5>
Evidence score: <sum>/10 Gap (gut minus evidence): <n>
Attendee type today: <comeback kid / explorer / wallbanger / builder / GOAT mindset>
If wallbanger, the adviser I will ask (role): <...>
One input to raise this quarter: <input> Action: <...> Done by: <date>
Annual return visit: <book or training to repeat> Date: <...>
Trend: <last quarter gut / evidence> -> <this quarter>Cadence
- Score every quarter (our recommendation; the speaker ran it once, live, in ten seconds).
- Annual return to one core book or training (our recommendation, built on the speaker's "different person" point).
Pitfalls
- Scoring generously. Bet-David gave visible respect to the people who admitted five or less. Honesty is the input; a flattering score wastes the exercise.
- Assuming income proves curiosity. His whole warning was the reverse: money makes a beginner's mind harder.
- Being a wallbanger: working hard, plateauing, and still refusing to ask. Bet-David said he was one himself years ago.
- Picking four actions. One input, one point, one quarter.
- Skipping a training because "I've heard it." The part you skipped last year may be the part your business grew into.
- Do not use this as a performance review for someone else. It is a self-score; scoring a team member with it turns honesty into risk.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, references/source-notes.md
Bonus waterfall designer
This skill produces a one-page bonus plan with three parts: the company unlock, the per-level target, and the individual payout ladder, plus a worked example and an affordability check. Tom Ellsworth's principle is that the company gets paid before anyone else: the plan "basically says we can't make a bonus together until the company hits minimum objectives this year. In other words, pay the company so it can pay us" (18:46:46). The second principle is that the plan must be visible and computable: "everybody in the organization knows it, and everybody can see the quantitative days you went through it and how fair it was. Fairness is the basis of it" (18:49:16).
The plan assumes an annual rating for each person. If the user has no rating system, run quarterly-calibration-calendar first, or agree an interim five-band rating for this year.
Inputs to gather
- Revenue this year and the growth target for next year.
- EBITDA (or operating profit) this year and the minimum acceptable next year.
- Headcount by job level (for example individual contributor, team lead, manager, director, executive) and average salary per level.
- The rating distribution from the last review, or an estimate. Ellsworth's expectation: most people at meets, "a very small percent" outstanding (18:43:25).
- The total bonus pool the company can afford at target. Default: work backward from the affordability check in step 6.
- Whether any existing sales commission plan is in place. The waterfall sits alongside it, not on top of it.
Steps
1. Write the company unlock
Ellsworth: "there has to be some unlock if the company achieves a minimum amount of growth and EBITDA because then we as founders and CEOs, right, now we have something in the bonus plan" (18:49:59). Set two minimums:
- Minimum revenue growth for the year.
- Minimum EBITDA for the year.
Below either minimum, no pool exists and no individual bonus is paid regardless of rating. Say this in one sentence on the plan. The "me" only happens "if the company has hit objectives and has made enough to fund the bonus plan" (18:46:58).
2. Set a fair target bonus percentage per job level
Ellsworth: "the targets will go across job levels, but these are the targets ... we create a fair target bonus across job levels" (18:47:26, 18:47:56). The speakers did not give percentages. Our starting defaults, to be adjusted to the business:
| Level | Target bonus, percent of salary (our default) |
|---|---|
| Individual contributor | 5 |
| Team lead | 8 |
| Manager | 10 |
| Director | 15 |
| Executive | 20 to 30 |
Target is what a meets-rated person earns when the company hits its target. Fair means the same level gets the same percentage everywhere in the company.
3. Build the individual payout ladder
Ellsworth, in order: "if you get a meets, you're at 100% of the target for your bonus. If you're at exceeds expectations, congratulations. It's like a salesperson being level one over quota. And then if you're outstanding, it's like a salesperson being level two over quota. Look how that escalates. The difference between a meets and an outstanding is 50%. The bonus is 50% bigger" (18:48:15 to 18:48:57).
| Annual band | Individual multiplier | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Does not meet expectations | 0 | Speaker-stated: no raise, no bonus discussion |
| Needs improvement | 0 | Speaker-stated |
| Meets expectations | 100 percent of target | Speaker-stated |
| Exceeds expectations | 125 percent of target | Speaker-stated as "level one over quota"; the 125 figure is our default, sitting between meets and outstanding |
| Outstanding | 150 percent of target | Speaker-stated: "50% bigger" than meets |
The sales analogy is the explanation to use with the team. Ellsworth: a rep "way above my quota by 20%, I got level one bonus. I'm above my quota by 25%, I got my next level bonus. And everybody in the organization understands and agrees that philosophy" (18:43:56). The waterfall applies the same accepted logic to everyone else.
4. Split the waterfall half company, half personal
Ellsworth, pointing to the diagram in his book: "how the waterfall works, half is from the company performance, half is from the personal performance" (18:49:31). Our formula for that split, once the unlock is passed:
bonus = salary × target% × (0.5 × company factor + 0.5 × individual multiplier)- Company factor: 1.0 when the company hits its target. Our default scale: 0.5 at the unlock minimum, 1.0 at target, capped at 1.5 for a stretch result. Straight-line between.
- Individual multiplier: from the ladder in step 3 (0, 0, 1.0, 1.25, 1.5).
- Below the unlock, the formula is not run. Nobody is paid.
5. Work one example per level
Fill the example table so every employee can find themselves. A manager on 100,000 with a 10 percent target, company at target (factor 1.0):
| Band | Calculation | Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Meets | 100,000 × 0.10 × (0.5 × 1.0 + 0.5 × 1.0) | 10,000 |
| Exceeds | 100,000 × 0.10 × (0.5 × 1.0 + 0.5 × 1.25) | 11,250 |
| Outstanding | 100,000 × 0.10 × (0.5 × 1.0 + 0.5 × 1.5) | 12,500 |
| Needs improvement | Formula not run; bottom-band exception applies | 0 |
Note on the bottom bands: the half-company, half-personal split would mechanically pay a needs-improvement employee half their target (5,000 in this example). Ellsworth's stated rule is that the bottom two bands get nothing: "We don't even talk about raises. You have to deliver improvement" (18:42:43), and "You have to be firm enough in the concept of meritocracy to say no" (18:43:05). Apply the rule, not the arithmetic: the two bottom bands receive zero. Write that exception on the page.
Note on outstanding: with the half-and-half split, outstanding pays 25 percent more than meets at company target, not 50. If the user wants Ellsworth's "50% bigger" to hold at company target, apply the multiplier to the whole bonus instead (bonus = salary × target% × company factor × individual multiplier). Both are defensible readings of the stage material; pick one, write it down, and do not change it mid-year.
6. Run the affordability check
Multiply each level's headcount by average salary, target percent and the expected distribution across bands. Sum to get the expected payout at company target. Compare with the pool the company can fund at target EBITDA. If the payout exceeds the pool, lower target percentages or raise the unlock. Never fix affordability by rating fewer people at meets. Meets is the normal score for "doing the job excellently that you were hired to do" (18:43:32).
7. Write the one page and explain it twice a year
Ellsworth's test is that everyone can see the maths and judge it fair. Put the unlock, the level table, the ladder, the formula, the exception for bottom bands, and one worked example on a single page. Walk the whole company through it once when the plan is set, and refer back to it at every quarterly review so nobody is surprised at year end (the twice-a-year rhythm is our recommendation; the transparency is speaker-stated).
Output format
Fill assets/bonus-waterfall-one-pager.md. It contains:
- Company unlock: two minimums in one sentence.
- Target table by level.
- Payout ladder by band with the bottom-band exception.
- The formula and which reading of the split was chosen.
- Worked example per level.
- Affordability table: expected payout vs pool.
- Communication dates.
Cadence
| Activity | Cadence | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Set unlock, targets and ladder | Once, before the fiscal year begins | Our recommendation |
| Explain the plan to the whole company | At plan launch, then referenced each quarterly review | Transparency speaker-stated; rhythm ours |
| Confirm the unlock is or is not hit | At year-end close | Speaker-stated structure |
| Pay out by annual band | Annually, after the annual score | Speaker-stated |
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Paying bonuses when the company missed its minimums. The pool does not exist until the company has "made enough to fund the bonus plan."
- Paying the bottom two bands anything. "Firm enough in the concept of meritocracy to say no."
- Handing out outstanding freely so the 150 percent tier stops meaning anything. Outstanding is "a very small percent"; most people are, correctly, a high meets.
- Making the plan opaque. If people cannot compute their own number, fairness cannot be seen and the payout reads as favouritism.
- Changing the rule mid-year (our addition). The plan only works as an incentive if it is stable for the whole period it covers.
When not to use this
Do not layer the waterfall on top of an existing sales commission plan for the same people; pick one variable-pay scheme per role. Do not use it in a year with no rating process, since the individual multiplier has nothing to attach to. And treat the default percentages as starting points, not advice on what the business can afford; the affordability check decides that.
Companion skills: quarterly-calibration-calendar produces the annual band this plan pays on. quarterly-calibration (Patrick Bet-David's session) reaches the same five bands with numeric cut-offs and its own bonus multipliers; if the user already runs that rubric, keep its bands and apply this skill's company unlock and half-and-half waterfall on top.
See references/source-notes.md for verbatim quotes with timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/bonus-waterfall-one-pager.md, references/source-notes.md
Business flywheel map
This skill produces a one-page flywheel: your core product in the centre, every other business, channel, relationship group and team drawn around it, arrows showing what feeds what, and a score for each link. It then produces two smaller flywheels for health and family, and one link to strengthen this quarter. Bet-David built the lesson on Disney's 1957 diagram, where theatrical films sat in the middle and merchandise, comic strips, Disneyland, music and TV all fed the films and each other. He said "the flywheel is what takes a regular person to build a $100 million company" and what moves a salesperson from $180,000 a year to $980,000. His warning was that most people treat it as "another conversation" and undervalue it, while "the money makers" are intentional about writing it down.
Run it as a drawing session. Ask for the inventory first, then build the picture with the user, then score it. Do not let the user skip the scoring; the scoring is where the quarter's action comes from.
Inputs to gather
- The core product or business. If they have several, ask which one everything else exists to sell. Disney's was films.
- Every other thing they run or belong to: product lines, services, podcasts or shows, newsletters, memberships, courses, events, clubs, associations, mastermind groups, sponsorships.
- Every referral relationship: professionals who send them clients (accountants, lawyers, agents), partners, distributors, communities.
- Teams: employees, contractors, coaches, advisors.
- For the health flywheel: doctors, trainers, therapists, coaches, practitioners they see regularly.
- For the family flywheel: the people and activities that develop each family member (coaches, teachers, clubs, traditions).
- Where the last five new customers or deals actually came from. This checks the drawing against reality.
Steps
1. Inventory the nodes
List every node from the inputs. One line each, no judgement yet. Bet-David's prompt in the room was "what businesses, podcast, shows, what feeds into what". Include the small ones. His own everyday examples were a networking club, a private cigar lounge, and quarterly lunches with accountants, none of which sound like a business line.
2. Put the core in the centre
Write the core product in the middle of the page. Disney in 1957: theatrical films. For a salesperson, it is the thing they get paid to close. For a creator, the flagship show or product. If the user cannot pick one, ask which node, if it stopped tomorrow, would starve the others.
3. Place the nodes and draw the arrows
Arrange the other nodes around the centre. Disney's layout as Bet-David read it off the slide: merchandise bottom left, comic strips bottom right, Disneyland at the bottom, music top right, TV top left. For each pair of nodes, ask: does A send customers, attention, money or credibility to B? If yes, draw an arrow A to B and label it with what flows. Two-way arrows are common and good.
Produce the drawing as text the user can keep. A Mermaid block works well:
flowchart TB
CORE[Core product]
A[Podcast] -->|audience| CORE
CORE -->|guests and stories| A
B[Networking club] -->|referrals| CORE
C[Accountant lunches] -->|client introductions| CORE
CORE -->|case studies| C4. Score every link
For each arrow, record three things. The three questions are ours; the failure modes come from the examples he gave.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Did it produce anything in the last 12 months? (deal, client, hire, audience) | Bet-David's club had produced $3 million policies. A link that produces nothing is decoration. |
| Does it depend on one person showing up? | If the only reason accountants refer is that you personally buy lunch, the link dies when you stop. |
| Is it on purpose or by accident? | The Apple example: people switched from Android because friends complained about green text bubbles. That was designed. |
Mark each link Strong, Weak, or Dead. Circle every Dead or one-person link.
5. Add the everyday links you are missing
Walk through Bet-David's list and ask which the user could add:
- A networking club where members are the customer profile. His example produced $3 million policies.
- A private members' lounge or club full of business owners. His example turned into big commissions.
- Quarterly lunches with referring professionals. His example was accountants who send insurance clients.
- A show or podcast that puts the core in front of the referral partners' audiences.
Add at most two new nodes. More than that is a wish list, not a flywheel.
6. Draw the health flywheel
Bet-David named his own: a cardiologist, a concierge doctor, and a chiropractor, and called it "an entire health team" that is part of the flywheel. Put the user in the centre and their practitioners around them. Ask which one is missing and which two never talk to each other but should.
7. Draw the family flywheel
His example was his son's soccer development: separate people working on mental game, technique, futsal, and striking, all feeding one player. Put each family member in the centre of a small wheel with the coaches, teachers, clubs and traditions that develop them. The New Year's Eve vision board ritual he described is itself a family flywheel node. Ask what the family traditions feed and whether they are on the calendar.
8. Pick one link to strengthen and one to add
From the scores, choose one Weak link to make Strong this quarter and one new node from step 5 to add. Write the specific action, the date, and who owns it. Bet-David's own explanation for why Valuetainment runs so many businesses was one sentence: "we're trying to build our own flywheel". One deliberate link per quarter compounds.
9. Set up the attribution habit
Every time a new customer, deal, hire or opportunity arrives, ask which arrow it came down. Record it. This is our addition. It is the only way to know whether the flywheel is real or just a nice drawing, and it makes the quarterly redraw honest.
Output format
Use assets/business-flywheel-map-worksheet.md. The short form:
CORE: <product>
NODES: <list>
LINKS
| From | To | What flows | Produced in 12 months? | One-person dependent? | On purpose? | Strong/Weak/Dead |
HEALTH FLYWHEEL: centre <me>; nodes <practitioners>; missing <...>; should talk to each other <A, B>
FAMILY FLYWHEEL: centre <person>; nodes <coaches, clubs, traditions>; what they feed <...>
THIS QUARTER: strengthen <link> by <action> by <date>; add <node> by <action> by <date>
ATTRIBUTION LOG: | Date | What arrived | Which arrow | Include the Mermaid diagram in the output so the user has a picture as well as a table.
Cadence
- Draw the first version tonight (speaker-stated: "this will be part of your homework when you go later on tonight").
- Redraw the flywheel and pick one link to strengthen every quarter (our recommendation).
- Take referring professionals to lunch every quarter (speaker-stated: "accountants that you take them out to lunch every quarter").
- Log attribution as deals arrive and review the log at the quarterly redraw (our recommendation).
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Treating the flywheel as "another conversation, can we get to the next topic". He said people "really undervalue the power of an incredible flywheel".
- Wanting motivation instead of systems. He warned that owners of very small businesses tune out here, and that "those who master the boring stuff eventually create wealth".
- Thinking flywheels are only for big companies. His examples were a club, a lounge, a lunch, and a kids' soccer team.
- Leaving health and family off the page. He said the mindset is "every aspect of your life".
- Competing on product alone. Apple beat Android on the flywheel, not the phone.
When not to use this
Do not use it to justify starting a third business before the first one produces. A flywheel with a weak core spins nothing. If the core product is not yet reliably selling, use the drawing only to identify the one or two referral links that would help it sell, and stop there.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/business-flywheel-map-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Buyback calendar audit
This skill produces three things: a single dollar figure for what an hour of the user's time is worth (their buyback rate), a marked-up two-week calendar with a delete / defer / delegate / DO decision on every block, and a one-page fill plan for the hours that come free. Dan Martell teaches this as the first two steps of the Buyback Principle, audit and fill, and says most owners do the audit, skip the fill, and never get momentum. His claim on stage: 15 to 20 hours a week back is realistic. His chief of staff runs the calendar prompt every Friday.
You play the "ruthless mentor" he described. Ask the clarifying questions one at a time, be direct about what the calendar says, and do not soften the math.
Inputs to gather
Ask for these before you start. Offer the defaults in brackets if the user is unsure.
- Annual pay to yourself. Salary, draws and distributions combined.
- Seller discretionary earnings (SDE). Personal expenses the business pays that a buyer would add back: car, phone, travel, meals, family on payroll. [Default: 10 percent of income if they cannot estimate.]
- Working hours per year. Martell uses 2,000. Keep it unless the user insists on a different figure.
- Top three goals for the next 12 months. One sentence each. If the user cannot name them, that is the first finding: their calendar cannot reflect goals they have not written down.
- The last two weeks of their calendar. Read it directly if you have a calendar tool. Otherwise ask them to paste an export or list every block with its duration and attendees by role.
- The coming two weeks, for the removal step at the end.
Steps
1. Calculate the buyback rate
Use Martell's formula exactly as he stated it:
buyback rate = (annual income + SDE) / 2,000 / 4The division by four is deliberate. He wants a four-times return on every hour bought back. His worked example: $100,000 a year becomes $50 an hour, then a $12.50 buyback rate.
State the rule with the number: anything, personal or professional, that someone else could be paid less than this rate to do is the user working against themselves. Say it plainly. He calls $10 tasks a former badge of honour that no longer adds up.
2. Ask four or five clarifying questions, one at a time
Before touching the calendar, ask the goal questions Martell's prompt opens with. Wait for each answer before asking the next. Good ones:
- Which of your three goals would change your business most if it were done by December?
- What is the one thing only you can do in this business?
- If you had ten extra hours next week, what would you spend them on?
- Which recurring meeting would you cancel today if nobody would notice?
- What did you do last week that a competent assistant could have done?
Speaker-stated: the prompt asks "4 or 5 questions one at a time." Recommended: keep your questions short and do not editorialise until the calendar is on the table.
3. Tag every block for time and energy
Go through the two weeks block by block. For each, record:
- Hours. Actual duration.
- Energy. Gave or drained. Ask the user, do not guess.
- Attendees by role. Not names in the written output.
Then look for the pattern Martell promised: one person who shows up in most of the draining blocks. Name the role, not the person, and say it out loud. He frames this as a relationship or role to redesign, not a meeting to shorten.
4. Apply the 4Ds
Label every block with exactly one of Stephen Covey's four labels, as Martell uses them:
| Label | Meaning | Test |
|---|---|---|
| Delete | Stop doing it | Would anything break if this vanished? |
| Defer | Schedule it later | Does it need to happen this fortnight? |
| Delegate | Give it to a person or AI | Could someone be paid less than the buyback rate to do it? |
| DO | Only the user can do this | Is this the work only they can do, toward the three goals? |
Martell writes DO in capitals because it is the short list. If more than a third of the blocks land in DO, push back. Ask, for each one, who else could own it if the user were on a plane for a month.
Cost the Delegate column: hours per fortnight times the buyback rate is the minimum the user is spending on work someone else should do.
5. Build the fill plan
Freed time is not for the beach. Martell says it must be filled, in this order:
- Skills that make the user more valuable toward their biggest goal. Ask "what is the next-level version of my role?" His examples: a bookkeeper becomes a tax strategist, a content creator learns to code. Pick two.
- Habits that align with the goals. Two or three, daily or weekly.
- Beliefs. One belief about money, people or the world that may be holding them back, and the belief a person who already reached the goal would hold instead. He has seen hard-working, smart people with an upside-down worldview never get there.
Then book the first learning block into the time the audit just freed. If it is not on the calendar, old work will take the hours back.
6. Remove at least three blocks from the coming two weeks
Speaker-stated exercise output: three blocks out. Get the user to name them, and for each Delegate block name the receiver (assistant, contractor, AI workflow). If they use a calendar tool, propose the edits but let them confirm each one.
Output format
Fill the template in assets/buyback-audit-worksheet.md. Short version:
Buyback rate: $__ /hour (income $__ + SDE $__) / 2,000 / 4
Top three 12-month goals: 1. __ 2. __ 3. __
Block | Hours | Energy | Who (role) | 4D | Receiver if delegated
...
Energy-drain pattern: [role] appears in _ of _ draining blocks
Hours in Delegate per fortnight: __ × rate = $__ spent on someone else's work
Hours in DO: __ (share of total: __%)
Fill plan
Skills (2): __ , __
Habits (2–3): __
Belief to retire: __ Belief to adopt: __
First learning block booked: [date, time]
Removed from the next two weeks: 1. __ 2. __ 3. __Cadence
- Weekly, Friday. Speaker-stated: "My chief of staff runs this every Friday, make sure my calendar's dialed." Run the tagging and 4Ds on the coming two weeks.
- Recalculate the buyback rate whenever income changes. Recommended.
- Refresh the fill plan quarterly, or when a skill is learned. Recommended.
Pitfalls
- Doing the audit and skipping the fill. Martell: "Most people do the first two, they forget the third and they never get the swing."
- Treating cheap tasks as a badge of honour. Once the rate is known, doing a task below it is the worst use of the user's time, not proof of grit.
- Hiring to grow instead of to buy back time. "We hire to buy back more time. If you do the second, you get the first." A hire that does not remove a block from this calendar has bought nothing.
- Letting a "ruthless" tone become cruelty. Be direct about the math and the pattern. Do not moralise about the person.
- Editing a live calendar without confirmation. Propose, then let the user confirm each change.
When not to use: the user has no recurring calendar to audit (a single project sprint, a first week in a new job). Use the stop-doing list instead: list last week's tasks, cross off the three cheapest to remove, and remove them.
See references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words and evidence timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/buyback-audit-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Camcorder SOP transfer and the Replacement Ladder
This skill produces a Replacement Ladder self-assessment showing which of five rungs the user still stands on, then a finished transfer package for the first task on the lowest rung: a standard operating procedure, a definition of done, a one-page checklist, and a named owner with a 90-day date. Martell calls transfer "taking what you know and giving it to somebody else" and says it is a skill most people never learn, because writing an SOP is painful. Recording yourself three times and letting AI write it removes the pain. His speaker friend did it for bookkeeping, hired a bookkeeper, and never touched finances again.
The ladder gives the order. Martell is firm: admin first, no matter where you start, because an owner whose inbox is still wild cannot hold focus on anything above it.
Inputs to gather
- Who owns each rung today. Ask the five questions in step 1. Accept "me", "me plus someone I supervise closely", or a role.
- The task to transfer. If the user already has one, take it. Otherwise pick the first task on the lowest rung they still own.
- Three recordings or transcripts of the user doing that task. If they do not have them yet, the skill's first output is the recording plan in step 3. If they have never done the task themselves, ask for a link to a good tutorial video instead (Martell's pro tip).
- The receiver. A person, a contractor, or an AI workflow. Default: whoever already owns the rung below.
- For admin only: whether the assistant has direct inbox login or receives forwards, and the three categories of email the user is afraid to let go of.
Steps
1. Score the Replacement Ladder
Ask, one rung at a time, "who owns this today?" A rung is replaced only when the user neither does the work nor closely supervises it.
| Rung | What it covers | Replaced when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Admin | Inbox, calendar, booking, simple follow-up | Someone else reads every email and brings only what they cannot handle |
| 2. Delivery | Onboarding, support, fulfilment | Big deals can be accepted without the user's week getting worse |
| 3. Marketing | Daily traffic and campaigns, funnel monitoring | Someone other than the user wakes up every day to push and watch distribution |
| 4. Sales | Conversations into transactions, follow-up, data entry | The user is no longer the rainmaker |
| 5. Leadership | Strategy and outcomes only | Every conversation with the team is about strategy and outcomes, not tasks |
The lowest rung still owned by the user is the next hire or next AI workflow. Do not skip ahead. Martell's line for anyone with no assistant: "If you don't have one, you are one."
Add the constraint question for the delivery rung. Martell's mentor asked him: "If you 10x your business, what breaks?" The answer is the bottleneck. Record it.
2. Pick the first task
Martell's filter is dislike: "What do you hate to do?" Within the lowest rung, choose the recurring task the user most dislikes. Check its cost with their buyback rate if they have one (see the buyback-calendar-audit skill). Examples from the talk: invoicing and bookkeeping, road-bike maintenance, onboarding emails, support inbox.
3. Record three times (the camcorder method)
Give the user this plan, in Martell's words where possible:
- Next time you do the task, open a video meeting with only yourself and share your screen.
- Do the task as you normally would and narrate what you are doing and why. Include the judgment calls.
- Do this for three separate occurrences so edge cases show up. Speaker-stated: "Do that three times."
- Get the transcripts. Strip passwords, account numbers and private client details before sharing them.
If there are no recordings and the user has never done the task, take a link to a good tutorial video and write the SOP from that instead. Say so in the output.
4. Write the transfer package
From the transcripts, produce three documents. Use headings and bullets; Martell wants it simple enough that the receiver never needs to ask him.
- SOP. Numbered steps in the order the user actually did them. Where the three recordings differ, write the rule that reconciles them ("if X, do A; otherwise B"). Note tools, logins to request (never the credentials), and the trigger that starts the task.
- Definition of done. What proof shows the task is finished, not just worked on. What good looks like. What to do when something goes wrong, and when to escalate.
- One-page checklist. The steps as tick boxes the receiver can print. If it runs past a page, the SOP is doing the checklist's job; cut it.
Save them together using assets/transfer-package-template.md.
5. Hand off and set the 90-day date
Name the receiver. Ask them to do the task once while the user watches, then the user stops touching it. Set the date by which the whole rung is off the user's plate (recommended: 90 days). Success test, speaker-stated in spirit: the user has not touched the task in 30 days.
6. If the rung is admin, run the full inbox handoff
Filtering is the failure mode. Martell's brother hired an assistant with a 42-page playbook and concluded it was "no big deal", because he still read every email and forwarded what he wanted done. Ask the question Martell asked him: "Did you delegate your inbox, or do you still filter and then send stuff to her?"
Then:
- List the three categories of email the user is afraid to let go of, and why.
- Write a rule for each: reply, schedule, decline, or escalate. Define what "escalate to me" looks like and how (a daily list, not forwards).
- Give direct access. The assistant gets the login, not the forwards. The inbox is "a public to-do list of strangers on your time"; someone else has to be the buffer.
- Set a daily review. Speaker-stated from the Branson model: the assistant brings only what they cannot handle, "sixty, sometimes ninety minutes if it's a whole lot of stuff." Start at 30 minutes if the volume is small.
- Add AI drafting if wanted. Have an AI study the last 30 days of sent mail, draft replies in the user's voice, never send, and leave placeholders for facts it does not have. The assistant reviews and sends.
- Count. After two weeks, how many emails did the user personally open? The number should fall each week.
Output format
Replacement Ladder — [date]
Rung Owner today Replaced?
Admin __ yes / no
Delivery __ yes / no
Marketing __ yes / no
Sales __ yes / no
Leadership __ yes / no
Lowest rung still mine: __ 10x breaks first: __
Task to transfer: __ Why this one: __
Recordings: 3 of 3 / tutorial link used
Receiver: [role] First supervised run: [date]
Rung off my plate by: [date]
Attached: SOP · Definition of done · One-page checklist
Admin only: inbox rules (3), daily review slot, weekly count of emails I openedCadence
- One new task every two weeks. Recommended. Repeat until the rung is replaced, then move up.
- Ladder re-score every quarter, with the 10x question. Recommended.
- Daily review with the assistant once the admin rung exists. Speaker-stated.
- 30-day check: has the user touched the transferred task? If yes, fix the SOP, not the person.
Pitfalls
- Skipping admin because it feels small. Martell would sell every car before losing his executive assistant. Everything above admin depends on it.
- Hiring first, documenting never. A hire without an SOP becomes someone to babysit. Record first.
- Writing the SOP from memory. The recordings capture what the user actually does, including the steps they would forget to write down.
- Filtering instead of delegating. Forwarding emails to an assistant keeps the user as the buffer and produces the "no big deal" verdict.
- Letting AI drafts auto-send or invent facts. Draft-only, placeholders for unknowns, a human sends.
- Scaling sales before delivery is off the user. More deals then mean more pain and the user starts hesitating on big opportunities.
When not to use: the task happens once, or it is genuinely the user's DO work (strategy, key relationships, the thing only they can do). Transfer removes recurring work below the buyback rate; it does not replace judgment the business is built on.
See references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words and evidence timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/transfer-package-template.md, references/source-notes.md
Creator story system
This skill produces four working documents for a creator: a creative-window profile, a one-line capture rule, a dated shoot log for the current project, and a beat sheet the editor can cut from. Logan Paul described this on stage as the part of his career nobody sees, "the behind the scenes boring stuff where I'm sitting at the laptop typing for hours on an airplane," and called it "the less glamorous side of it, but also the most important" (14:01:17). His argument is that structure is "the work before the work": if you design the story before the edit, you see what it looks like before it exists, and you take most of the guessing off the editor.
Work through the steps with the user in conversation. Fill in the worksheet in assets/creator-story-system-worksheet.md as you go and hand it back at the end.
Inputs to gather
Ask for these, and offer the default when the user is unsure.
- What they make (vlog, podcast, launch ad, documentary, short-form series). Default: whatever they shipped most recently.
- Where ideas currently go (notes app, voice memos, nowhere). Default: the phone's built-in notes app.
- When good ideas tend to arrive, if they know. If they do not, the skill runs a two-week logging pass (step 1).
- One current project, and a rough inventory of what has already been shot or recorded.
- Who edits: themselves, one editor, or a team. Logan's view is that structuring and cutting should not both sit on one person.
- Time available for a structuring session. Logan blocks up to four hours for a long piece; default to 90 minutes for anything under 20 minutes of runtime.
Steps
1. Find the creative window
Logan's window is "the 10 to 20 minute window when I close my eyes when I go to sleep at the end of the night," which he admits "isn't great for my sleep pattern" (14:02:05). He told the room to "figure out when you're most creative" rather than copy his hours. The two-week method below is our recommendation for finding it.
- For two weeks, every time a genuinely good idea arrives, note the time of day and what the user was doing.
- At the end, look for the cluster. Common windows are the minutes before sleep, the shower, a walk, a flight, or a commute.
- Remove capture friction inside the window: phone or notebook within reach, notes app on the home screen, voice memo shortcut if hands are busy.
- Protect the window. Do not fill it with scrolling or calls.
If the user already knows their window, skip the logging and go straight to friction removal.
2. Set the capture rule
Logan's rule is blunt: "if you have an idea, for the love of God, get it out of your head and write it down. You will forget it. You 100% will forget it" (14:02:38). Even ideas that feel unforgettable go. He also noted that "not every idea is going to be an incredible idea, but some of them are still good" (14:03:16), so the bar for writing something down is zero.
Write the rule with the user as one sentence they can repeat, for example: "Idea appears, phone comes out, idea gets typed, then I go back to what I was doing." Confirm there is exactly one place ideas live. Multiple inboxes are where ideas die.
3. Keep the post-shoot log
This is the first step of Logan's storytelling process, in his words: "after you shoot something, take out your phone, write down what you shot. Write the broad strokes of it, write the date" (14:04:30). He repeats the three fields: "date, this is what was shot, broad strokes." And he is explicit about frequency: "Every time you log the piece of content, do that. If you're pursuing a quest for a story or something like that, eventually you should have a list of all the stuff you shot" (14:04:43).
For each shoot, recording or notable event, log:
| Field | Speaker-stated | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Yes | |
| What was shot | Yes | Who, where, what happened |
| Broad strokes | Yes | Two or three lines, no detail |
| Conflict, surprise or emotion moment | Our addition | Flag anything that could anchor a beat |
Three minutes per shoot. If the user has a backlog with no log, have them build one now from thumbnails and file dates before moving on. Do not let them skip to structuring with a pile of unlogged footage.
4. Wait for the click, then block the structuring session
Logan does not start structuring on a schedule. He waits: "I will be patient to let the stroke of inspiration hit me before I start structuring it" (14:05:44). But once it hits, he commits real time: "there will be a day where I will sit there for 4 hours and beat out the entire story" (14:05:59).
Ask the user whether the story has clicked yet. If not, reread the log together and look for the moment the audience would most want resolved. That is usually the click. Then block the session on the calendar.
5. Lay out the beats
Logan points to one source: "if you want to tell stories, you should read the book Save the Cat. There's beats you could follow. Rising exposition, all is lost moment, the climax, all of it" (14:05:05). He does not follow it beat for beat: "there's a rhythm and there's conflict that has to be introduced" (14:05:23). The single question he asks of every piece: "Why would someone stay for a video or a story you're trying to tell that doesn't have conflict? You got to figure out what that is and then what's the resolution for that conflict?" (14:06:13).
Run the beat sheet in this order.
- Name the central conflict in one sentence. What does the audience need to see resolved? If there is no answer, there is no piece yet.
- Map log entries onto Logan's beats as spoken: setup, conflict introduced, rising exposition, the all-is-lost moment, the climax, the resolution. The full fifteen-beat Snyder sheet is in
references/save-the-cat-beats.mdif the user wants finer grain. - Mark gaps. Any beat with no footage needs a shot, an interview, a voiceover, or a title card. Write that as a shot list.
- Check the rhythm: does tension rise before it falls? Is the all-is-lost moment real, or just an inconvenience?
- Write the resolution before touching the opening. The opening is usually the last thing to lock.
6. Hand off to the editor
Logan's payoff for all of this: "you take a lot of work off your editor's plate" (14:06:29), followed immediately by "you should have a kick ass editor or two." Deliver the beat sheet, the shot list of gaps, and the complete log together. The editor should be able to cut from the structure, not invent it.
If the user still edits everything themselves, note that Logan did too early on ("I was editing, it's important," 14:06:37), then treat hiring or contracting an editor as the next capacity move once volume justifies it.
7. Monthly reread and one action
This step is ours, built on two things Logan said. First, ideas in notes only matter if they are revisited. Second, when asked how to move from "ramblings on your phone" to something real, his answer was: "just do it. Just go and just start. Do something. Do anything. Forward progress. Momentum. You're gonna figure it out" (14:48:05).
Once a month, reread the idea notes, star the ones worth pursuing, and pick the oldest starred idea. Take one concrete action on it that day.
Output format
Fill assets/creator-story-system-worksheet.md. In brief it contains:
- Creative window: time, trigger, capture tool within reach, what is banned in the window.
- Capture rule: one sentence, one inbox.
- Shoot log: dated table for the current project.
- Beat sheet: central conflict, six beats with log entries mapped, gaps as a shot list.
- Editor handoff: what was sent, to whom, when.
- Next reread date and the one idea receiving action this month.
Cadence
| Activity | Cadence | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Write down every idea | Every time one arrives | Speaker-stated |
| Log the shoot | Every shoot, within minutes | Speaker-stated |
| Structuring session | Before every long-form edit | Speaker-stated method, cadence ours |
| Reread notes, star, act on one | Monthly | Our recommendation |
| Refind the creative window | Once, then whenever routine changes | Our recommendation |
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Trusting memory. "You will forget it. You 100% will forget it." The idea that feels unforgettable is the one that goes.
- Handing an editor a pile of footage with no log and no structure, so the story gets invented in the edit instead of designed before it.
- Shipping a piece with no conflict. If nobody needs to see something resolved, nobody stays.
- Letting the numbers drive the creative decision. Logan described his own podcast's views falling from millions per episode to hundreds of thousands, and said a creator must "be prepared to remove yourself from the emotion of the views" (14:10:24). Audit the format ("understand what it is, where you fit, and who you're trying to speak to," 14:09:00), do not panic.
- Waiting to feel certain. Momentum comes from doing something, anything, and adjusting.
When not to use this
Skip the beat sheet for pieces that are not stories: a product demo, a tutorial, a straight news clip. The capture rule and shoot log still apply. Do not use this skill to promise virality or growth. Logan had roughly 10,000 hours of videos and 4,000 subscribers at 18. The system makes the work better and repeatable; the reps do the rest.
See references/source-notes.md for verbatim quotes with timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/creator-story-system-worksheet.md, references/save-the-cat-beats.md, references/source-notes.md
Decide means cut off, then sequence the next five moves
This skill produces a decision list where every goal has a named sacrifice, and for any major move, a five-step sequence with the tempting shortcut flagged. Two ideas from the Vault 2026 opening sit behind it. Emcee Tayler DeGrande asked the room where the word decide comes from: "Decide comes from the Latin meaning to cut off. So, you guys all decided to be here. My question to you is what are you cutting off?" (11:47:45). Most people add goals without removing anything, which is why the goals do not stick. Then Patrick Bet-David, on his book Your Next Five Moves: "everything in life for me is sequencing. Everything. Marriage, sequencing. Raising money, sequencing. Hiring somebody, sequencing" (12:27:38). Most expensive mistakes are right moves made in the wrong order. Run the cut-off test on every goal; run the sequence test on any move big enough to hurt if it goes wrong.
Inputs to gather
- The goals or commitments on the table for the next quarter or year. Ask for the full list, including personal ones. Offer a default horizon of the next twelve months.
- For the sequence test, the single major move under consideration, in one sentence: "hire a sales lead", "raise a seed round", "open a second location", "get married", "sell the company".
- What the user is doing today that would have to stop or shrink to make room. They will need prompting; most people cannot name it at first.
- One adviser by role who could check the sequence [default: a peer who has made the same move].
Steps
Part A: the cut-off test
- List every goal. One line each. Include personal and business goals together; DeGrande's question covered both: "What are you leaving behind from your personal life, your business life?" (11:47:45).
- Write what gets cut off next to each goal. A habit, an obligation, a client, a product line, a meeting, a hobby, an excuse. Ask the user to name the specific thing, not a category: "Thursday golf" beats "wasting time". Push for the cost in hours or dollars per month so the trade is visible.
- Cross out or fix any goal with an empty second column. Speaker's principle, our rule: no cut, no decision. Either find something real to cut or drop the goal to a someday list. Keep the total number of decided goals small; our recommendation is no more than three per quarter.
- Tell one person what was cut. Naming the sacrifice to someone else makes it harder to quietly pick back up. DeGrande's framing was that the room should "walk out of this event a completely different person"; that only happens if the cut items stay cut.
Part B: the next-five-moves sequence
- Name the move. Write the major move in one sentence, and the date the user is tempted to do it.
- Write the five moves that must follow it, in order. Ask: once this is done, what has to happen next, and next after that, five deep? Bet-David's model is chess, where the number of possible positions after the first four moves is vast, so order matters more than any single move (12:27:21). Number them 1 to 5.
- Write the prerequisite for each move. For each of the five, what has to be true before it is safe? Cash in the bank, a person in a seat, a signed contract, a process documented, a conversation had. Our recommendation: if move 1 has an unmet prerequisite, the "major move" is not the next move; the prerequisite is.
- Flag the shortcut. Which move is the user tempted to jump to early? Write what breaks if they do. This is the single most useful line in the exercise. Common shortcuts: raising money before the model works, hiring a senior leader before there is anyone to lead, launching a second product before the first one is stable.
- Check the sequence against the masteries. Bet-David's five moves to master, as captured on stage (a recording gap dropped the first two; the book lists them as knowing yourself and reasoning): the ability to reason and come up with ideas, which he ranked "number one above everything" and above public speaking (12:29:31); master building the right team and share pressure with it; master strategy to scale; master power plays, because "this thing gets nasty when you start competing and you get bigger" (12:29:53). Ask which mastery the move demands and whether the user has it or has someone who does.
- Show the sequence to one adviser before acting. Our recommendation: send the five moves and the flagged shortcut to the named adviser and ask one question: what am I doing out of order?
Output format
Fill this in, or use assets/decide-and-sequence-worksheet.md.
DECISION LIST (quarter: <...>)
| Goal | What I am cutting off | Cost of the cut (hrs or $ / month) | Real decision? |
| ... | ... | ... | yes / wish |
Told about the cuts: <role>, <date>
SEQUENCE: <major move> Tempted to do it by: <date>
1. <move> | needs first: <prerequisite> | status: met / unmet
2. ...
3. ...
4. ...
5. ...
Shortcut I am tempted to take: move <n>. What breaks: <...>
Mastery this demands: reason / team / strategy to scale / power plays. Have it? <yes / no / via whom>
Adviser check: <role>, <date>, what they said was out of order: <...>
Decision: proceed as sequenced / reorder / wait for prerequisite <n>Cadence
- Cut-off test: every time goals are set, at minimum quarterly (our recommendation; the emcee posed it once, at the start of the event).
- Sequence test: before each major hire, raise, launch or personal commitment (our recommendation, from the speaker's principle).
- Quarterly review: are the cut items actually gone, and did the sequence hold? (our recommendation)
Pitfalls
- Adding goals without cutting anything. DeGrande's point: a decision is defined by what you leave behind.
- Cutting something vague. "Less distraction" is not a cut. Name the meeting, client, habit or hour.
- Making the right move in the wrong order. Bet-David named marriage, raising money and hiring as the classic sequencing failures.
- Treating public speaking or presentation as the skill to build first. Bet-David ranked reasoning above it: "Elon may not be the best public speaker, but he knows how to reason and come up with ideas" (12:29:33).
- Assuming growth removes competition. The last mastery exists because bigger means people try to put you out of business.
- Do not use the sequence test for small reversible choices; it is for moves that are costly to undo.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/decide-and-sequence-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Dollar-value note ledger
This skill turns note-taking into a short, ranked list of things worth money. Patrick Bet-David opened Vault 2026 by teaching the method he has used for years: when an idea lands, file it as a $100,000 idea, a $1 million strategy or a $10 million strategy, and keep a fourth column for leaks, the things that save money or prevent a loss. His point was that entrepreneurs default to hunting upside and forget the leak that is quietly costing more than any new opportunity will earn. He called the ledger pages "the most important pages you're going to come to at the end" (12:30:50). The output is a ledger you return to, not a notebook you never open again.
Inputs to gather
Ask for these before the session starts. Offer the defaults in brackets if the user is unsure.
- The source: event, session, book, podcast, course or meeting, and roughly how long it runs.
- The user's business scale: annual revenue band and team size. This does not change the labels, but it helps you sanity-check whether an idea really earns "$1M".
- Existing notes, if the session already happened. You will re-file them into the ledger.
- Who, if anyone, paid for the seat [nobody]. If a boss, founder or spouse paid, the user owes them a daily report (see step 7).
- How the user wants to capture during the session [a single page with four headings].
Steps
- Set up the four headings before anything starts. Write them on one page or in one note:
$100K idea,$1M strategy,$10M strategy,Leaks. Bet-David's instruction was to set the categories first and write into them as ideas arrive (12:30:01). Ordinary notes go somewhere else; the ledger page stays clean.
- Agree on what earns a label. Speaker-stated: the labels are the money the idea could plausibly make. Our recommendation for calibration: label by the dollars the idea could add or save over the next three years if executed well, not by how exciting it sounds. An idea for a $400K business can still be a $1M strategy if it changes the model. If the user cannot say in one line why it earns the label, it goes in ordinary notes instead.
- Write entries in three parts. For each ledger item capture: the idea in one sentence, the one-line reason it earns its label (rough math is fine: "20 more jobs a month at $4K"), and the first thing it would take to start. Entries without the third part tend to stay on the page.
- Prompt for leaks on purpose. Bet-David's examples were "this is going to save you $800,000" and "that's going to prevent you from getting sued, that cost me $5 million" (12:30:38 to 12:30:42). Because people rarely write leaks unprompted, ask at the end of each session: did anything today point at legal exposure, a contract, a tax or payroll mistake, churn, a key-person risk, insurance, fraud, or a process that is bleeding cash? Those go under Leaks even if the speaker never used the word.
- Rank at the end of each day. Bring the page together and star one item. Speaker-stated: return to the pages at the end. Our recommendation for the ranking itself: for each entry score value by label (Leaks scored by the dollars saved), confidence that it applies to this business (1 to 3), and effort to start (1 easy to 3 hard). Sort by value, then confidence, then lowest effort. Star the top opportunity and the top leak separately so the leak column never gets buried.
- Build the first-30-days list at the end of the event. Consolidate every day's ledger into one. Pick one opportunity and one leak to execute in the next 30 days, name the owner and the first calendar block, and park the rest as a ranked backlog. Our recommendation: two items, not ten. A ledger that produces two executed decisions beat one that produces a reading list.
- Report to whoever paid for the seat. Bet-David told employees whose company paid their way that the ticket means "I believe in you, I need you," and that the founder expects items they missed (12:01:56). If someone else paid, the user sends a thank-you before the first session and the top three ledger items at the end of each day.
Output format
Fill this in, or use assets/dollar-value-note-ledger-worksheet.md for a full event.
Source: <event / book / podcast> Date: <date>
Business scale: <revenue band, team size>
$100K ideas
- <idea> | why it earns it: <one line> | first step: <one line>
$1M strategies
- ...
$10M strategies
- ...
Leaks (money saved, loss or lawsuit prevented)
- <leak> | estimated $ protected: <amount> | first step: <one line>
Ranked (value, confidence 1-3, effort 1-3)
1. <item> | <label> | conf <n> | effort <n>
2. ...
First 30 days
- Opportunity: <item> | owner: <role> | first block: <date>
- Leak: <item> | owner: <role> | first block: <date>
Sent to sponsor (if any): <top three items, date sent>Cadence
- Every session of every event, book chapter or episode: keep the ledger live (speaker-stated, 12:30:07).
- End of each day: rank and star (speaker-stated to return to the pages; the daily rhythm is our recommendation).
- Within a week of getting home: consolidate and set the first-30-days list (our recommendation).
- Monthly, for ongoing reading and podcasts: re-rank the running ledger and pick the next item (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Filing only opportunities. Bet-David's warning: "sometimes all we think about is opportunity, we don't think about the leaks" (12:30:34). A plugged leak is often worth more than a chased idea.
- Labeling everything. If every idea is a $1M strategy, the ledger is just notes with dollar signs. Push the user to defend the label in one line or drop it to ordinary notes.
- Writing the idea without the first step. The step is what makes the page actionable later.
- Treating the pages as the output. The output is the executed first-30-days list; the pages are the input.
- Using the ledger for a session that is pure inspiration. If nothing earns a label, that is a valid result. Do not invent entries to fill columns.
- Do not use this as a replacement for full meeting minutes or a decision log; it is a filter, not a record.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/dollar-value-note-ledger-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Experimentation cadence
This skill produces a working operating rhythm for a team: three shared channels, a single metric (tests run per week), each team's first ten tests, one completed 1% audit, a list of constraints tested for paper, and the leader's first weekly memo. Bartlett's argument at The Vault (2026-09-01) is that the correct answer to any business question now expires in three to six months, so the durable edge is not knowing the answer but the rate at which your team runs small experiments and fails in public. He credits his show's growth (roughly a million subscribers in one 30-day period) to this rate, not to better questions, and runs three Slack channels to sustain it: Experiments, 1%, and Pushing on Paper Walls. Asked for the single most important thing, he said: "care more than your competitors do about small details and try more things."
Inputs to gather
Ask for these before you start. Offer the defaults if the user is unsure.
- Team size and the functions or teams inside it (roles only, no names needed).
- Where the team already talks every day (Slack, Teams, WhatsApp). Default: Slack.
- For each team, the one number it can move (reply rate, watch time, conversion, close rate, delivery time).
- How many deliberate, written-down tests the team ran last month. Default: assume zero.
- One customer or audience touchpoint to audit first (studio, shop floor, sales call, onboarding email, checkout).
- Constraints the team currently treats as fixed: lead times, prices, formats, "how clients want it", how long a task takes.
- Whether they are hiring in the next quarter.
- The leader's weekly writing slot. Default: 45 minutes on Friday morning.
Steps
1. Open the three channels
Create three channels everyone in the company can read. Use Bartlett's names so the language sticks (speaker-stated names; the posting templates are ours).
| Channel | What goes in it | Post template |
|---|---|---|
| Experiments | Every test, failed or successful, within a day of finishing | Hypothesis / Variable changed / Metric / Result / What we learned |
| 1% | One small improvement a day, however petty | What I changed / Why a competitor would ignore it / What happened |
| Paper Walls | A constraint you pushed on and what it turned out to be | The wall / Who set it / What I asked / Steel or paper |
Pin the templates. Ask the leader to reply to the first twenty posts personally. Bartlett's studio manager got "a huge round of applause" in the channel for a scented candle a guest noticed; the applause is the mechanism, not a nicety.
2. Make the count of tests the only incentive
Explain the rule to the team in Bartlett's own terms (speaker-stated):
- Hold all variables, change one, state a hypothesis, decide what you are measuring, run it, report back to the whole company. "If it fails, great. If it succeeds, great."
- The input (how many tests the team tries) is controllable. The output (whether each works) is not. Reward only the input.
- Do not track win rate. "If you incentivize the outcome, you disincentivize the behavior because people will get scared."
- Do not rank experiments by worthiness. "They are all worthy. Some of the smallest changes we've made to the show has had the biggest impact."
Bartlett's company has a head of failure and experimentation whose only job is to raise the rate of trying things (speaker-stated). Our recommendation: name one person, even part-time, whose job is the weekly count and nothing else.
3. Plan each team's first ten tests
For each team, list ten tests it could run this month. Push for small: a subject line, a call opening, a thumbnail colour, a checkout step, the wording of a guest introduction. Write each one in the Experiments template before it runs. One variable per test. Post the result within a day.
Benchmarks to calibrate ambition (speaker-stated): about 350 Facebook ad A/B tests per guest interviewed; one guest's name tested 50 ways to learn how the audience wanted him introduced; 10 to 15 experiments a day across the company. Our recommendation for a team starting from zero: ten tests per team in month one, then raise the weekly count every month.
4. Run the 1% audit (45 minutes)
Bartlett's 1% habit comes from Jeff Olson's The Slight Edge and Sir Dave Brailsford's marginal gains at British Cycling: things easy to do are easy not to do, and "in every facet of your life right now, it is compounding for or against you."
- Pick one touchpoint and walk through it as the customer.
- List twenty details you would normally ignore: smell, sound, temperature, the first sentence, load time, the music playing, what the customer touches first.
- Mark the ones a competitor would never bother with. Those are the targets.
- Improve three this week. Post each in the 1% channel.
- Repeat weekly with a different touchpoint.
Examples from stage: CO2 on set kept under 1,000 parts per million because above that "it's like having one or two plates of beer"; a candle a guest remarked on; music researched to relax each guest. Brailsford asked how to get 10% more water in the bottles and how soft the hotel pillows were. His team went from leaving at 5pm to leaving at 1am because "we felt like we were going somewhere." Look for that feeling; it is the signal the audit is working.
5. Hunt paper walls (1 hour, then ongoing)
A paper wall is a constraint that looks like steel and turns out to be preference and tradition. Bartlett's examples: Zara's founder asking why clothes took nine months and getting designs on rails in ten days; Roger Bannister's four-minute mile broken by eleven others within days; suitcases without wheels until someone asked why.
- List every constraint the team treats as fixed.
- For each, write who set it and when. If nobody knows, it is probably paper.
- Pick three. Ask the source directly: why does it take that long, cost that much? What would it take to halve it? Ask why again of whoever set the original rule.
- Record what you learn in the Paper Walls channel, including the small ones.
- Add one question to weekly planning: "What would it take to do this in a fraction of the time?"
Bartlett's animator had taken nine days per job for four years. Asked what it would take to do it in two, the answer was a $2,000 laptop; rendering was eating five or six days. People "don't know they're trapped inside paper walls", so the leader has to ask on their behalf. He tells his team that a couple of such breakthroughs over five years means a team 50% smaller, learning 170% faster, doing things almost 200% faster (speaker-stated figures).
If the user is hiring, add the paper wall interview question (speaker-stated): "You have an event in six weeks. The supplier says it will take eight weeks to deliver. What do you do?" Three answer types: scale back the event, push the event two weeks, or ask the supplier why it takes eight weeks. Only the third pushes on the wall; weight it heavily. Our recommended follow-up: "Tell me about a constraint you were given at work that turned out not to be real."
6. Write the weekly memo (leader)
Bartlett says he writes more memos each week "than anybody in this room", by hand, because deferring your thinking to AI shrinks the understanding you need to ask AI the right question. Citing Andrew Huberman, he says the anterior midcingulate cortex grows when you do things you actively resist.
- Choose one problem you are wrestling with this week.
- Write one page to the team in your own words. No AI in the first draft.
- Only after finishing, use AI to critique it or find gaps.
- Send it. Keep every memo in one folder and re-read it a month later.
Our recommendation: open each memo with this week's test count and one thing the three channels taught you, so the memo doubles as the company's experiment-rate report.
Output format
Fill in assets/experimentation-cadence-worksheet.md. In short:
Channels opened: Experiments / 1% / Paper Walls (where: ___)
Owner of the weekly count: ___ (role)
Baseline tests last month: ___ Target this month: ___
First ten tests, per team: hypothesis / variable / metric / date
1% audit: touchpoint ___ / 20 details / 3 improved this week
Paper walls: constraint / who set it / what I asked / steel or paper
Hiring question added to interviews: yes / no
Weekly memo slot: ___ First memo topic: ___Cadence
- Daily: post experiments, 1% wins and paper walls as they happen. Bartlett's team posts in all three channels every day (speaker-stated).
- Weekly: publish the test count. Leader writes the memo (speaker-stated weekly).
- Monthly: is the count rising month over month? Rotate the 1% touchpoint (our recommendation).
- Quarterly: re-list constraints and retest the ones that were "steel" last time (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Rewarding successful experiments. People stop proposing anything uncertain; the channel goes quiet.
- Copying tactics from talks and books and expecting them to last. They expire in months; only the rate of testing holds.
- Deciding which experiments are worthy. The smallest changes had the biggest impact on Bartlett's show.
- Expecting visible results early. The Diary of a CEO was flat for three years before it grew. "You have to kinda just have faith because you'll do it tomorrow and nothing will happen."
- Assuming the team can see its own paper walls. They cannot; ask why for them.
- Letting AI write the memo. The point is the thinking, not the document.
When not to use this: for one-shot decisions where a failed test would be irreversible or unsafe (regulatory filings, safety-critical systems). Use it on the many small, reversible decisions those big ones sit on top of.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/experimentation-cadence-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Family business charter
This skill produces two documents. The first is a one-page company identity: vision, mission, business principles, and values. The second is a development plan for each child or relative the owner hopes will become a partner, built from three lists (what they need to know, the attributes they need, the experiences they need to have had), plus an equity-gifting decision and a yearly financial review with the accountants.
The McDonald's franchisee on the panel said that before coaching he had no vision, mission statement, principles, or values, and that writing them down "removed conflict" because everyone stopped pulling in different directions. He then applied the same four parts at home. On succession, he said "I am raising up my partners": if he gets to choose his partners, he decides what they need to know, the attributes they need, and the experiences they need. His children already hold equity, and every year they sit with the family's CPAs and review the financials. The hosts cited that about 70 percent of family businesses never reach the second generation, which is why this is worth writing down now.
Inputs to gather
Ask for these before drafting. Offer the defaults in brackets if the user is unsure.
- The business: what it does, for whom, rough size, and how many family members work in it (by role, not name).
- The family members involved now, by relationship and role (spouse who runs the books, brother who runs field crews, son who is an integrator).
- The potential successors or future partners: relationship and age. Children of any age count; the franchisee starts his reading list at about six.
- Where the owner wants the business to be in ten years [default: still family-owned, run day to day by the next generation, with the founder in a supporting role].
- Existing written material: any vision statement, values poster, shareholder agreement, or will. Often there is none, which is normal.
- Whether the owner is open to gifting equity to children while the company has value [default: yes, subject to lawyer and accountant advice].
Steps
Part one: the company identity page
- Draft the vision in one sentence: where the business is going. Make it specific enough that a family member could disagree with it.
- Draft the mission in one sentence: what the business does and for whom.
- Draft five business principles: how decisions get made here. Principles settle arguments, so write them as rules you could point at ("we do not take on debt to grow faster than we can hire", "the person who owns the role makes the call").
- Draft five values: how people behave here. Values are about conduct, not strategy.
- Read the page aloud with every family member in the business. Edit until nobody objects and each person can restate it in their own words. The franchisee's test is that disagreements get settled by pointing at the page instead of at each other.
- Post it where the family works. The panel's advice was to refer to it whenever a disagreement starts.
- Offer to write a matching family values page for the home. The franchisee learned the four parts on the business side, saw them work, and "did it on the family side". Same four headings, family-scale content.
Part two: raising partners, not heirs
- For each potential successor, write three lists, using the franchisee's framing: "if I get to choose who my partners are, these are the things I want them to know, these are the attributes I want them to have, these are the type of experiences I need them to have."
- Know: the knowledge any partner in this business must have (how the money moves, how a job is priced, how a location is opened, the industry's regulations).
- Attributes: character traits you would require of any partner, family or not.
- Experiences: what they should have lived through (a front-line job, a failed project, a hard customer, managing someone older than them).
- For every line, write one thing the person can do this year to move toward it, at their age. A book, a shift on the floor, a meeting they sit in on, a small budget they own. Keep it to what fits in twelve months.
- Add a reading list. The franchisee's children read 75 books between about age six and 18, including Your Next Five Moves and Atomic Habits. Ask the owner for the books that shaped how they run the business, order them by the age each one makes sense, and give the next one this month. The number is the owner's to choose; 75 is the speaker's figure.
- Add exposure. The franchisee's succession plan "is actually pretty simple": the kids see what he does all day, every day, and are part of other conversations. Name the conversations the successor will be in the room for this quarter (vendors, hiring, customer escalations, banking).
- Set the review date for the plan: the person's birthday each year. Revisit the three lists, mark what moved, and write next year's actions.
Part three: equity and stewardship
- Decide the equity question. The franchisee gifted ownership "when I had that value, when I had more depth" and told his children "this is yours and you need to grab and take care of this". Write down: who receives what share, when, and with what conditions. Flag clearly that this needs a lawyer and an accountant before anything is signed, for tax, voting rights, and buy-back terms.
- Schedule the annual stewardship review. Every year the franchisee's children meet with the family's CPAs and "review everything". Book half a day: revenue, profit, debt, cash, explained at each child's level. Ask each one what they would do differently and record the answer so their judgment can be compared year over year.
- Write the expectation note. The panel's closing advice was to "set the expectations early and often" because people are only upset when something they expected was not delivered. For each relative in the business, one paragraph: role, pay, decision rights, how success is judged, what happens if it does not work out, and what a good exit would mean for them. Read it together and initial it.
Output format
Fill in assets/family-business-charter-worksheet.md. In short, it contains:
- Company identity page: vision, mission, five principles, five values, review date.
- Family values page (optional mirror).
- One development map per successor: know / attributes / experiences, each with a this-year action, plus reading list and rooms they will be in.
- Equity and stewardship: gifting decision (flagged for professional advice), annual CPA review date, expectation notes per relative.
Cadence
- Identity page: write once, review 20 minutes per quarter (our recommendation; the speaker said only that it must exist and be referred to).
- Development maps: revisit annually on the person's birthday (our recommendation, built on the speaker's daily-exposure approach).
- Reading list: one book a month, discussed over a meal (our recommendation; the speaker's rule is 75 books by 18).
- Financial review with the CPAs: every year (speaker-stated).
- Expectation notes: before any new arrangement and every six months (speaker said "early and often"; the interval is ours).
Pitfalls
- Writing the page and never reading it again. Its value is as the thing you point at in an argument.
- Treating a hard wall between work and home as the healthy default. The appliance-repair owner said separating "this is work, this is family" never worked for them; blending, and processing issues fast, did. Offer both options.
- Letting tension fester. Two panelists said the business forces them to resolve personal issues quickly because the company has to run tomorrow.
- Assuming relatives know the expectations on pay, ownership, or exit without ever saying them.
- Gifting equity without legal and tax advice, or without the stewardship review that teaches children what they own.
- Do not use this skill to pressure a child who does not want the business. The franchisee's frame is choosing partners, and partners choose back.
Read references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words and evidence timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/family-business-charter-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Family operating system
This skill produces a one-page family charter: four values, a daily one-on-one rota, a recurring ritual calendar, a three-decade energy map, and a support-system inventory. Bet-David's test of a successful parent is "when your kids seek you after they no longer need you", and his claim is that this is won by systems, not by hours. His father left at 4:30 in the morning and came home at 8:30 at night, yet they are close because the father was intentional with weekend time. The skill rejects the work-life balance debate and replaces it with a small set of fixed, repeatable practices that survive a hard season.
Inputs to gather
- Household roster: partner and each child with ages. Roles only if the user prefers privacy.
- Current fixed family time, honestly. What actually happens every week now.
- Current decade and the two after it, with the user's rough current split of energy between business, health and relationships (three numbers that sum to 100).
- Excuses in circulation. Any "because of work" or "because of family" sentence the user has said this month. Both directions.
- Recurring tasks at home and work that do not need to be them. Childcare, household, admin, scheduling, finance, specialist advice.
- Existing help, if any: nanny, housekeeper, assistant, bookkeeper.
Steps
- Run the 75-year-old test. Ask: picture yourself at 75. Who do you want to call you, visit you, want your company? For each person, what did you do with them this week, and would they say you listen? Bet-David told the story of a successful mechanic whose 33-year-old son would not watch football with him, because the son was doing exactly what the father had done: coming home too tired to play. Write one gap per person.
- Write the family creed in four words. The Bet-Davids use lead, respect, improve, love (speaker-stated). Meanings as given on stage: lead means in every situation choose to lead; respect everybody because everyone is dealing with a challenge; improve because it will be necessary in every situation you face; love people. Choose your own four or adopt these. Write one sentence under each. His youngest writes the four words ten times a day, and writing them earns screen time; young children learn a creed by repetition, not lectures.
- Set the daily one-on-one rota. Five to fifteen minutes with each family member, every day, more on weekends, so they can say what is on their mind (speaker-stated, from a book he recalled as Thank God It's Monday). Rules: phone away, one open question, then listen. Assign each person a slot and track it for two weeks on the worksheet. It is working when they start bringing things to you unprompted.
- Kill the excuses in both directions. Take each "because of work" and "because of family" sentence from the inputs and rewrite it as a system fix with a time and place. "Work took priority" becomes "Saturday 9 to 12 is blocked for the kids." "Too busy providing to work out" becomes "fifteen-minute walk outside with my partner after dinner" (speaker's own example). Cross out the originals.
- Fix the weekly rituals. The Bet-David calendar (speaker-stated): Friday night for husband and wife; Saturday movie night with the kids; a whole-family dinner every week with no phones at the table; a Sunday ice cream outing. Pick one couple ritual, one kids ritual and one family dinner. Put them in the shared calendar as recurring and non-negotiable. Run them for a full quarter before adding more. Add one-on-one parent-child dates once the weekly ones hold. Reading rule: kids read every day before screens; "books are our currency as a family".
- Fix the annual rituals. New Year's Eve vision boards; a family business-planning conversation about what each person wants next year, including the children; Christmas together; gifts for the key people in the family (speaker-stated). Put dates in the calendar now.
- Draw the three-decade energy map. Three columns: this decade and the next two. In each, the percentage split between business, health and relationships, and three sentences describing a normal Tuesday at the end of that decade: where you live, who is around, how far you travel. Bet-David's own map was lopsided on purpose: twenties about 90 percent business, 5 health, 5 relationships, driving 40,000 miles a year; thirties married and flying six months a year, living in Dallas because it was three hours from everyone; forties an entire life within a three-mile radius with clients flying to him (speaker-stated, and explicitly not a prescription). Write what the earlier decade must produce to make the later one possible.
- Match the vacations to the decade. For twenty years he never took a one-week vacation; it was weekend getaways to nearby towns. The three-week family trips came only once the business could carry them. "If you're not there yet, don't go do the two, three week thing right now." Plan one weekend getaway a quarter, not the big trip.
- Build the support system. "A big vision needs big support." List every recurring task at home and at work that someone else could do, group them, estimate hours per week, and hire or delegate the biggest group this quarter. Then write the rules of trust for the people who help at home: they are part of the team, they stay out of family disagreements, and nobody may disrespect them in front of you (speaker-stated; his wife credited a long-time household helper as the reason she could support the business and raise four children).
- Optional: write a morning grounding statement. Bet-David read his morning prayer aloud. Its shape, if the user wants one: quiet the noise; name what you want replaced (anxiety with peace, fear with faith, uncertainty with trust, pressure with confidence); ask for a clear mind, steady hands, wise words and a peaceful heart; state that your identity does not come from the outcome; close with a surrender line. Say it for 30 days, then revise, because prayers should change with the season. He added that praying for people who betrayed him is what removes bitterness.
Output format
Fill in assets/family-operating-system-worksheet.md. Short form:
FAMILY CHARTER — <family> — <date>
Creed: <word 1> · <word 2> · <word 3> · <word 4>
Daily: 5–15 min one-on-one with <each person>, slot <time>, phone away
Weekly: <couple night> · <kids night> · <family dinner, no phones>
Annual: NYE vision boards · family planning talk · <holiday> · gifts for key people
Reading rule: read every day before screens
Decade map: now <b/h/r %> → next <b/h/r %> → after <b/h/r %>; Tuesday at 20 yrs: <…>
Vacations this decade: <weekend getaways / longer>
Support: hire or delegate <group> this quarter; rules of trust: <…>
Excuses retired: <n> System fixes written: <n>Cadence
- Daily: one-on-one time per family member; kids read before screens; morning grounding statement if adopted (speaker-stated).
- Weekly: family dinner with no phones, couples' night, kids' night (speaker-stated).
- Monthly: one parent-child date per child (our recommendation).
- Quarterly: one weekend getaway with your spouse; review the ritual calendar and add one thing (our recommendation).
- Annually: New Year's Eve vision boards and family planning conversation (speaker-stated); redraw the decade map on your birthday (our recommendation).
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Shielding a tired parent from the children ("leave daddy alone, he's tired"). Good intentions, and it removes the parent from the child's life.
- Blaming work for a failing marriage or family for a failing business. Both lists are excuses; find the system.
- Buying the three-week vacation lifestyle before the business can carry it.
- Phones at the dinner table, adults included.
- Letting anyone disrespect the people who help you at home.
- Letting a grounding practice run on autopilot instead of updating it with your season.
When not to use this: as a script to impose on a partner who has not been part of the conversation. Build the charter together. For the ten biggest decisions and the seven warning signs, use the companion skill ten-decisions-seven-signs-review.
See references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/family-operating-system-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
First-five-seconds promise check
This skill produces a pass-or-fix verdict on the opening of a piece of content, with the exact cuts to make. Nick Shirley described the first mistake creators make as making the video about themselves: "People don't care that you went to the gym at 5:00 in the morning when you're making a video about politics. Like you have to stay on track. Like the first five or six seconds, if you watch my videos, you'll notice that my thumbnail goes right into the first clip of the video usually. So, you always have to deliver exactly [what] that person [clicked to] watch" (13:11:06 to 13:11:21). He added the standard he edits to: "I make my videos so a five-year-old can understand it, and a 95-year-old can understand it" (13:25:56), and the reason: first-time viewers "aren't coming to watch you. They're coming to watch the value that you're about to give to them." The check takes ten minutes per piece and is the cheapest retention fix available.
Inputs to gather
- The thumbnail, title or headline as it will appear. For audio or text, the title and first line.
- The first six seconds as they stand: a transcript, a description of the shots, or the clip itself. Ask also for the first 30 seconds, since drop-off usually shows there.
- The topic in one sentence and the intended audience.
- The primary source or evidence the piece relies on (a document, a location, a number, a person on camera).
- Retention or click-through data from the last similar piece, if available [default: none yet].
Steps
- Extract the promise from the thumbnail or headline. Write one sentence a stranger would say after seeing only the thumbnail and title: "I'm going to see X." If you cannot write it in one sentence, the thumbnail is making no promise and needs work before the opening can be judged.
- Extract what the first six seconds deliver. One sentence describing what actually appears. Then compare the two sentences. Speaker-stated standard: the thumbnail goes straight into the first clip. Our test: would a person who has not seen the piece say both sentences describe the same thing? If not, either move the promised clip to the front or change the thumbnail.
- Scan the opening for anything about the creator. Morning routine, travel, setup, "welcome back", channel news, sponsor reads, a long self-introduction. Shirley's rule: nothing in the open is about you when the click was about the topic. Mark each item and cut it, or move it after the promised payoff has landed. Our threshold: nothing about the creator before the promise is delivered.
- Run the value-first check. Ask: if this viewer has never seen the channel, what have they received by second six? Shirley: "You want to provide value right out the gate" (13:25:56). If the answer is "an introduction", fail the check. Personal material earns its place later in the piece, once the value has been paid.
- Run the five-year-old and 95-year-old test. Have the user write the piece's core explanation in one paragraph with no jargon. Read it, or have them read it, to one person much younger and one much older than the usual audience. Mark every word or step where either loses the thread and rewrite until both can repeat the main point. Speaker-stated standard; our recommendation is the read-aloud method.
- Show the source instead of describing it. Shirley's approach was to "show people that this is actually happening from the source" rather than frame it as right or left (13:25:56). Check that the primary evidence appears on screen or in the audio early, not only in the creator's summary. Where the piece takes a side, ask whether the source alone would carry the point.
- Give the verdict and the metric to watch. Pass, or fix with the numbered list of cuts and moves. Our recommendation for scoring afterwards: average view duration over the first 30 seconds, and click-through rate, compared with the last similar piece.
Output format
Piece: <title> Format: <video / short / podcast / post>
Thumbnail or headline promise (one sentence): <...>
First six seconds deliver (one sentence): <...>
Same promise? <yes / no> Fix: <move clip X to front | change thumbnail to Y>
About-the-creator items in the open: <list, with timestamps> -> cut / move after <second n>
Value received by second six: <...> Verdict: <pass / fail>
Plain-language test
One-paragraph explanation: <...>
Younger reader lost the thread at: <...> Older reader lost it at: <...>
Rewritten line(s): <...>
Source shown on screen or in audio by: <second n> (or: described only -> add <source>)
Verdict: <PASS | FIX: 1. ... 2. ... 3. ...>
Watch after publish: first-30-second retention <n>% vs last <n>%; CTR <n>% vs last <n>%Cadence
- Every piece, before publishing (speaker-stated: his videos are built this way every time).
- Review the retention and click-through numbers a week after publish and carry the lesson into the next check (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Opening with yourself. The example Shirley used was the 5 a.m. gym trip in a politics video. Viewers clicked for the topic.
- A thumbnail that promises one thing and a first clip that delivers another. Both can be good on their own and still fail together.
- Explaining for your peers. If a child and an elderly viewer cannot follow it, the general audience will not either.
- Framing before showing. Shirley's audience trusted the source footage; the framing shrank it.
- Treating length as the fix. Retention in the first 30 seconds is the problem this check solves; length is a separate decision.
- Do not use this on content whose whole point is the creator, such as a personal vlog or an announcement. There the creator is the promise.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, references/source-notes.md
Five-aspects conflict sheet
This skill produces two things: a one-page prep sheet for a specific hard conversation, and a script for running it that ends with the person knowing you still believe in them. Bet-David asked the room who had no formula for confronting people. Most hands went up. His point: "because of that, you avoid conflict." The five aspects came out of a weekly leadership meeting when a manager asked how to address a conflict. The nine guidelines are how he runs accountability with his own team, including a 30-day ultimatum he had given a three-year employee days before the session. He calls teaching the sheet company-wide "not a $100,000 solution ... this could be a $10 million solution" because of how many working relationships sit at a five out of ten with nobody saying anything.
Inputs to gather
- Who the conversation is with, by role or relationship (direct report, client, business partner, spouse, child, in-law). Keep names out of the notes if the user prefers.
- The specific gap: what was promised or expected, what happened, and the number or fact that proves it. If the user offers a generalisation ("they have a bad attitude"), ask for the last two concrete instances.
- How long this has been going on and whether it has been raised before.
- The consequence the user is willing to attach if nothing changes, and the reward if it does.
- Whether this is a one-off conversation or a pattern the user wants to teach their team to handle.
Steps
Part 1: fill in the five aspects (speaker-stated)
Bet-David: "In every relationship, each party is thinking about five things. They have their own set of concerns, they have their own set of fears, they have their own set of assumptions of you, they have their own set of motives and their own asks."
Fill in both columns. Write the user's side first, then the best honest guess of the other person's side.
| Aspect | Mine | Theirs (my best guess) |
|---|---|---|
| Concerns: what is actually bothering me about this situation | ||
| Fears: what I am afraid will happen, including about the conversation itself | ||
| Assumptions: what I am assuming about them, and what they probably assume about me | ||
| Motives: what I actually want out of this, stated honestly | ||
| Asks: the specific thing I am going to ask for |
Coach the user on two aspects that usually come out thin:
- Assumptions are where most conflicts live. In his own example with his son over college, the son assumed "you just want me to go to college because you didn't go". The father's actual reasoning was different, and the assumption dissolved once stated aloud.
- The ask has to be specific and small enough to say in one sentence. His was "add one more option to the table". An ask like "be better" is not an ask.
Check the user's own fear column too. Bet-David named his: "My fear is that you don't think I have positive intentions for your dreams." Saying the fear out loud is what let the other side answer it.
Part 2: run the conversation with the nine accountability guidelines (speaker-stated)
Structure the meeting in this order. The guidelines are his, in his numbering; the mapping onto the meeting flow is ours.
- Do not be afraid to hold them accountable and call out the broken word. Open by naming the commitment and the miss plainly. "The more you don't do it, the more they know you'll accept them not hitting their numbers in the future."
- Question their answers. When they explain, go one layer deeper. His example: "They? Tell me more about they." Do not accept vague attribution or a solved problem retold as an excuse.
- Make specific statements, not generalisations. Use the two concrete instances from your inputs, not "always" or "never".
- Give clear expectations. State what good looks like from here, in observable terms.
- Use measurable figures and data. The number that proves the gap, and the number that will prove it closed.
- Attach consequences and rewards. In his company a miss "takes a massive hit" on the quarterly calibration score, and about a third of bonus is tied to that score. Say what happens if nothing changes and what happens if it does.
- Coach them through the challenge. Ask what is in the way and what help they need. His team coached one manager for six months before parting ways; consequences and coaching are not opposites.
- Role-play. Before the real meeting, rehearse it with a peer, and when teaching the sheet to a team, have them role-play with each other. "The right way to do this is to role play."
- Finish with love. Close with his sentence, adapted to the relationship: "I believe if you improve in this area, you could have a major future here in the company." He adds: "Sometimes we forget to say that last line."
Now share the sheet. Bet-David literally opened his laptop and typed both sides in front of his son, then tested each assumption aloud. Suggest the user do the same: show the sheet, or at least walk through the five headings in order, and ask the other person to correct the "theirs" column. People "are so appreciative of the fact that you were very intentional about the meeting".
Part 3: after the meeting
- Record what the other person said their real concerns, fears and assumptions were, next to your guesses. Wrong guesses are the learning.
- Write the agreed expectation, measure, date and consequence in one line each.
- If the fear the user wrote down turned out to be unfounded, note that. If it was founded, note the plan.
- Set the follow-up date. For work conversations, tie it to the next calibration or a 30-day check.
Part 4: teach it to the team (when the user asks)
Bet-David: "The next phase is to make sure every single person in your company knows how to do this." Run a short session: explain the five aspects, hand out the blank sheet, pair people up, and have each pair role-play a real but low-stakes conflict using the nine guidelines. "You know who the owner is on this? We do. We're the leaders."
Output format
Fill in assets/five-aspects-prep-sheet.md. The short form:
Conversation with: [role] Date: ...
Gap: [commitment] vs [what happened], proven by [number/fact]
| Aspect | Mine | Theirs (guess) | Theirs (what they said) |
| Concerns | | | |
| Fears | | | |
| Assumptions | | | |
| Motives | | | |
| Asks | | | |
Opening line (guideline 1): ...
Two specific instances (guideline 3): ...
Expectation from here (4) and the measure (5): ...
Consequence / reward (6): ...
Support offered (7): ...
Rehearsed with (8): ...
Closing line (9): "I believe if you improve in this area, ..."
Follow-up date: ...Cadence
- Before every confrontation, starting with the next one (speaker: "take a piece of paper, write down your concerns, fears, assumptions, motives, and asks, and write down what you think theirs are").
- Teach it to the whole team once this quarter, then include it in onboarding (our recommendation, based on his "make sure every single person in your company knows how to do this").
- Keep a standing weekly leadership meeting where questions like "how do we address conflict?" get answered and turned into method (speaker: "we do weekly Max Seven meetings in our office").
Pitfalls
- Skipping the sheet because the issue feels small. The relationships stuck at five out of ten are the ones nobody thought were worth a conversation.
- Accepting "they said" or "here's what happened" at face value. Question the answer.
- Generalising. Bet-David stopped attendees on stage all day: "Stop generalizing and start being specific."
- Consequences with no coaching, or coaching with no consequences. He uses both.
- Forgetting the last line. Without it, a hard review lands as a threat rather than a standard.
- Letting a manager blame "the executive team" for a score. One did, the employee came back to leadership, and it ended in a cease-and-desist. Own the message you deliver.
- Do not use this sheet to avoid a decision that is already made. If someone is being let go, be direct; the five aspects are for relationships you intend to keep.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/five-aspects-prep-sheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Four-option leader conversation
This skill produces, for each plateauing leader, a chosen structural option, a mentor pairing, three observable skill targets and a dated 90-day review. The final case study of The Vault 2026 described a fictional manufacturer whose six-year leadership team grew it from 6 to 22 million dollars and was now the drag on reaching 100 million. Nobody was failing visibly; the operations head still ran the floor like there were 30 employees when there were 140. The strongest answer from the floor came from a 28-year-old founder whose own company was on pace to go from about 12 million to 100 million in a year. His sequence: look at the org chart first, have the honest conversation with four options, invest in two kinds of mentors, and keep pressure high with a skill review every 90 days. The reason it works is that it turns a verdict into a shared decision and makes firing visibly the last option, not the first.
Inputs to gather
- Current revenue and the target two to three years out. [Default target: twice current.]
- Each senior leader by role, with the largest scale they have personally operated at before (team size, revenue, complexity).
- What each leader wants. If unknown, step 2 collects it.
- The gap per leader, in one sentence: what the next level needs that they have not done. Example from the case: "can close, has never led 20 reps."
- Loyalty debt, honestly. Pay cuts taken, weekends worked, years served. It is real and it belongs in the room; it just is not the deciding variable.
- The user's honest lean today, per leader, on the four options. They will be asked to say it out loud.
Steps
- Draw the org chart for the company you are becoming, not the one you have. "Where are we now and what does our company need to look like as we grow into this 100 million runway?" (speaker-stated). Mark each box: filled and ready, filled but needs development, or empty. Structure first stops you building roles around whoever happens to be there.
- Ask each leader one question in a one-on-one: "Who do you want to be in this company in five years?" (a founder from the floor, speaker-stated). Sort the answers into two tracks: wants to step up, or comfortable and overwhelmed. His working assumption was about half in each. The comfortable half need leadership hired above them so they can keep flourishing; the ambitious half get a leadership program, a coach, and equity tied to calibration results.
- Apply the two conditions for investing in an insider: upside and coachability (another founder, speaker-stated). Not loyalty, not tenure. If both are present, invest. If either is missing, one of the structural options applies. Weigh the cultural risk of an outsider too: they may not have the fire to build a department from the ground up.
- Decide your honest lean before the meeting. Write which option you favour for this person and why. Bias toward growth, as the presenting founder did, "because we believe in our people", but do not walk in without a view.
- Run the four-option conversation. Open with the org chart and the gaps. Then, in the presenter's words: "Look, guys, we're going to have to change and there's four options." State your bias toward their growth and why you believe in them. Agree the option together. Consider option 2 more often than instinct suggests; he described an upcoming hard conversation where the answer was to hire next to a leader rather than under him, which relieves pressure without demoting the loyal person.
- Hire someone above you, who will lead you.
- Hire someone next to you, to take off the pressure.
- Hire people below you, who will support you so you can move up.
- We part ways. He added: "we've been here, we've been growing, we're probably not going to do that."
- Assign two mentors. A skill-based mentor who operates far above your scale in their function ("somebody at that ninth or multi-ninth figure level") and a leadership mentor who teaches them to lead more people (speaker-stated). Source them at events; make it an explicit job duty for executives to attend events and build relationships. "Never, ever, ever skip over an important relationship."
- Write three observable skill targets for the next 90 days. Observable means someone else could verify it: "has hired and onboarded five reps", "presents a 12-month cash plan", "runs the floor through two shift leads without being on it". Put the review date in both calendars before the meeting ends.
- Hold the 90-day skill review on the date, not when convenient. Mark each target met or not met with evidence. Our recommendation: two consecutive reviews with no progress triggers the next option in the list. Belief without a deadline is how a loyal team stays stuck.
- Set expectations early with new hires so this conversation is never a surprise. A first-year franchisee on the floor proposed asking every early hire in their first month what they want to be in five years, and agreeing three or four ways things could end well for them if the fit ends (speaker-stated). Revisit annually.
- Ask the same question of yourself. The last founder captured said, "I am this case study and I am the bottleneck." Ask three direct reports where decisions wait on you; delegate or hire against the top two this quarter (our recommendation).
Output format
Fill in assets/four-option-leader-conversation-worksheet.md, one block per leader. Short form:
LEADER: <role> Current scale operated: <…> Next-level gap: <…>
Five-year answer: "<…>" Track: step up / needs leadership above
Upside: yes/no Coachable: yes/no Loyalty debt noted: <…>
My lean before the meeting: <above / beside / below / part ways>, because <…>
Agreed option: <…> Date agreed: <…>
Skill mentor: <name or target profile> Leadership mentor: <…> Contact by: <date>
90-day targets: 1 <…> 2 <…> 3 <…>
Review date: <…> Result: met / not met per target, with evidenceCadence
- Org chart for the next level: draw once this month, refresh every quarter (our recommendation).
- Five-year question: every leader within two weeks, then annually (our recommendation).
- Four-option conversation: once per leader at or near their ceiling, within 30 days; repeat only when a review triggers it.
- Skill review: every 90 days (speaker-stated).
- Mentor sourcing: at least one event a quarter, as a stated executive duty (our recommendation based on the speaker's "it's your job to go out to events").
- Bottleneck check on yourself: every quarter (our recommendation).
Pitfalls the speakers warned about
- Waiting until someone is visibly failing. At this stage nobody fails visibly; the company just stops growing.
- Treating it as loyalty versus talent instead of choosing among four structural options.
- Believing in your people without a 90-day review, so belief becomes an excuse for no progress.
- Hiring an outsider without weighing fire and culture, or one who is there for the exit rather than the mission.
- Promoting loyal people who lack upside or coachability because they earned it, and setting them up to fail.
- Never attending events, so there is no mentor bench when you need one.
- Ignoring the possibility that the founder is the bottleneck.
When not to use this: for performance problems with a clear cause and a short history. This is for capable, loyal people whose past ceiling is below the company's next level. Also note the recording ended mid-discussion; the framework is complete but the room's debate is not fully captured.
See references/source-notes.md for the speakers' exact words.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/four-option-leader-conversation-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Future truth and the delivery plan
This skill produces a one-sentence future truth, the people who need to hear it, a ledger of promises already made, and the next proof point that turns the statement from talk into track record. Bet-David defined a future truth as something that is "only truth to you" and "a lie to everyone else" until it arrives, and said visionaries live a lie half the time. The part he called more important than speaking it is delivering it: "You can't call yourself a visionary if you've never casted a vision that never became reality." In 2011, with no YouTube channel, he told his team that presidents and Kobe Bryant would one day come to his events. His own people told him to stop making videos at 32 views. The skill exists to keep the statement bold and the proof points small and frequent.
Run it as a conversation. Draft the sentence together, then interrogate it with the tests below before moving to delivery.
Inputs to gather
- The business or family the truth is about, and roughly where it is today (revenue, headcount, audience, or a plain description).
- Any "one day" statements the user has already made out loud to a team, a spouse, a partner, or kids, and whether each was delivered. Get dates if they can remember them.
- The three audiences: who is on the team, who is in the family, who are the customers or followers.
- The user's honest sense of how the team reacted the last time they talked about the future [eye rolls, polite nods, real belief, never tried].
- A 90-day window on the calendar (our default; adjust for the user's cycle).
- Whether they want the vision-board ritual included [yes if they have a family or a team they see in person; skip otherwise].
Steps
1. Draft the future truth
Write one or two sentences beginning "One day we will...". Bet-David's own examples from 2010 and 2011: one day we will interview the best comedians; one day Kobe Bryant will sit down with us; one day presidents will come to our conferences. His model of a delivered one is Kennedy's "we will land on the moon before the decade is over".
Apply three tests. All three are drawn from how he described his own statements; the wording is ours.
- The lie test. Would a reasonable person hearing this today think it is untrue? If nobody would doubt it, it is a plan, not a future truth. Make it bigger.
- The picture test. Can the listener see it? "Presidents at our conference" is a picture. "Significant growth" is not.
- The date test. Kennedy gave a decade. Add a horizon, even a loose one, so the truth can be checked.
2. Name the audiences and say it this month
Bet-David listed the audiences explicitly: employees and staff, the sales team, family, kids, spouse. He called this "talk dirty about the future", a language most people never learn to speak.
List each audience and a date this month to say the truth out loud to them. Prepare the user for the doubt phase. His team's reaction was "this guy's crazy" and "I think Pat's trying to be a motivational speaker". When the channel later hit 158,000 subscribers and he paused content for three months, the same people called stopping irresponsible. The doubt is normal and does not mean the truth is wrong.
3. Build the promise ledger
The credibility of a future truth is borrowed from earlier promises that came true. Bet-David told the room that the way to give a spouse respect for a "one day" statement is by the previous one becoming reality, "cuz the next time you talk, she'll believe you". He promised his wife a designer purse after their third child and delivered it at the hospital; he promised a bigger ring at ten years, and she chose a trip to Monaco instead. Both were kept, and that is why the next one is believed.
Make a table of every "one day" the user has said out loud: what was promised, to whom, when, delivered or not, and the date delivered. Total the delivered and undelivered rows. If undelivered outnumber delivered, the first job is to deliver one of them before casting anything new. That is our rule; his principle is that delivery comes before the title.
4. Pick the next proof point
Choose the first small, visible piece of the future truth that can be delivered within 90 days (our window). It should be:
- something the audience will notice without being told,
- clearly a slice of the big truth rather than an unrelated win,
- fully in the user's control.
Write it as a sentence, a date, and the audience who will see it. Bet-David's early proof points were videos posted while his own guys said the views were embarrassing. Small counts.
5. Deliver, then repeat the truth
Schedule the day the proof point lands and the moment the user restates the future truth to the same audience. Add the delivered row to the ledger. Then pick the next proof point. The loop is speak, deliver, speak again. Each kept promise is what earns the word visionary instead of, in his words, "a talker".
6. Optional: the New Year's Eve vision board ritual
Bet-David's family builds vision boards every December 31 from about 8 p.m. The ritual as he described it:
- In the last week of December, buy about 50 magazines at a bookstore, and boards, cards and glue from a craft store.
- Everyone in the family makes their own board for the year ahead. Guests are welcome; they bring their own magazines.
- Use his three sections from his first set in 2009: what inspires you (images of the life you want), what excites you (quotes that drive you), and your goals. He spent 14 hours on that first set and one line, wanting to be in the room with other lions making big decisions, is the one he traces today's calls from heads of state back to.
- Hang each board in the maker's room and leave earlier years up so the progression is visible. His kids' rooms have four years of boards each.
- Have each person explain their board to the others.
He named two intentions: the whole family learns to dream, and the kids carry the tradition to their own children. He also noted it keeps the family off the roads on one of the most dangerous nights of the year. If it is the user's first board, he asked for a one-to-two-minute video sent to him on Minnect.
Output format
Use assets/future-truth-delivery-plan-worksheet.md. The short form:
FUTURE TRUTH: One day we will <picture> by <horizon>.
LIE TEST: <who would doubt it today> PICTURE TEST: <what they would see> DATE TEST: <horizon>
AUDIENCES AND DATES THIS MONTH
Team: <names by role> say it on <date>
Family: <who> say it on <date>
Customers: <who> say it on <date>
EXPECTED DOUBT: <what they will probably say> MY REPLY: <one line>
PROMISE LEDGER
| Promise | To whom | Said on | Delivered? | Delivered on |
Delivered: <n> Undelivered: <n> FIRST JOB: <deliver X> or <cast the new truth>
NEXT PROOF POINT: <sentence> BY: <date within 90 days> SEEN BY: <audience>
RESTATE THE TRUTH ON: <date after delivery>
VISION BOARD (optional): Dec 31, 8 p.m. | magazines bought by <date> | who is coming | three sections: inspires / excites / goalsCadence
- Say the future truth to each audience once this month, then at every team kickoff and family milestone (our recommendation).
- Review the promise ledger and pick the next proof point every quarter (our recommendation, matching the 90-day window).
- Vision boards every New Year's Eve (speaker-stated: "every Christmas, New Year's Eve at our house").
- First vision board: send a short video to Bet-David on Minnect (speaker-stated, once).
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Calling yourself a visionary when no vision you cast has ever become reality. His word for that person was blunt.
- Expecting your team to support the truth early. They will call it crazy until it pays, and then call stopping irresponsible.
- Making "one day" promises to a spouse or kids and not delivering. Each broken promise makes the next truth harder to believe.
- Speaking the language of the future only to yourself. He listed employees, staff, sales team, family, kids and spouse as the audiences on purpose.
- Rushing the vision board. His first set took 14 hours, and he credits the time spent for what it produced.
When not to use this
Do not use it to paper over a business that is missing payroll. A future truth is not a substitute for a cash plan, and a team that is not being paid will not hear it. Fix the immediate problem, then come back to this.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/future-truth-delivery-plan-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
ITR crisis triage
This skill turns a vague emergency into one quantified line: what the problem costs if nothing changes (Return), how long the fix takes (Time), and what the fix costs (Investment). Tom Ellsworth taught it on Day One of The Vault 2026 as the tool a number two uses to be the boss's "soft pillow at night": you still raise the problem, but you bring it a couple of steps closer to a solution, with a number attached. His rule for every team: nobody brings a crisis without the ITR. The side effect he promised is that small problems stop reaching the leader's desk, because the numbers show they are small.
Inputs to gather
Ask for these in one pass. Accept rough numbers; a defensible estimate beats a blank.
- The problem in one sentence. What happened, when, and who noticed.
- Who it is being escalated to (the CEO, a partner, a board, or "nobody yet, I own this"). Default: the user's direct leader.
- The unit of impact. Revenue per week, cost per day, customers at risk, hours lost. Default: revenue per week, because that is the example Ellsworth used.
- Candidate fixes the user already has in mind, if any. If none, the skill proposes two or three.
- Anything already done to contain it. Ellsworth's test of a good operator is arriving with "here is what happened and here is how we have already contained it."
Steps
- Name the crisis type. Write it at the top of the page. Ellsworth's eleven types: health, technology (cybercrime, a phishing click in finance), organizational (you have outgrown your structure, your only estimator quits), violence or revenge from a former employee, defamation (Glassdoor, Instagram), financial (the CEO's personal finances, or a market squeeze such as expensive diesel), black swan (the PDF kills the fax machine), white swan (a change you can see coming), personal (a parent's illness pulls you away), natural (ice storms, hurricanes), and the market or leadership crisis that follows from the others. Naming the type tells you who should own it and which playbook applies.
- Start with Return. Ellsworth is explicit that you work backwards from impact. Ask: if nothing changes, what does this cost per week or per month? Put a dollar figure on it. His example: a roofing company loses its only estimator, cannot get three bids out a week, and loses about $200,000 of revenue a week. If the user cannot price it in dollars, price it in customers, hours or reputation and then convert.
- Then Time. How long will the fix take? Give a range and the assumption behind it. Example: thirty days with an interim consultant while a permanent hire is recruited.
- Then Investment. What does the fix cost? Include the premium you pay for speed. Example: about $10,000 for a semi-retired estimator hired as an emergency consultant, paid more than a salaried hire because it is an emergency.
- Compare Return to Investment on one line. Write it as: "Return: losing X per week. Time: Y days. Investment: Z." If Return dwarfs Investment, the case for action is made and the escalation is really a request for a yes. If Return is small, do not escalate. Solve it and mention it in the next regular update. Ellsworth: "If your people are in the habit of using ITR, they may not even bring some stuff to your desk because it turns out to be small."
- Run the lifespan check. Ellsworth listed what shortens a crisis (a strategy, poise, knowing what is and is not working, assigning people and moving through the solution, seeing five moves ahead) and what lengthens it (over-exaggerating a small pricing problem into company drama, or downplaying an angry ex-employee's post until it has 50,000 likes and your logo on it). Ask the user directly: are we panicking, are we blowing this up, or are we waving it off? Adjust the response to the size the ITR revealed.
- Assign and schedule. Name the owner of each step of the fix and set a check-in time. Write the next five moves, not just the first one.
- Produce the escalation brief. Fill the output template below. The brief should let the leader say "thank you for bringing me a solution, thank you for quantifying it" and give a yes in under two minutes.
Output format
ITR brief: [problem in one sentence]
Crisis type: [one of the eleven]
Already contained: [what has been done]
Return losing [X] per [week/month] if nothing changes
Time [Y] to fix, assuming [assumption]
Investment [Z], covering [what]
Recommendation: [escalate for a yes / solve without escalating]
Over- or under-reacting check: [one sentence]
Owner and next five moves:
1. ... (owner, by when)
2. ...
3. ...
4. ...
5. ...
Check-in: [date and time]The longer worksheet, including a three-crisis lifespan audit, is in assets/itr-crisis-triage-worksheet.md.
Cadence
- Every escalation (speaker-stated). Ellsworth told the room to star the workbook page and tell their teams: "Before you bring me crises or big problems, bring me also the ITR."
- Weekly Glassdoor and social check by HR or whoever owns the employer brand (speaker-stated), because revenge now looks like anonymous reviews posted five minutes apart.
- Quarterly lifespan audit of the last three crises (our recommendation): how long each lasted versus how long it needed to, and which factor stretched it.
- Once, and whenever it changes: brief your number two on your personal stress points and financial constraints (our recommendation, from Ellsworth's point that a financial crisis is often personal to the CEO).
Pitfalls
- Bringing a crisis without numbers, so every problem sounds equally urgent and the leader has to do the analysis.
- Starting with the cost of the fix instead of the cost of the problem. Ellsworth insists on Return first.
- Downplaying a reputational hit because "it's just an ex-employee." By the next morning it can be viral with your logo attached.
- Over-exaggerating a small problem until someone finally asks "what is our impact here?"
- Treating a white swan (a change you could see coming) as a black swan. The winner is the company that shows up with the solution.
Do not use this skill for personal or values-based decisions, where the "return" is not a number; use a decision review instead. Do not use it to justify a decision already made; the point is to size the problem before choosing the response.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/itr-crisis-triage-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Key-person continuity plan
This skill produces two things: a time-boxed response plan for the two weeks after a key person leaves, and the "insurance policies" that stop the next departure hurting the same way. It comes from the last case study of Day One at The Vault 2026. A fictional $23 million mechanical contractor loses its 19-year VP of Operations on a Tuesday morning; he held every client, vendor and process in his head, and there was no key-man insurance, no accurate operations manual and no second-in-command. Patrick Bet-David's framing: this will happen to everybody. "The question is what insurance policies you create for it not to happen the second time. If it happens second, third, fourth, fifth time, you're just not creating the right systems." The response steps below are the ones a CEO with $15 million EBITDA said he ran for real, losing no customers.
Inputs to gather
- Mode. Has someone already left (run Part A then Part B), or is this prevention (run Part B, then rehearse Part A against the most critical person)?
- The person and role, and roughly how long they have been there.
- What lives only in their head: clients, vendors, processes, passwords, negotiation history, judgment calls. Ask for a first list; the plan will refine it.
- Top customers and critical vendors, ranked by revenue and criticality. Default: the top twenty of each.
- The remaining senior leaders, by role, and who among them might assume they are next.
- Systems the company already has: CRM, invoicing, shared drive, email admin access, key-man insurance, operations manual and how current it is.
- The next all-hands or company meeting date. Default: two weeks out, as in the case.
Steps
Part A: the response (first 48 hours to the all-hands)
- Step into the gap yourself. The CEO who lived it: "My first move was to step up as a CEO and make sure that I filled the voids and the customers don't feel that pain." Draft the call in three sentences: what happened, who is in place, and the personal guarantee. His words to customers: "Everything's going to be okay. The systems and processes are in place to make sure that the quality of service that you're receiving is going to continue." Another respondent put it as "I'm going to be personally responsible for continuity." Start calling within hours, ranked by revenue. Meet critical vendors in person.
- Name the interim and make sure everyone knows. The second move was "putting someone in that person's place" so "everybody in the organization knows that somebody qualified is taking that role." A visible interim within 48 hours stops the "who's next?" spiral in which alliances form and meetings turn political.
- Put a number two behind the interim immediately. The third move: "put a number two behind that supervisor, so that I don't have that same problem again. And if my number one supervisor that I put in place thinks about screwing around, they know they have a number two to replace them." Depth is both continuity and negotiating position.
- Build the dependency list in twenty-minute huddles. With the management team, list everything the departed person did and who takes each item. Keep huddles short and frequent until the list is stable.
- Recover the data before anything is wiped. Export one to two years of invoices and rank every transacting customer by spend; an AI tool or a spreadsheet does this in an hour. Before closing the departed person's company email, and within your written policy for doing so, have it searched for prospects and open conversations. Hand both lists to the remaining team to divide and conquer. A twenty-year-old company has a CRM; as one respondent said, "I don't think it's a panic mode."
- Put the anxious leaders to work on four workstreams. Instead of letting four senior leaders speculate, give each one a job: (1) the operations manual and systems, (2) client relations, (3) internal office affairs and morale, (4) developing future people. Ownership converts anxiety into continuity.
- Go to the person who left, hat in hand. Not to win them back but to learn what happened and, if possible, have them train the replacement. "Don't call him into the office... go there hat in hand." Have a second plan for when they say no.
- Run the culture post-mortem. One respondent: "If someone worked there for eighteen years, it's no surprise that they quit if you're the CEO. If it is a surprise, then you're totally asleep at the wheel." Meet each remaining leader one on one and ask what discontent they saw and when, and what the departed person's strengths and downfalls were, so the replacement is an upgrade. Decide whether this is addition by subtraction before rushing to hire.
- Prepare the all-hands. One clear paragraph per department: what changed, who owns what, what stays the same. Announce the operational-resilience check-in that will run weekly until the transition is stable, then monthly.
Part B: the insurance policies
- Write the key-person dependency map. List every role whose loss would hurt for more than a week. For each, list what only that person knows or does, and mark each item green (documented and someone else can do it), yellow (partly) or red (only in their head). Name the interim and the number two. Blanks and red items become dated tasks with owners.
- Two backups per role. The CEO with about 100 staff who built this: "Not only do you have one backup, you have a second backup." Where there is no name, that is the quarter's hiring or development priority. His test of success: "The sooner they leave, the better."
- Build the vault of knowledge. "It can't be in one person. So the whole team could access it if it ever does happen." Run a four-week sprint with the most knowledge-concentrated person, one hour a week: week one, the top twenty client relationships into the CRM; week two, vendors and negotiation history; week three, the five most critical processes as step-by-step SOPs; week four, the judgment calls nobody else knows. Then have their number two run one process from the documents alone and log every gap. Repeat with the next person.
- Run the data-recovery drill before you need it. Rank customers from invoices, pull every open opportunity from the CRM without any one person's login, and confirm in writing with legal or HR the policy for reviewing a departed employee's company email. Time it. Anything over a day is a gap. Assign the drill to someone other than the data's owner.
- Decide on key-man insurance. Get a quote on the two or three most critical people and make an explicit decision. In the case, "no key-man insurance" was one of the three missing safeguards.
- Store the three scripts. The customer and vendor continuity call, the senior-leader message naming the interim and their workstream, and the all-hands update. Keep them where they can be found in a crisis.
- Say the transparency line, and keep saying it. "They need to know that they're replaceable, but that's not the plan. So as long as you're bringing value, you're good." Said plainly and consistently, this removes the hostage dynamic without creating fear. The speaker who built double backups did so because "I don't like being given ultimatums in business, whether it's direct or indirect."
Output format
Key-person continuity plan for: [role] Mode: response / prevention
First 48 hours
[ ] CEO calls: top customers (ranked), critical vendors in person. Script: ...
[ ] Interim named: [role]. Announced to whole company by: ...
[ ] Number two behind the interim: [role]
[ ] Twenty-minute huddles scheduled; dependency list started
[ ] Data recovery: invoices exported, customers ranked; email reviewed under policy; CRM opportunities pulled
First two weeks
[ ] Four workstreams: manual & systems [owner] · client relations [owner] · internal affairs [owner] · future people [owner]
[ ] Hat-in-hand visit to the departed person; plan B if no
[ ] Culture post-mortem: one-on-ones with each remaining leader; strengths and downfalls of the departed
Before the all-hands
[ ] One paragraph per department
[ ] Resilience check-in cadence set (weekly, then monthly)
Insurance policies
| Role | What lives only in their head | Green / yellow / red | Interim | Number two | Second backup | Task, owner, date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[ ] Knowledge-vault sprint scheduled for: [role], four weeks from [date]
[ ] Data-recovery drill run on [date]; took [time]; gaps: ...
[ ] Key-man insurance quoted for [roles]; decision: ...
[ ] Three scripts written and stored at: ...
[ ] Transparency line said at: [next all-hands date]The full worksheet, including the four-week vault sprint and the drill log, is in assets/key-person-continuity-plan-worksheet.md.
Cadence
- Immediately after any key departure: write the new system that stops it hurting the same way, before moving on (speaker-stated).
- All the time, and at minimum every all-hands: the transparency line (speaker-stated: "all the time").
- Once this month: the dependency map and the three scripts (our recommendation).
- Weekly for a quarter: the one-hour vault session with the most knowledge-concentrated person (our recommendation).
- Monthly: a one-on-one with each senior leader asking how they are doing and what would make them leave, so a resignation is never a surprise (our recommendation, from the "asleep at the wheel" point).
- Quarterly: review the two-backups-per-role map (our recommendation).
- Annually: repeat the data-recovery drill (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Letting one person be "institutional knowledge wearing a name badge" with nothing written down.
- Handling customers and vendors while the senior leaders inside form alliances. The internal politics move faster than the external damage.
- Panic-hiring a replacement instead of using the data you already have and the leaders you already employ.
- Wiping a departed employee's accounts before recovering prospects and open conversations.
- Treating the resignation as transactional and never asking what culture problem it exposed.
- Surviving the first loss and building nothing, so it happens a second, third and fourth time.
- Reviewing a former employee's email without a written policy. Do it within your jurisdiction's law and your own HR policy, and record the authorisation.
Do not use this skill to plan a dismissal; it is about continuity, not removal. If the departure involves a legal dispute, misconduct or a data breach, involve counsel before the data-recovery steps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/key-person-continuity-plan-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Know yourself: seven seats and the personal identity audit
This skill produces a written self-audit with three decisions attached: which of the seven seats fits your wiring, whether you should be the number one or a high-value number two (and of what size), and one breakthrough sentence you can act on. Bet-David opened Move One by calling "who do you want to be, and what kind of life do you want to build?" the hardest question most people face, and said income follows that answer rather than the other way round. Tom Ellsworth added that the role that suits you is where you are comfortable, what you aspire to, what you hone, what you teach, and how you want to be led, and that it may not be where you start. Fewer than 1% of the room had finished the audit before the session. The point of this skill is to be in that 1%.
Work through it as a coach, not a form. Ask one block of questions at a time, reflect back what you hear, and push for specifics. The speakers were blunt that the breakthrough depends on honesty.
Inputs to gather
Ask for these up front. Offer the defaults in brackets if the user is unsure.
- Current role and title, and the size of the business or team they sit in [solo, under 10, 10 to 50, 50+].
- Every job or venture they have had, in order, with one line on what they loved about each.
- Whether they have ever been the number one (founder, owner, CEO). If yes, how it went and what they blamed when it did not work.
- Where they expect wealth to come from [founding equity, joining early with equity, building their own agency or practice, salary and savings].
- How they spend a long holiday: restless by week three, or content [unknown is a fine answer; the test comes later].
- Whether they have a trusted group of three or four peers to process this with. If not, note it; the skill still works alone.
- A 15-minute block with no interruptions for Part E.
Steps
Part A. Who do you want to be (5 minutes)
- Ask the user to write one sentence answering: who do I want to be, and how big a life do I want to build?
- Offer Bet-David's three shapes to react against: the person who gets all the pressure (the number one), the number two, or a quiet, low-key life nobody notices. There is no wrong answer. The mistake is not choosing.
- Ask when they last discovered what they were capable of. Tom Ellsworth said crisis is where most people meet themselves. Treat the last hard stretch as data about capacity, not a bad memory.
Part B. Score the seven seats (10 minutes)
The seven seats Tom Ellsworth named, with his own examples:
| Seat | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Entrepreneur | Founding and building from zero |
| Intrapreneur | A CFO, COO, CMO or CIO who creates inside a company still being built, not following a 60-year-old playbook like at General Electric |
| Support team | Marketing manager or operator at an early-stage company; loves that tomorrow is not promised |
| Solopreneur | Realtor building a niche brokerage; parent whose side hustle became a full-time store; loves the freedom it gives the family |
| Influencer | Building and serving an audience with content |
| Sales | Wants to be the best salesperson in the room |
| CEO / founder / inventor | Carries the vision, the selling, and the life savings |
- For each seat, score 1 to 5 on the five dimensions Tom listed: comfortable here, aspire to it, would hone it, could teach it, want to be led this way. The scoring scale is our recommendation; the five dimensions are the speaker's.
- Total each row. Circle the highest. Write down what pressure, teaching load and leadership style come with that seat.
- Run the career-arc lens test. Beside each past job, write what they loved and what they did not know about themselves then. Tom went sales, then operations, then marketing at a startup, then COO, and only later saw his lens had been COO all along. Look for the recurring lens and write it in one line. Check it against the circled seat. If they disagree, the arc is usually more honest than the aspiration.
- Note the gap between today's seat and the circled seat. Tom's rule: knowing the role that suits you means being comfortable driving from where you are, and it may not be where you start.
Part C. Number one or number two (10 minutes)
- Ask Bet-David's question and record the honest answer: would you rather be number one of an $800,000-a-year business, or number three at a company like SpaceX that pays you a $200 million cheque at exit? He claimed about 30 mid-level SpaceX managers received $200 million to $400 million each when the company went public. The position number is irrelevant. The value you sit next to is not.
- List the last three times they tried to be the number one. Did it work? If not, what did they blame? Bet-David's warning: if you keep failing at number one, you may be built for two or three, or for number one of a smaller business.
- Ask Tom's engine-room question: is there a vision I would love to build an engine room for, so the CEO never has to look over their shoulder? Tom founded and sold a company as CEO and called it an absolute grind, then made more money and felt more joy as one of seven founders at a mobile games company and later as Bet-David's number two. His line: "I could be the most valuable number two because I understand the number one."
- Decide the wealth path in writing: founding with equity, joining early with a piece of equity, building an agency or practice, or salary and savings. Name who controls the equity and what event turns it into cash.
- Write the 12-month seat decision: number one of what size, or number two or three to whom.
Part D. Are you a driver, and what does the dream cost (5 minutes)
- Ask the three-week vacation question Tom attributed to a former Sprint CEO: before you promise yourself a house on Maui forever, take a three-week vacation over Christmas and notice how you feel at the end of week three. If they would be stir crazy, they are a driver, and their dream needs to be demanding rather than restful. If they have never taken three weeks off, schedule it as a real test.
- Ask the three mastermind questions Tom credits to Bet-David: Do I know where I want to go? Do I know what it takes to get there? Am I really willing to do it?
- Rate the fire in their heart today from 1 to 10 (speaker's image; the scale is ours). Write what would keep it burning when someone blocks them or steals a deal. Tom's rule: great entrepreneurs never blame a vague "they". They name the competitor and the date.
Part E. The personal identity audit (15 minutes, alone, timer running)
Set a 15-minute timer. Write without polishing. These are the questions heard on stage and repeated at the microphone; ask them in these blocks.
- Opening three. How does the world see you? How do you see yourself? What is the difference?
- Drivers. What conditions produce the best version of you? What tends to bring out the worst in you?
- Mirrors. Who annoys you, and why? What triggers you about other people? What type of people do you like most, and why?
- Pressure. How do you handle pressure in business versus at home? Where do you need control, and why? What is your biggest accomplishment? What fear stops you?
Push on two questions the microphone share-backs showed were most productive:
- On "who annoys you", ask whether the irritation says anything about the user. A company president said the answer had nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with what he thought of himself.
- On pressure, split it into a business column and a personal column. A $30 million manufacturer found he coped at work because he owned the company and the relationships, and struggled at home where he did not. Ask what the user controls in one place and not the other.
Part F. Process it (15 minutes with peers, or 5 alone)
- If they have a group of three or four, have them share what the exercise did for them, not every private answer. Bet-David's instruction was to open up about the effect, not to read out the pages.
- Run the public-self versus private-self check. Write the three words the world uses for them and the three words they use for themselves alone. Mark which list they want to live in. A franchise founder realised his public self ignored small problems and focused on the future, and chose to stay in that skin privately. Write one daily trigger that flips them back, and one line to say when it happens.
Part G. Name the breakthrough
- Ask for one sentence starting "I realised..." that they could say to their group. Bet-David's stated goal was a breakthrough that "nobody back home recognizes when you go home".
- If any block is unfinished, get a commitment to finish it the same night. He asked the room for exactly that.
Output format
Fill in the worksheet at assets/know-yourself-identity-audit-worksheet.md. The short form:
WHO I WANT TO BE: <one sentence>
SEAT SCORES: <seat: total> x7 CIRCLED SEAT: <seat> LENS FROM CAREER ARC: <one line>
GAP: today I sit in <seat>; the fit is <seat>; the difference is <pressure/teaching/leadership>
NUMBER ONE OR TWO: <answer to $800K vs SpaceX> | last three attempts at #1: <...> | engine room for: <vision or none>
WEALTH PATH: <path> | who controls the equity: <...> | liquidity event: <...>
12-MONTH SEAT DECISION: <#1 of what size, or #2/#3 to whom>
DRIVER TEST: <would be stir crazy by week three: yes/no/untested> | FIRE: <1-10> | what keeps it lit: <...>
IDENTITY AUDIT: <answers to the 13 questions, unpolished>
PUBLIC SELF: <3 words> PRIVATE SELF: <3 words> I WILL LIVE IN: <which> FLIP TRIGGER + LINE: <...>
BREAKTHROUGH: I realised <one sentence>
FINISH BY: <tonight's date>Cadence
- Finish the whole audit the same night you start it (speaker-stated).
- Redo the identity audit with the same questions every six months and compare answers (our recommendation, based on a fourth-year attendee who said the audit evolved across four years while his company doubled).
- Re-score the seven seats once a quarter against the last 90 days of energising and draining work (our recommendation).
- Run the three-week vacation test once, over a holiday, before committing to any exit dream (speaker-stated).
Pitfalls the speakers warned about
- Chasing the number one seat out of ego when you would create more value and wealth as a number two or three, then wondering why you keep failing.
- Treating solopreneur or support roles as failures. Tom framed them as legitimate identities you may be built for.
- Planning a retirement you would find unbearable by week three because you are a driver.
- Blaming a vague "they" instead of naming the competitor and the date.
- Starting the audit and not finishing it. Bet-David predicted fewer than 20% would take it seriously.
- Reading out private answers to the group instead of sharing what the exercise did for you.
- Drifting toward working only with people you admire and away from the people you are most qualified to help. A consultant at the microphone said he produced less once he stopped working with underdogs like his former self.
When not to use this
Do not use it as a hiring or performance tool on someone else. It is written in the first person for a reason, and the honesty it depends on disappears when a manager is asking. For team-level role fit, use the seven-seat table as a conversation starter and let each person score themselves privately.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/know-yourself-identity-audit-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Leadership X-ray and the seventeen-answers objection handler
Two procedures that use the user's own transcripts as a mirror. Both come from the nine AI prompts Martell showed on stage from his companies.
Leadership X-ray. Martell's point: "most of you don't know how you communicate to your team." He drew pictures, built plans and role-played, and the AI still found his deficits. Paste a one-on-one or team-meeting transcript and score it against outcome, measure, coach. Speaker-stated result: "you thought you were leading? You were not. You were telling." Output: a short written assessment and one change for the next call.
Seventeen-answers objection handler. Founders are world-class closers who "suck at follow up." One of Martell's team was stuck on an objection in the DMs; the fix was to give it to the AI, generate 17 responses, and pick the one that sounded most like him. Output: every objection in the transcripts, grouped, with a handling approach, and a script for the top one.
Decide which procedure the user needs from what they paste. A meeting with their own team is the X-ray. Anything with a prospect or customer is the objection handler.
Inputs to gather
For the X-ray:
- The transcript of the user's last one-on-one or team meeting, recorded with the other people's consent. Or 30 days of team chat for the monthly version.
- Which speaker is the user. Ask if the labels are unclear.
- The outcome the meeting was meant to produce, in the user's words.
- The role sheet for the person, if one exists (see the
outcome-measure-coachskill). Without it, score against the method's three parts directly.
For the objection handler:
- Three to five transcripts or threads where a prospect pushed back, only ones the user is permitted to analyse.
- The single objection that most often stalls their conversations, in their words.
- What the offer actually is, price, terms and who it is not for, so the responses stay honest.
- Who will use the script. The user, a salesperson, or a DM team. This sets the voice.
Steps: leadership X-ray
1. Mark every leader turn
Go through the user's turns and tag each as one of:
- Outcome. Naming or clarifying what great looks like.
- Measure. Asking for or discussing a self-score, a checklist, evidence.
- Coach. Principle, personal story, or asking "what will you do differently next time?"
- Tell. Giving the next instruction, solving it for them, checking whether a task got done.
- Other. Logistics, small talk.
Count them. Report the split as a table, quoting the two or three most telling turns with a time or line reference so the user can read the moment themselves.
2. Score against the three parts
For each of outcome, measure and coach, give a 1-to-10 with one sentence of evidence from the transcript. Be specific about the moment the user slipped into telling and what the coaching move would have been instead (name the principle; ask for the agreement).
3. Write the next-call plan
One change, not five. Phrase it as something the user will do in the first five minutes of the next meeting, for example: "Open by asking for their self-score on the three parts before you share yours." Add one sentence the user can say word for word.
4. Monthly: X-ray the team chat
Speaker-stated purpose: find where the team is overwhelmed, where communication is breaking down, and what problems are hiding in plain sight. Report patterns by role, not by person, and end with the one question the user should ask the team this week. Tell the user to let the team know the analysis is happening and what it is for.
Steps: seventeen-answers objection handler
1. Extract every objection
Read the transcripts and list each objection as the prospect said it, with a reference. Include the quiet ones ("let me think about it", going silent after a price).
2. Group and diagnose
Cluster the objections. Common families: price, timing, trust, fit, authority (needs to ask someone), status quo. For each group, write one line on what the prospect is actually worried about and the best way to handle it: clarify fit, add proof, reframe cost against outcome, or agree they are not a fit. The aim is honest handling, not pressure.
3. Generate 17 responses to the top objection
Speaker-stated: "have it write 17 examples and then pick the one you like the most." Write 17 numbered responses to the user's hardest objection. Vary them by mechanism, not by wording: question back, proof, reframe, story, cost of inaction, isolate the objection, agree and redirect, offer a smaller step, disqualify. Keep each under 60 words and in the voice of whoever will use it. Do not include claims the user has not confirmed.
4. Pick and script
Ask the user to pick one, or the two they would combine. Turn it into a short script: the response, the follow-up question, and what to do if the objection comes back. Recommended: test it for two weeks and track close rate on that objection before writing the next.
Output format
X-ray:
Leadership X-ray — [meeting, date]
Turns: Outcome _ Measure _ Coach _ Tell _ Other _ (Tell share: __%)
Scores: Outcome _/10 · Measure _/10 · Coach _/10 with one line of evidence each
Telling moments (read these yourself): [ref] "…" [ref] "…"
One change for the next call: __
Say this in the first five minutes: "__"Objection handler:
Objections found (n=__) → Groups: __
Group | What they are really worried about | Best handling
…
Top objection: "__"
17 responses: 1. … 17. (varied by mechanism)
Picked: #__ Script: response → follow-up question → if it returns
Test window: two weeks, close rate on this objection before/afterBoth templates are in assets/xray-and-objection-worksheet.md.
Cadence
- X-ray after every one-on-one or team meeting. Speaker-stated: "Use this next time you do a one-on-one or any team meeting." It is working when the notes stop repeating the same fault.
- Team-chat X-ray monthly. Recommended.
- Objection handler once now, and again whenever a new objection appears. Recommended.
Pitfalls
- Treating the AI score as truth. Read the flagged moments yourself and ask the team member for their view. The score is a prompt for reflection, not a verdict.
- Recording without consent. Tell people they are being recorded and how the transcript will be used. For chat analysis, tell the team.
- Looking for a person to blame in team chat. Report patterns and roles, not gossip.
- Scripts that pressure rather than clarify. Martell's own reason his salesperson outsold him was credibility, not tactics. A response that pushes a bad-fit buyer over the line costs more than the deal.
- Inventing proof. If a response needs a statistic or a client result, leave a placeholder and let the user fill it.
- Skipping the pick. Seventeen answers is a menu. The user must choose the one that sounds like them or the script will not be used.
When not to use: the transcript is of someone else's meeting the user was not leading; the "objections" are legal or compliance questions that need a real answer, not a handling script.
See references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words and evidence timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/xray-and-objection-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Listening-led interview with the RICE sheet
This skill produces a preparation brief with no questions in it, a RICE sheet filled in during the conversation, and an offer or follow-up written to the person's ideology first. Bartlett told The Vault (2026-09-01) he has "never in the history of the show ever written a question down": research is about getting genuinely curious about the person, and "great interviewers, they don't lead, they follow." His most impactful episode came from abandoning his plan within ten seconds when a guest with a speech condition sat down. The same method runs his two-hour hiring interviews, his sales and his negotiations, and he credits it to spies: former CIA officer Andrew Bustamante told him motivation starts with shutting up and letting the person hand you their ideology.
Inputs to gather
- The type of conversation: interview, hiring, sales, negotiation, one-to-one, personal.
- Who the person is, by role, and what the user already knows about them.
- What the user hopes comes out of it (a great episode, a hire, a deal, a decision). Keep this in the brief, not in the conversation.
- Time available. Default: as long as the person needs; Bartlett sits for two hours in hiring interviews.
- Any topic that needs trust before it can be raised (a public setback, a family story, a past failure).
- The user's current list of questions, if one exists. You will convert it.
Steps
1. Research until you are curious, then throw the questions away
Read and watch enough that the user can say three things about the person they genuinely want to understand. Write those as topics, never as questions (our recommendation, to give a nervous user a safety net; Bartlett himself writes nothing). If the user already has a question list, keep it out of the room. Over-preparation shows up as leading.
2. Draw the RICE sheet
Four boxes, in the order former CIA officers rank their power (speaker-stated):
| Box | What you are listening for | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Ideology | What they believe and care about; the chip on their shoulder; who overlooked them; the cause they would work for | 1st, most powerful |
| Ego | How they want to be seen; what they want to be known for; who they want to prove wrong | 2nd. "Even Mother Teresa has an ego" |
| Reward | Money and the things they want | 3rd |
| Coercion | Pressures they are under: deadlines, debt, a boss, a family situation | 4th. Note it to understand them; never use it |
Everyone has three lives: public, private and secret. A spy reaches the secret life by listening for months. You are not doing that; you are listening long enough to hear the ideology.
3. Open with one broad question, then stop talking
One open question, then silence until the person has completely finished. Most people have never had anyone listen to them for ten minutes uninhibited. Do not fill pauses. Do not signal where you want to go.
4. Follow what they lean into
"People will subconsciously take you to where they want to go if you just listen." When they light up, slow down, or repeat themselves, go there, even if it abandons the plan. Bartlett's example: a celebrated broadcaster struggling to speak because of a medical condition; within ten seconds the conversation became about the fear of being a fraud, and that weekend stadiums across the Premier League carried banners saying "you're not a fraud."
5. Earn trust before the sensitive topic
If there is a subject the person is known to avoid, wait. Bartlett went back to a guest's painful childhood 75 minutes in, and prefaced it by sharing his own struggle with a parent before asking "can we talk about this?" Offer something of yourself first, then ask permission.
6. Fill the sheet as you listen
During or immediately after, write what you heard in each box in the person's own words. In hiring, Bartlett spends the two hours on "everything about your life, your ideology, the chip on your shoulder, the person that overlooked you in school", and only then shapes the offer.
7. Tailor the offer: ideology, then ego, then reward
Write the offer, proposal or next step so the first paragraph speaks to what they care about, the second to how they want to be seen, and only then the money or terms. Bartlett: "I can tailor my offer to your ideology." The test that it worked: candidates who accept an offer that was not the highest bid.
8. Debrief
Note what the person revealed that the user would never have asked about, and how long the user went without interrupting. Both numbers should rise across conversations.
Output format
Fill in assets/rice-listening-sheet.md. In short:
Conversation: type / person (role) / date
Curiosity brief (topics, not questions): 1 ___ 2 ___ 3 ___
Opening question (one): ___
Trust-first topic, if any: ___ (what I will share first: ___)
RICE heard: Ideology ___ | Ego ___ | Reward ___ | Coercion (understand only) ___
Where they took the conversation that I did not plan: ___
Offer / next step, in order: ideology → ego → reward
Debrief: longest stretch without interrupting ___ min; what I would never have asked about ___Cadence
- Every interview, sales call or hiring conversation: run the method (our recommendation; Bartlett applies it "to everything in my life").
- After three conversations: compare debrief notes and see whether the listening stretch is growing (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Writing questions "just in case" and then reading them. The list leads; the person follows you instead of the reverse.
- Mentioning money before you have heard the ideology. Reward is third on the list for a reason.
- Using what you hear under Coercion. The method Bustamante teaches is described as "motivate or manipulate"; use it to serve the person's ideology, never to apply pressure. Applying pressure destroys the trust that made them talk.
- Rushing the sensitive topic. Trust is earned in the first hour, not assumed.
- Assuming your talking is the value. Bartlett notes Julian Treasure's TED talk on speaking has about 50 million views and the one on listening about two million; "what does that say about us as humans?"
When not to use this: a structured, legally scripted interview (compliance, safeguarding) where every candidate must be asked identical questions. Use the listening posture, keep the required script.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/rice-listening-sheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Outcome, measure, coach
This skill produces a one-page role sheet (outcome sentence plus a 1-to-10 measurement checklist the person scores themselves against) and a written coaching script for the next time a result misses. Martell learned the method from Naval Ravikant as the alternative to transactional leadership: tell someone what to do, check they did it, tell them the next thing. That loop caps a company at about 12 to 14 employees, because there are only so many people one person can run it with before the day is firefighting and their own work starts at 8 p.m. Worse, managers copy it and the cap replicates down the organisation.
Transformational leadership swaps the loop for three parts. Outcome: what great looks like, so clearly a child gets it. Measure: how to score it, so the person checks their own work. Coach: what happens when it misses, which is a principle and a story, never the next instruction. His company rule: "we train and we don't tell."
Inputs to gather
- The role. One role per pass. Default to the one the user spends the most time correcting.
- The person's name and tenure, for tone. Use the role, not the name, in anything the user will share beyond the two of them.
- What great looks like in the user's words, even if messy. You will compress it.
- The last miss. What happened, what the user wanted instead, and what they said at the time. Needed for the coaching script.
- The principle behind the miss, if the user can name it. If not, you derive it in step 4.
- A personal story from the user about learning that principle the hard way. Ask for it; do not invent one.
Steps
1. Write the outcome sentence
One sentence describing the result the role exists to produce, in words a 13-year-old would picture. Martell's example for a lawn company: "when we do our client's lawn, it's the best lawn in the neighbourhood." Test it: could the user's youngest relative repeat it back and say whether a given job hit it? If it needs a second sentence, it is a task list, not an outcome.
Write two or three candidates and let the user pick.
2. Build the measure
List the five to seven parts that make up a great result. Speaker-stated: "there's seven parts to a great lawn, and here is the checklist." For each part write:
- What a 10 looks like. Observable, not "excellent".
- What a 1 looks like. Observable, not "bad".
- How it is checked. By whom, when, with what evidence.
The scale is 1 to 10 and the person scores themselves first. Martell: "you're going to self-assess. But now you know how to measure your work." The self-score matters more than the boss's score, because it moves the checking off the leader's plate. Recommended: agree the threshold that triggers a coaching conversation (below 7 on any part, or below 8 overall) so nobody is guessing.
3. Set the rhythm
When does the person self-assess: after each job, weekly, or per deliverable? Where does the score go? Who sees it? Recommended default: after each unit of work for delivery roles, weekly for everything else, scores in a shared sheet the leader reads before the one-on-one.
4. Script the three-step coaching conversation
Use it when a score is low or a result misses. Martell's steps, in order, with nothing added:
- Start with the principle they violated. State it as a rule that outlives this incident. Not "the hedges weren't trimmed" but "we finish the whole job before we call it done." Speaker-stated: "This is the principle. You violated it."
- Tell a personal story of how the user learned that principle and why it matters. This is what makes the person relate rather than defend. Speaker-stated: "you use a personal story to demonstrate to that person how you learned that principle and why it is so important. That way they relate to you." If the user has no story, help them find one; it can be a story of watching someone else pay for the same mistake.
- Get an agreement. Ask: "Next time this scenario comes up, what will you do differently?" Wait for a specific, spoken commitment. Martell's example: "I will make sure the hedges are trimmed." Then close it, in his case with a handshake.
Write the script as the user would actually say it, in their voice, under 200 words. Everything else, Martell says, "you're a manager. You're a boss. People don't quit companies, they quit bosses."
5. Record commitments and follow up
Log the agreement with a date. In the next one-on-one, ask about it before anything else. If the same principle comes up twice, the measure is unclear or the outcome is; fix the sheet before coaching again.
Output format
Fill assets/role-sheet-and-coaching-script.md. Short version:
Role: __ Date: __
Outcome (one sentence a 13-year-old gets): "__"
Measure (self-scored 1–10 after each __ )
# Part of a great result 10 looks like 1 looks like Checked by / how
1 __ __ __ __
… (5 to 7 rows)
Coaching threshold: below __ on any part or below __ overall
Coaching script for the last miss
Principle: "__"
Story: "__" (my own, under 90 seconds)
Agreement: "Next time __ comes up, what will you do differently?" → "__"
Follow-up date: __Cadence
- One role per month until every role has a sheet. Recommended; the speaker's exercise says "repeat for one more role each month."
- Weekly practice in one-on-ones: ask for the self-score before commenting. Recommended.
- Every miss gets the three-step conversation, not an instruction. Speaker-stated.
- Quarterly: reread each sheet and retire parts of the measure the team now hits at 10 every time.
Martell warns it feels slow at first. It compounds because the people you coach go on to coach their teams the same way, and the 12-to-14 cap disappears.
Pitfalls
- Adding a fourth step. Telling the person what to do next, after the story, undoes the coaching. The agreement has to be theirs.
- Outcomes that are task lists. If the outcome sentence names the steps, nobody can self-assess the result.
- Scoring for them. If the leader scores first, the checking never leaves the leader's desk.
- Skipping the story. The principle alone is a lecture. The story is what lets the person relate instead of defend.
- Coaches who tell. Martell calls it an epidemic that business coaches with great businesses tell rather than coach their own staff. Run the script on yourself too; the
leadership-xray-objection-handlerskill does that from a transcript. - Using it for a first-day hire. Coach only after the outcome and measure have been taught. A miss against a measure the person never saw is the leader's miss.
When not to use: safety incidents, legal or conduct issues, and anything that needs an immediate instruction. Give the instruction, then come back to the principle later.
See references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words and evidence timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/role-sheet-and-coaching-script.md, references/source-notes.md
The $100 packaging test
This skill produces a tested title and thumbnail (or headline and cover), an opening rewritten to deliver on them, and a record of how far apart the best and worst variants were. Bartlett's point at The Vault (2026-09-01): "in the modern world, you don't have to be guessing for creative decisions." The first time he tested how to package an early episode, the worst variant delivered about 1% and the best about 20%, from the same conversation, the same hours, the same flight for the guest: "the variance in performance because I did a $100 test was 2000%." He ran 400 tests on his book's title and cover before writing a word, and his team runs hundreds of paid variants per episode. Your first question about anything creative should be "how do I test which one will perform the best?"
Inputs to gather
- What is being packaged: video, podcast episode, article, book, product, landing page, ad.
- The core promise in one sentence: what the audience gets if they click. If the user cannot say it, start there.
- The audience the test should reach: existing subscribers, a lookalike of them, or an interest group. Default: lookalike of current audience.
- Budget for the test. Default: $100 (Bartlett's cited figure). Smaller works; the spread is usually large enough to see.
- Time available before publishing. Default: 24 to 48 hours for the test.
- Where the test can run: Meta ads, YouTube, LinkedIn, or an email split to two segments if there is no ad account. Default: Meta ads, because that is what Bartlett's team uses.
- The current draft of the first 60 seconds or first paragraph.
Steps
1. Write the promise, then the variants
Write the promise once, in plain words. Then write ten title or headline variants and three thumbnail or cover variants (our counts; Bartlett runs hundreds, and five to ten is the floor he implies). Mix angles: outcome, curiosity, contrarian, specific number, named person, question. Do not filter by which one you like. Keep the promise honest: the test only works if the content can deliver whatever wins.
2. Run one variable at a time
Test titles against a fixed image first, then images against the winning title. Mixing both in one round hides which change mattered (this is the same hold-all-variables rule Bartlett applies to every experiment).
3. Run the paid test
Set up one ad set per variant with identical audience, placement and budget. Split the $100 evenly. Run 24 to 48 hours. Measure click-through rate. Our recommendation: aim for at least a few hundred impressions per variant before reading results, and treat a gap of 2x or more as real; ignore gaps of 10% to 20% with small samples. With no ad account, send two email subject lines to two random halves of the list and read open rate, or post two community polls; weaker but better than taste.
4. Pick the winner by the number
Choose by click-through rate, not preference. Bartlett calls this being unromantic: after 3,000 readers each received a random chapter of his book with eye tracking and rated it life-changing or cliché, he deleted three of his favourite chapters. "Three of my favorite chapters, I deleted."
5. Rewrite the opening to deliver the promise
Platforms rank on average view duration, so the title and thumbnail are a promise and the first 10 to 30 seconds must start paying it off, certainly within 60 (speaker-stated). "If the episode says, here's how to make a cup of tea and you click it, and it's a cup of coffee, you're gonna bounce." MrBeast's opening restates the packaging in the first sentence with no greeting. Bartlett packages first, then cuts the trailer to match the winning packaging. Do the same: rewrite the trailer, cold open or first paragraph after the test, not before.
6. Restructure if the payoff is buried
If the moment that delivers the promise happens late, move it forward where the story allows. Bartlett moved a sensitive segment from the 75th minute of an interview towards the start because it was "really important context". He does not cut length for its own sake; a 120-minute conversation ships at 100 to 120 minutes, never 60.
7. Log the spread
Record best and worst variant, their click-through rates, and the ratio. Keep a running log across launches. The log is what convinces a team that packaging is worth the hour and the $100 next time.
Output format
Fill in assets/packaging-test-sheet.md. In short:
Promise (one sentence): ___
Round 1, titles (fixed image): variant / impressions / clicks / CTR winner: ___
Round 2, images (winning title): variant / impressions / clicks / CTR winner: ___
Spread: best CTR ÷ worst CTR = ___x
First 60 seconds rewritten to deliver: ___ (what the viewer gets by 0:10 / 0:30 / 0:60)
Segment moved forward, if any: ___Cadence
- Before every major release: run the test (our recommendation; Bartlett's team runs it on every episode).
- Every episode or piece: rewrite the opening to the packaging promise (our recommendation).
- Quarterly: read the spread log and raise the number of variants if the spread is still large (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Choosing the variant you like. The whole method exists to remove your taste from the decision.
- Testing title and thumbnail at the same time. You will not know what won.
- Writing a title the content cannot deliver. It wins the click and loses the viewer within 30 seconds, which platforms punish.
- Treating a "good enough" title as fine. The 20x gap came from the same conversation; the content was never the variable.
- Skipping the test because the budget is small. Bartlett's founding example cost $100.
When not to use this: when the audience is a handful of named people (a pitch to one investor, a memo to your team). Test where there are enough people for a click-through rate to mean something.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/packaging-test-sheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Plus-minus recognition program
This skill produces a one-page recognition rule your team can read and plan toward: the metric, who is eligible, the categories, the prize ladder, and the date of the ceremony. Bet-David opened the last morning of The Vault 2026 by doing exactly this in front of the room. The metric he ranked his consulting team on was "plus minus": how many more people each person brought to the conference this year than last. Winners had to have 18 to 24 months of tenure, the number one flew on the jet with him, and he announced next year's prize on the spot so people have twelve months to organise toward it. The reasoning is simple: incentives announced after the fact reward luck, incentives announced in advance change behaviour.
Inputs to gather
Ask for these before drafting anything. Offer the defaults in brackets.
- The one behaviour you want more of next cycle. Referrals, attendance, new accounts, retained clients, teammates recruited. [Default: whichever outcome funds the business, not an activity proxy.]
- Last cycle's number for each person, so growth can be computed. If none exists, this cycle becomes the baseline and you rank on absolute results once.
- Roster with role and start date for every eligible person. Roles matter for categories (closers, managers, rookies, setters or support).
- Three to five experiences only the leader can give. A seat on a trip, dinner at their home, a private strategy hour, shadowing them for a day.
- The recognition moment. Where, when, in front of whom. [Default: the next all-hands or annual event.]
- Cycle length. [Default: one year for the headline award, with a quarterly shout-out on the same metric.]
Steps
- Define the metric as a change, not a total. Write it as "this cycle minus last cycle" per person. Bet-David ranks on growth because it lets a mid-sized producer beat a big one who plateaued, which keeps everyone reaching. Count the outcome you actually want, not the proxy: his standard is "butts in seats, not tickets sold" (speaker-stated).
- Set the eligibility rule. Bet-David requires 18 to 24 months with the company before someone can win the main award (speaker-stated). The reason: someone with 13 good months should not take the stage from people with sustained results. Write the rule as one line under the award.
- Add categories so the same three stars do not win everything. Bet-David named: top three on plus minus, top manager on plus minus, rookies (first event), top appointment setter, top five overall by volume, and top five attending companies or partners (speaker-stated). Give every role on your roster one fair way to win. Rookies get their own category rather than diluting the main one.
- Build the prize ladder out of access, not cash. Number one flew on the private jet with him; next year's top five earn a private dinner at his home (speaker-stated). List the experiences from the inputs, rank them by scarcity, and attach each to a rung. Cash is easy to compare and forget; proximity to the leader is scarce and gets retold.
- Set the threshold for next year's top prize and announce it now. Bet-David's line was "anybody next year that has a hundred people here, butts in seats" earns the private dinner (speaker-stated). Pick a number that is hard but visibly reachable for your top quartile. Our recommendation: roughly 1.5 to 2 times what this year's winner did.
- Publish the rule before the period starts. One page, shared with the whole team, dated. People cannot plan toward an unwritten rule.
- Run the ceremony. Rank at the end of the cycle, announce the top three by name in front of peers, tell the story of what each did. Read the numbers out loud. Let the audience see you outscored if it happens; Bet-David congratulated an executive who beat his own leadership-assessment score and said he had work to do (speaker-stated).
- Push recognition one layer down. He told the recognised leaders to recognise their own people using the same data (speaker-stated). Ask each winner who manages people to run the same ceremony for their team within a week.
- Recognise quiet discipline as well as numbers. The first person he recognised was a general-ticket attendee who queued at 6:30 every morning unasked. Once a week, name one person publicly for consistency nobody measured (our recommendation).
Output format
Fill in assets/plus-minus-recognition-program-worksheet.md. The short form:
RECOGNITION RULE — <team> — <cycle dates>
Metric: <outcome> this cycle minus last cycle, per person
Counts: <what counts, what does not>
Eligible: <tenure rule>; rookies compete in their own category
Categories: <one metric per role>
Prize ladder: #1 <access prize> · #2 <…> · #3 <…>
Next cycle's top prize: <threshold> earns <experience>, announced <date>
Ceremony: <date, place, audience>
Pass-down: winners who manage people run the same ceremony by <date>Cadence
- Publish the rule once, before the cycle begins (our recommendation: this month).
- Headline ceremony once a year at your annual event, and announce next year's prize in the same breath (speaker-stated pattern).
- Quarterly shout-out on the same metric so nobody forgets what earns the stage (our recommendation).
- Weekly public thank-you for one act of quiet discipline (our recommendation).
- Winners recognise their own people within one week of each award (speaker-stated).
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Rewarding tickets sold or activity instead of people in seats. Measure the outcome you want.
- Letting a short hot streak win an award meant for sustained performance. That is what the tenure rule is for.
- Recognising only the top closers and forgetting managers, rookies and support roles.
- Under-pricing what you want people to take seriously. His show-up rates fell from about 95 percent for the highest-priced tickets to about 71 percent for general admission; commitment predicts attendance.
- Discounting a premium offer for loyal customers, which trains everyone to wait for a deal.
When not to use this: for teams smaller than about five people, a public ranking humiliates more than it motivates; recognise individually instead. Do not rank on a metric people cannot influence.
See references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words and numbers.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/plus-minus-recognition-program-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Power vs. Force level check
This skill produces a three-column self-score (business, money, closest relationship) on the map of consciousness from David R. Hawkins's Power vs. Force, a named next rung for each, one action that expresses it, and a short team-training routine. Patrick Bet-David taught the chart in a twelve-minute block on Day One. His argument: people who go from $88,000 to $400,000 and back to $72,000, or who would lose $10 million if handed it, are not short of opportunity; "it's their identity". People at the bottom of the chart "try to force things to happen", people at the top "have power and they attract it". The first level where you gain power is courage, so courage is the first target for every person you lead. He uses the chart with his children, salespeople, and executives, and told the room to put it on the wall and train it "all the time".
The chart is a book framework, not a validated psychological instrument. Use it as a vocabulary for where someone is right now and what one rung up looks like, never as a ranking of a person's worth.
The ladder, as taught on stage
Top to bottom. The line between courage and pride separates power (above) from force (below).
| Level | What it feels like | Bet-David's gloss |
|---|---|---|
| Enlightenment, peace, joy, love | Named, not dwelt on. The practical business range is courage through reason. | |
| Reason | Fairness | "People say this guy is fair ... I don't like the decision he made, but he is fair." Retention rises when staff say this. |
| Acceptance | Letting others be different | "I'm willing to accept that Tom is different than me." |
| Willingness | Movable, renegotiable | "I'm willing to work with you, I'm willing to listen to you." Partners who make it work "have to be in this calibration area." |
| Neutrality | Hearing both sides | "Somebody that's willing to listen to both sides and then make the decision what's best." You do not care whether the good idea was yours. |
| Courage | The first level of freedom and power | The courage to take the risk, make the investment, hire the executive you are not comfortable paying yet, speak in front of an audience. |
| Pride | Ego | Better than anger because "of pride you will do something", but it will not let you be proven wrong. |
| Anger | Hate | Better than everything below it: "at least you're expressing how you feel." |
| Desire | Craving | The negative kind, not the healthy ambition he usually means. |
| Fear | Anxiety | Where the salesperson afraid of rejection sits. |
| Grief | Regret | "I should have never done that." |
| Apathy | Despair | |
| Guilt | Blame | "Blaming yourself." |
| Shame | Humiliation | "The lowest level of consciousness any one of us can have." |
Not stated on stage but from the book: courage calibrates at 200 and is the threshold between force and power.
Inputs to gather
- What the user wants scored: themselves, one decision, or a team member. Default to themselves across three areas: business, money, closest relationship.
- The biggest open decision in each area right now, in one line.
- The highest point they have reached in each area (income, deal size, trust) and roughly when they slipped back, if they did.
- For team training: who is on the team by role, and which person is currently stuck on something.
Steps
Self-score
- Lay out the ladder top to bottom and draw the line between courage and pride. Above is power, below is force.
- For each of the three areas, ask the user to name the level that is actually driving their current position on the open decision. Push past the flattering answer. If they are sitting on a hire because of what it costs, that is fear, not prudence. If they are defending an idea they have not tested, that is pride.
- Mark the highest level they have reached in each area and write one sentence on when and why they slipped back. This is Bet-David's "you're going to get scored ... you're going to say, I crossed one at that place."
- Circle one rung up for each area. Do not skip rungs. Someone at fear aims at desire or anger, not reason. Someone below courage aims at courage; that is the first target for everyone.
- Write one action that expresses the next rung this week, with a date. Use his examples as the bar: the investment, the hire, the hard conversation, the stage.
Decision check (use before committing people or money)
- If the level driving a decision is pride, run the neutrality meeting. Bet-David had sold his executives on an idea he loved for three months and was about to assign an engineering team. Two hours of questions with an executive who had a contrary study ended with "You are right. This is a bad idea." Ask two or three people to prepare the strongest case against the idea. The user's only job in the room is to ask questions, not defend. Afterwards they write one paragraph: what I now believe and what changed.
- If the decision is about a partnership split, run the willingness check. Ask the partner whether the current split of work and reward feels fair. Listen without interrupting. His example: hearing that he contributes less than before and offering to sell 20 percent of a 50 percent stake so the partner goes to 30 percent, "cuz this relationship matters to me and I want us to grow together." If the partner says the split is off, propose one concrete adjustment within a week.
- If the friction is a colleague who operates differently, run the acceptance inventory: list the three differences that irritate the user and, for each, what that difference makes possible that their own style does not.
Team training
- Print the ladder large and put it where the team meets. Speaker-stated.
- Walk the team through it once, level by level, using the leader's own examples of where they have been. Thirty minutes.
- In every one-on-one where someone is stuck, ask them to point to their level. For a salesperson afraid of calls, expect fear. Bet-David's script: "look where you are. You're in the fourth level. You're afraid." Then point to courage and ask what one call made with courage looks like. Have them make it. Debrief only on the level they operated from, not the outcome.
- Once a quarter, ask five direct reports, anonymously if needed: would you call me fair, and when was I not? Fairness is the visible sign of reason, and Bet-David said retention goes up the moment staff describe you that way. Change one decision habit based on the pattern in the answers.
Output format
Fill in assets/level-check-worksheet.md. In short:
| Area | Level driving it now | Highest reached / when I slipped | Next rung | This week's action | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business | |||||
| Money | |||||
| Closest relationship |
Plus, when used: the neutrality-meeting paragraph, the partnership adjustment, the acceptance inventory, and the team-training log.
Cadence
- Self-score: every Monday for the three areas (our recommendation). Speaker-stated only that everyone in the room would be scored that day.
- Courage action: one avoided decision per week (our recommendation).
- Neutrality meeting: before every major commitment of people or budget (speaker-stated by example; the "every" is ours).
- Partnership willingness check: every six months (our recommendation).
- Fairness survey: quarterly (our recommendation).
- Team training: speaker said "all the time"; we suggest a monthly refresher plus five minutes in every one-on-one.
- Read the book: once. Bet-David's instruction is that the first three chapters are slow and you must reach chapter four; the chart is on page 74 of his edition.
Pitfalls
- Using the chart to rank people. It is a vocabulary for now and next, not a verdict.
- Mistaking pride for strength. Pride gets you moving and then stops you hearing the case against your idea.
- Confusing "desire" on this chart (craving) with the healthy ambition Bet-David usually praises. He said on stage they are different.
- Aiming a scared person at reason. The first target is courage, always.
- Committing engineers or budget before the two-hour meeting.
- Refusing to renegotiate a partnership when your contribution has changed, and losing the partner over the number.
- Do not use this as a mental-health screen. Someone describing sustained shame, guilt, or despair may need a professional, not a chart.
Read references/source-notes.md for the speaker's words and evidence timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/level-check-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Pressure rehearsal: build your own Doghouse
This skill produces a weekly rehearsal plan for one high-stakes performance, an audience ladder that grows step by step, a one-card game plan with a single "will not do" line, and a debrief log that tracks one thing: did you notice the audience or only the task.
Asked how he stayed calm in front of 15,000 people, Floyd Mayweather said it was built in the gym. He created a daily open session he called the Doghouse, where "everyday we let people from all around the world come watch me train. So sometimes there's 200 people in the boxing gym watching me train. So once you train around 2 or 300 people every day for 30 years, you used to it." In the ring he does not see the crowd: "All I see is the referee, just the guy in front of me." The second half of his method is emotional control: "You can't lose control of your emotion. You have to stay calm, relax, and focused at all times cuz anything can happen. You can't go in there trying to kill a guy. You got to go in there with a game plan." And the order of training matters: his five-year-old grandson only wants to spar, and Mayweather tells him every day "you have to learn the techniques" first.
Inputs to gather
- The performance that scares the user, in one line: a pitch, a keynote, a negotiation, cold calls, a live demo, a hearing, a match.
- The date of the real event, if there is one [default: assume eight weeks out and plan eight rehearsals].
- Current comfort level: the largest audience they have performed this in front of without noticing the room.
- Who is available as an audience: colleagues, a partner, a meet-up, a coach, a recorded livestream, a tougher sparring partner.
- The way the user usually breaks under pressure: freeze, ramble, rush, apologise, argue, go off-plan [default: ask them to name one].
- The fundamentals of this performance, as the user sees them: the opening line, the three points, the ask, the pause after a question.
Steps
Build the plan (30 minutes)
- Split the performance into technique and sparring. Technique is the repeatable parts done slowly with no audience: the opening, the transitions, the close, the answer to the hardest objection. Sparring is a full run in front of people. Mayweather's rule for his grandson is technique first, every day, before sparring. Do not let the user skip to full runs.
- Write the audience ladder. Start one step above the largest audience where the user did not notice the room, and add one observer or one degree of difficulty per week: one colleague, then three, then a stranger, then a hostile questioner, then a recording, then a room. Mayweather's ladder was 200 to 300 spectators daily; the user's starts wherever it starts.
- Write the one-card game plan: what the user will do, in five lines or fewer. This is his "go in there with a game plan".
- Add the one "will not do" line: the thing the user does when provoked, and the commitment not to do it. Mayweather's version: never go in trying to destroy anyone, because losing control of your emotion loses the fight. Pick the user's own failure mode from the inputs.
- Add the crowd line. Mayweather's thought while Conor McGregor did the talking: "This whole arena could be filled with Conor McGregor fans, but they can't fight for you." Write one sentence the user can say to themselves about who actually decides the outcome in their arena. Usually it is one buyer, one panel, one counterparty, not the room.
Weekly rehearsal (30 to 60 minutes)
- Ten minutes of technique, alone: run the opening, the hardest objection, and the close, slowly.
- One full sparring run at this week's rung on the audience ladder. Real time, no restarts. If it is a negotiation or sales call, the audience plays the counterparty and is told to press the user's failure mode.
- Immediately after, the user answers one question only: did I notice the audience, or only the task? Write the answer down. Do not grade content, delivery, or outcome yet. Mayweather's debrief bar is whether the room disappeared.
- Then, and only then, check the card: did I stay on the game plan, and did I do the "will not do"? Yes or no.
- Move up one rung next week. If the answer to step 8 was "the audience", stay on the same rung one more week and add nothing else.
Before the real event
- Re-read the card and the crowd line. Nothing new goes on the card in the last 48 hours.
- Afterwards, grade yourself only on the plan and the "will not do", not on the result. Mayweather said talking does not win fights and the crowd cannot fight for you; the only thing under the user's control was the plan.
Output format
Fill in assets/doghouse-worksheet.md. In short:
- Performance and event date.
- Fundamentals list (technique drills).
- Audience ladder, week by week.
- One-card game plan (five lines), the "will not do" line, the crowd line.
- Weekly log: rung, noticed the room? (audience / task), stayed on plan? (Y/N), did the "will not do"? (Y/N).
Cadence
- Technique: daily, ten minutes (speaker-stated by example: his grandson trains two hours a day after school; the ten minutes is ours).
- Sparring in front of people: weekly, growing the audience each week (our recommendation; Mayweather's was daily for 30 years).
- Card and "will not do" line: before every negotiation or high-stakes meeting (our recommendation, built on his "game plan" and emotional-control rule).
- Stop adding rungs when the answer to "did I notice the room" is "only the task" three weeks running, then keep a maintenance rep every two weeks.
Pitfalls
- Sparring before technique. The grandson wants to box everyone in the gym; the coach says techniques first, every day.
- Rehearsing alone and calling it pressure training. The whole point of the Doghouse is people watching.
- Jumping several rungs at once because one week went well. One observer or one degree of difficulty per week.
- Grading on outcome. A rehearsal where the user stayed calm and on plan but lost the mock negotiation is a success; the opposite is a failure.
- Trying to out-talk the other side. Mayweather let McGregor do the promotion and won the fight.
- Entering a real arena unprepared. He called boxing the one sport you cannot "play"; one shot can end a career. Do not book the keynote before the ladder is climbed.
- This is a performance protocol, not treatment for anxiety. Someone with panic symptoms should see a professional as well.
Read references/source-notes.md for the speaker's words and evidence timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/doghouse-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Protect your superpower
This skill produces a compass statement your leadership team has heard, a support demand phrased as a company need, a named shadow with a promotion path, and a 30-60-90 delegation plan for each handoff. Tom Ellsworth, president of Bet-David Consulting and a former MBA professor, argued that the CEO is the point of focus who drives value with a superpower, usually sales or product, and that everything else has to be run by a supporting cast within clear limits of authority. When the superpower gets pinched by internal demands, the first casualty is external time: industry contacts, big agreements, training delivered from the front. His fix is not longer hours ("that's a path to burnout") but a repeatable structure: say where your time goes and why, make the demand in the company's name, build one successor at a time, and let go at the pace they prove they know it.
Inputs to gather
- The user's superpower. Product, sales and business development, or something else that is genuinely their core. [Default: ask what they were doing when the company grew fastest.]
- Their title and the share of time they want on the superpower. Ellsworth's reference point: at PHP the founder spent about 60 percent with the sales field and 10 percent on the future (speaker-stated).
- Where the time actually goes now. A rough two-week split across superpower, future planning, supporting functions (finance, HR, marketing, admin) and firefighting.
- The leaders whose departments must run without them for the compass to hold, by role.
- Their most capable individual contributor in the department they most need to get out of.
- The next week they will be away with the phone off.
- Any pending promotion request, and whether the requester has someone who can do half their job.
Steps
Part 1: compass, why, demand
- Declare your compass. Write two sentences in Ellsworth's shape: "I am going to be CEO, but a large part of me is going to be chief revenue officer" (or chief product officer, or chief business development officer), "and I will spend roughly X percent of my time there." His example was a highway-construction executive whose compass was to be the chief business development officer of her own company (speaker-stated).
- Declare the why. One line: if the company grows, raises, bonuses and promotions follow; if it does not, "raises are smaller, bonuses are smaller, promotions are rare." Say it out loud. "You have to remind people there's not a money tree and a printing press in the backyard." This is what makes the team want you out of the building.
- Demand support in the third person. Draft the ask first in the first person ("I need you to step up") and notice how it lands as a personal favour. Rewrite it with the company as the subject: "[Role], the company needs you in the role of [title] to deliver [outcome], because the company can't grow as effectively if we don't clear the decks for [leader]." Ellsworth: "When you talk about the company, I'm suddenly not making it about you and me." Use the personal voice only for encouragement afterwards.
- Check for the pinch. The five symptoms are stretch, overlap, growing pains, inexperience and distraction (speaker-stated). If the two-week log shows the superpower and future-planning shares well below the compass, list the external conversations that did not happen because you were inside. That list is the cost.
- Protect the future slot. Put a standing item in the weekly leadership meeting where the leader shares what they are thinking about and asks "what do we all think?" (speaker-stated). Keep a running list of relationships you should have but do not, such as a second bank before you need one or the president of a distributor you spend two million a year with. Book one a month. Ellsworth, quoting Roger Penske: luck is what unprepared people call preparation.
Part 2: shadow to team lead
- Pick the most capable individual contributor and set the vision. "You are going to shadow me. I want you right next to me on every phone call with the major accounts, and when we get off I want you to ask me why, why, why." Then the deal: "If you'll shadow with me, I will make you a team lead as a first step to management" (speaker-stated).
- Run the vacation test. Before your next week away: "I'm going to be on a one week vacation, I'm not going to touch my cell phone, but you need to be delivering things for me while I'm gone." They deliver the reports and keep things moving. If it goes well, they passed (speaker-stated).
- Promote to team lead and split the work. They take one or two reps and all the easiest, lowest-maintenance clients or opportunities. You keep the senior rep and go have the larger conversations with the bigger relationships. "Team lead" is a deliberate half-step to management. It works the same in any department.
- Apply the half-your-job promotion rule everywhere. "I can't promote you to director of marketing unless you can show me that a marketing associate is ready to do at least half your job." When someone asks for a promotion on tenure, make the deal: have one person shadow you certain days of the week, show them the next level, then prove the team runs while you are away for a week. Come back and talk about director (speaker-stated). It replaces "I've been here two years" with a budget-neutral test and forces every leader to develop people.
- Restructure rather than extend the day. Ellsworth's picture: a sales leader with four reps becomes a VP of sales with a trusted manager running the original two reps plus a new hire, and two new senior reps as direct reports. Roughly the same number of direct reports; nearly double the team. The alternative, seven to seven or seven to nine, "is a path to burnout for your team, for you."
Part 3: 30-60-90 check-ins
- For each handoff, write three rows: method, measurement, feedback. Ellsworth's stages, as captured (speaker-stated):
- 30 days. Method: shadow and watch regularly, not micromanaging. Measurement: "repeat that back to me." Feedback: ongoing dialogue with quick "show me" checks.
- 60 days. Method: shadow and observe occasionally, for example sit together 8 to 10 then they run alone. Measurement: demonstrated results, "show me the reports." Feedback: live, a 10-minute visit in their office or yours.
- 90 days. Method: semi-independence. Measurement: results only, "show me the report." Feedback: if the report is off, dive back in and manage; if it is on, calibrate on getting better. The recording cut off in this sentence, so treat the 90-day row as partially captured.
- 120 days. Not captured. Our recommendation: full ownership with a periodic results review, and you leave the rhythm only when a report goes off.
- Advance a stage on evidence, not on the calendar. "You want them to feel a progression of you letting go, but you don't want to let go until you feel the progression that they know." If a stage is not met, hold it.
Output format
Fill in assets/protect-your-superpower-worksheet.md. Short form:
COMPASS: I am <title>, but a large part of me is chief <superpower> officer; ~<X>% of my time.
WHY: If the company grows, raises/bonuses/promotions follow. If not, they shrink.
DEMAND (third person): <Role>, the company needs you as <title> to deliver <outcome>, because <…>.
PINCH LOG (2 wks): superpower __% · future __% · support functions __% · firefighting __%
Missed external conversations: <…>
SHADOW: <role> shadows on every major call from <date>; vacation test week of <date>;
if passed: team lead over <n> reps + lowest-maintenance accounts
HALF-YOUR-JOB: <requester> must show <successor> can do half the job before <next title>
30-60-90 for <handoff>: method / measurement / feedback per stage; advance on evidenceCadence
- Compass and why: write once, read at the next leadership meeting, repeat whenever a new leader joins (our recommendation).
- Weekly future-planning slot in the leadership meeting (speaker-stated).
- One new external relationship conversation a month (our recommendation).
- Shadow program: start one this month; about a quarter start to finish; then the next department.
- Vacation test: your next week off (speaker-stated).
- Succession map review, who can do half of each head's job: every quarter (our recommendation).
- Handoff check-ins at 30, 60, 90 and 120 days; repeat-back and quick "show me" at least weekly in the first 30 (speaker-stated).
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Answering growth with longer hours instead of restructuring. Burnout for you and the team.
- Asking for support in the first person, which turns a company need into a personal favour.
- Promoting on tenure rather than on whether a successor exists.
- Letting go on the calendar rather than on demonstrated readiness, or micromanaging so nobody ever gets to demonstrate it.
- Letting the superpower get pinched until external relationship-building disappears entirely.
- Carrying a person too long because you are a salesperson at heart. A small company cannot carry people the way a giant can; someone has to say "you've tried long enough."
- Imitating another founder's style instead of leading from your own personality.
When not to use this: when the "superpower" is a task the leader enjoys rather than the function that drives the company's value; test it against what actually grew revenue. Do not start a shadow program with someone you would not promote; the deal has to be real.
See references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words and the note on what the recording did not capture.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/protect-your-superpower-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Quarterly calibration
This skill produces a calibration rubric for the user's company, a scored sheet for every employee each quarter, a manager-spread diagnosis, and the bonus and raise decisions that follow from the bands. Bet-David built it after running a commission sales force on personality for seven and a half years and realising "not one person's making over $100,000 a year". Once he paid salaries, benefits and equity and supplied most of the leads, the market stopped holding people accountable, so he had to build the mechanism himself. Two years in at his own companies, Tom Ellsworth reports it exposed which managers to bet on and which to move out, and about 5% of staff who disliked being measured left. In the earlier team-building session Bet-David put a number on it: without calibration you get about a 6 out of 10 from people, with it about 7.5, which on a $2 million payroll is roughly $300,000 a year recovered.
Inputs to gather
- Headcount and structure: how many employees, how many managers, who reports to whom. Bet-David's trigger is 25 or more employees; below that, run a lighter version.
- Compensation basics: base and target bonus percentage per role, or a typical example. Needed for the multiplier maths.
- Whether any review or KPI system exists today, and how bonuses are currently decided. Listen for "gut feel".
- The quarter being scored and its close date.
- For a live scoring round: the self-scores and manager scores per person (five numbers each), or the willingness to collect them.
Steps
1. Write the EALIR rubric (once, before the first round)
The five categories, each scored 0-10 for a total out of 50. Bet-David defines each by about four observable criteria. Start from his list and have the user rewrite each criterion in their own business's terms, then write what a 3, a 7 and a 10 look like for each category (the 3/7/10 anchors are our recommendation).
| Category | Speaker's criteria |
|---|---|
| Effort | Urgency; quality control ("QC everything"); personal development; raising standards |
| Attitude | Perseverance; buy-in; coachable to the culture; personal character |
| Leadership | Teamwork; developing others; confronting respectfully (using the five aspects); accountability |
| Innovation | Creative and critical thinking; improvement; implementation |
| Results | Being in the "one club" (you only have to ask once); hitting KPIs; beating your prior best |
Every score needs a specific example. "We only have to ask you one time it gets done" is his clearest promotable marker; count how many times a person has to be asked and you have a results metric.
2. Fix the bands and their consequences (speaker-stated, non-negotiable)
| Total /50 | Band | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 5-10 | Does not meet expectations | "You're fired. It's very black and white." (Scores under 5 are not addressed on stage; treat them the same.) |
| 11-24 | Needs improvement | One quarter to clean up, with a written plan. Still here next quarter: asked to leave. Ends the year in this band: no bonus, no raise. "If you don't give me a raise, I'm leaving. We totally understand." |
| 25-39 | Meets expectations | "You're doing a good job, we're happy with you." Target bonus. (The 25-39 range is inferred from the stated neighbours.) |
| 40-47 | Exceeds expectations | Bonus multiplier |
| 48-50 | Outstanding | Larger multiplier |
Write these into the company's published policy before the first round. Bet-David's view is that certainty at the bottom is what makes the top feel fair. Do not negotiate the bottom two bands case by case.
3. Run the three-view sequence each quarter (speaker-stated)
- Self-score. Every employee scores themselves 0-10 on each category with an example per score, within a week of quarter close. Do this first and do not skip it: the gap between self-view and company view is the agenda for the review.
- Manager score. Each manager scores their direct reports independently on the same rubric. For the first round, give managers no coaching beyond "calibrate your team and come to us". Bet-David does this deliberately: "we want to see exactly what you're going to be doing."
- Committee. Managers present their scores to the leadership group. Leave "meets" alone unless someone challenges it. Debate every "exceeds" (push up to outstanding or down to meets) and every "does not meet" or "needs improvement" by asking "why did you give this person that score?" Watch how logical versus emotional each manager's reasoning is. Agree the final number. His example: self 47, manager 39, committee lands at 41.
- Delivery. The manager gives the final score and reasoning to the employee, opening with the self-score. "You just scored yourself a 47. Tell me why you think you were a 47 last quarter?" Then go to the numbers. "At best, I have you at 31, but I really want to understand why you have yourself at 47." Agree what a higher band looks like next quarter in observable terms. Close with the line from the accountability guidelines: "I believe if you improve in this area, you could have a major future here." The manager owns the message; never "the executive team made me lower it".
4. Diagnose each manager from their rating spread (speaker-stated types)
Before the committee meets, tabulate each manager's percentage of reports in each band, plus the manager's own self-score.
| Type | Spread | What it means | Ellsworth's two-year finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| People-pleaser | ~50% outstanding, 30% exceeds, 20% meets, nobody below | "Afraid of conflict." Not realistic; "the greatest organizations in the world have never had this." | Teams slow on deadlines |
| Elitist | Rates self exceeds or outstanding, rates everyone else low | "I'm an outstanding. My people suck." Future stars conclude the company cannot see it and leave. | Hits deadlines, highest turnover of good people |
| Steward | ~10% does not meet, 20% needs improvement, 50% meets, 15% exceeds, 5% outstanding | "Fully calibrated, fair, solid." This shape is the company target. | Hits deadlines; the person you call in a crisis; promote to director |
Flag any manager with zero reports below meets, and any whose self-score sits far above their team average. Bring flagged spreads into the committee and have the manager walk through their reasoning person by person. For elitist-shaped teams, schedule skip-level conversations: talk directly to two or three of their reports about what they are working on, what is in their way, and how they find out how they are doing. "Their first calibration they get exposed."
5. Decide where the leak is
After the committee, look at where low scores cluster. "Is the leak the employee or is the leak the middle management? If it's middle management, let's invest into these guys and help them become better managers, or if it's the employee, let's coach them." Ellsworth is blunt that moving weak managers out and strong ones in is leadership's job, not HR's.
6. Compute bonus and raise outcomes (year end, from the year's bands)
Bet-David's worked example: $100,000 base, 20% target bonus, so meets pays $20,000. Outstanding "may be 150% of 20%", so $30,000. Our suggested table, with his two anchor points:
| Year-end band | Bonus | Raise |
|---|---|---|
| Does not meet | Exited before year end | none |
| Needs improvement | 0% of target | none |
| Meets | 100% of target | standard |
| Exceeds | 125% of target (our recommendation between his anchors) | above standard |
| Outstanding | 150% of target (speaker) | top of band |
Show the user the dollar difference for a real role. In the team-building session he framed it as the gap between a $20,000 and a $40,000 bonus: "I'm getting to work, buddy."
7. Publish the ladder
Attach the bands to a public role ladder so nobody guesses what the next level requires or pays. Bet-David's reference is Apple's seven engineering tiers with published pay bands: "this eliminates conflict." Write levels, what each must reliably do, and the pay band, and point to it whenever a raise is discussed.
Output format
Fill in assets/calibration-scoresheet.md. The short form:
Quarter: Qn YYYY Rubric version: ...
Per employee
| Role | Manager | Self E/A/L/I/R = total | Manager E/A/L/I/R = total | Committee final | Band | Gap (self - final) | Next-quarter target |
Manager spread
| Manager | Self-score | % DNM / NI / Meets / Exceeds / Outstanding | Type | Action (coach / skip-level / promote) |
Leak diagnosis: employee or manager, per cluster
Year-end money: base × target % × multiplier per personCadence
- Rubric: write once, review annually (our recommendation).
- Full three-view calibration: every quarter (speaker: "once a quarter managers come, we go through all of your employees").
- Needs-improvement plans: one quarter, then decide (speaker).
- Skip-level check: one team per month, prioritising skewed spreads (our recommendation).
- Bonus and raise decisions: year end, from the year's bands (speaker).
- Expect about 5% attrition in the first year from people who dislike being measured (speaker's experience). Treat it as the system working.
Pitfalls
- Paying bonuses on feel. One owner described his method as a quarterback who "just gets a feeling and throws the ball"; Bet-David: "imagine how many of us pay bonuses because we like that guy."
- Annual reviews. Ellsworth cites an HR survey: they measure "the last sixty days and whether the person is generally a nice person", and employees learn to sandbag Q1 after the bonus lands.
- Skipping the self-score. A hidden 15-point gap means the employee thinks you are happy and you think they know you are not. "Now you have a conflict."
- Coaching managers on how to calibrate before the first round. It hides the bias you most need to see.
- Negotiating the bottom bands when someone threatens to leave.
- A manager blaming the committee for a lowered score. It destroys confidentiality and, in one case, ended in a cease-and-desist.
- Assuming resistance means the system is wrong. Hires from large companies expect calibration; hires from small ones have never seen it and need to be walked through the first cycle.
- Running this on running mates or advisers. Use the running-mate matrix for the people who share your pressure; calibration is for the payroll.
Related skill: quarterly-calibration-calendar (from the Performance AI session) lays out the same review as a week-by-week operating calendar. Use this skill to design the rubric, bands, manager diagnosis and money; use that one to run the three weeks.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/calibration-scoresheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Quarterly calibration calendar
This skill produces a dated three-week review calendar for the coming quarter, a scoring sheet every employee and manager fills the same way, a calibrated band for each person, and a one-line rule tying four quarterly scores to one annual raise decision. Tom Ellsworth's reason for building it is a reversal he sees managers make constantly: the upbeat, outgoing report gets rated above the quieter peer who "actually delivers on time" and is "more buttoned up on budget." "This person should be an A minus and this person should be a B plus. But you get it backwards" (18:37:11). Paul Williams relayed the brief Patrick Bet-David gave him: "if we don't have a system, it is literally just a popularity contest ... Give me something that measures everybody by the same yard stick" (19:10:19).
Run this with the user before quarter close. If they are mid-quarter with no goals set, start at step 0.
Inputs to gather
- Quarter close date. Default: last day of the current calendar quarter.
- Headcount, and how many people each manager has. Williams' thresholds: around 15 employees you start meeting people you do not know; around 50 you ask "who's that?"; at 100 the question becomes who got raises (19:16:44).
- Whether company goals exist and have been cascaded to individuals. If not, that comes first.
- Who sits on the calibration committee. Valuetainment uses the leadership team: in Ellsworth's words, "Paul and his team, myself and Pat" (18:40:36). Default: CEO plus every manager's manager.
- The tool: spreadsheet, form, or software. The process works in any of them; the safeguard in step 6 matters more than the tool.
- Whether managers will see the self-score before scoring (step 3).
Steps
0. Confirm goals exist top-down
Ellsworth: "The company needs clear goals that are set, and so you set those, you take the time to make sure that they're top down, and now you've got everything set, but it's delivering it to the people" (18:39:54). The self-assessment asks people to rate themselves against expectations; if the expectations were never delivered, the review produces arguments instead of improvement. If goals are missing, write company goals, cascade them to teams and individuals, and run the first review a quarter later.
1. Put three dates on the calendar the day the quarter closes
Ellsworth's timeline: "Following the close of a quarter, we have self evaluations for a week. We then have managers who are given about a week, and then by the end of three weeks, it's done" (18:41:05). The constraint is deliberate: "This can't be a distraction. It's got to be an enabling process that's efficient, that fits in the calendar, but quickly gives you exactly what you need" (18:41:16).
| Milestone | Due | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Self-assessments complete | Quarter close + 7 days | Every employee |
| Manager assessments complete | Quarter close + 14 days | Every manager |
| Calibration done and results delivered | Quarter close + 21 days | Committee, then managers |
If the cycle runs long, cut steps rather than extend the deadline (our recommendation, from the "can't be a distraction" rule).
2. Week one: self-assessment with evidence
Employees "rate themselves in one to 10 on five areas" (18:40:23). The five categories Williams showed are effort, attitude, leadership, innovation and results, giving a total out of 50 (19:12:20). Every score needs an example. Williams described the prompt that made it work: "It says, hey, you give me a score, you didn't give me a specific example" (19:14:07). A score without an example is sent back.
Make it easy to complete. Most Valuetainment staff did their last round on a phone and Williams "did 42 of my calibrations in car play mode while I was driving" (19:12:01). The less bureaucratic it feels, the more honest the input. Allow voice notes or a short conversation instead of a form if the tool permits.
3. Week two: manager assessment, independently
Managers score the same five categories on the same scale, with the same evidence rule. Decide one policy for whether the manager sees the self-score first and apply it to everyone. Williams: "We have the ability to show this to the manager before they do the manager calibration or we can keep it away. In this instance, we kept it away" (19:13:10). In that demo the employee scored 45, the manager scored 37 without seeing it, and the committee moved the final number up. Hidden gives an independent read; visible speeds the conversation. Default to hidden (our recommendation).
4. Week three: committee calibration and band
The committee reconciles the two scores per person. Ellsworth: "What did your team think, Paul? What did you think, and what do we think together? And let's process this through" (18:40:44). Record a final score out of 50 and assign one of five bands.
| Band | Definition, speaker-stated |
|---|---|
| Does not meet expectations | Improvement required before any pay conversation |
| Needs improvement | Same |
| Meets expectations | "Doing the job excellently that you were hired to do on time within budget in the framework and KPIs you were given" (18:43:32) |
| Exceeds expectations | Over and above what was asked, like a salesperson at level one over quota |
| Outstanding | Well over and above, like level two over quota; "a very small percent" |
Five bands is deliberate. Williams: a ten-point scale or extra middle categories "would get confusing. So we deliberately, very purposely and intentionally have five set ratings" (18:44:39). The speakers gave no numeric cut-offs from the 50-point total to a band; the committee assigns bands by definition. Check the distribution after the fact: if more than roughly one in ten land in outstanding, recalibrate (our recommendation, from Ellsworth's "very small percent").
Hold the line on meets. Ellsworth: "People say, well, why am I not an outstanding? You're a high meets, which means you're incredibly valuable, but you're doing what was asked" (18:43:53). And: "Meets is a great score for people doing a great job within the bounds of their job" (18:44:23).
5. Deliver like a report card
Managers deliver the final score, band and reasoning to each employee before day 21. Ellsworth's picture: "It's like a teacher getting the report cards and sending them home. That's exactly what we're doing here so people know where they are and what's expected of them" (18:41:31). The report card also becomes the record: when a question comes up next quarter, "you just go back to it and say, well, what did we all say last quarter? It's right here" (19:18:10).
6. Install the release safeguard
Valuetainment's director of studio operations, weeks into the job, entered his team's scores in an early tool and pressed done. "What I didn't realize about the done button was that it meant done done, and then it got sent out to all the employees from the studio" (19:20:47). Uncalibrated scores reached the whole team, and it "led to a lot of trust issues" for months (19:21:16).
Whatever the tool, map four states: draft, manager review, committee approval, released to employee. Confirm nothing can reach an employee before committee approval. Test with one dummy record before the first live cycle. Brief every new manager on the flow in their first two weeks. (Steps are ours; the lesson is the staff panel's.)
7. Ask every manager the five duty questions
The process exists partly to give managers "a duty, a duty to objectively sit back and manage your team" (18:38:32). At the start of each quarter, ask each manager Ellsworth's five questions and record yes or no:
- Have you sat down with everybody?
- Have you set expectations with everybody?
- Have you given your high performers their props?
- Have you given your low performers their severe encouragement to get going?
- Have you given everybody alignment with the plan for the year?
Any no becomes that manager's action item for the next two weeks.
8. Roll four quarters into one annual pay decision
Ellsworth: "We don't do raises quarterly. We do feedback quarterly en route to a full annual score, where we then would talk about raises" (18:42:51). Williams on why: "otherwise when it comes to compensation, recency kicks in. Everybody realizes at Christmas, we're now talking about compensation changes for next year and they start to change the way they turn up" (18:45:23).
Annual pay consequences by band, speaker-stated:
| Annual band | Raise |
|---|---|
| Does not meet, needs improvement | "We don't even talk about raises. You have to deliver improvement" (18:42:43). "You have to be firm enough in the concept of meritocracy to say no" (18:43:05). |
| Meets, exceeds | "Very average merit increase" (18:43:16) |
| Outstanding | "Above market increase" (18:43:16) |
Publish the rule. When someone asks for a mid-year raise, point to it.
9. After calibration: nine-box, recognition, publish the shape
Three follow-throughs Williams described. Place every person on a three-by-three grid of impact (results) against performance or potential (the other four categories). Study the two off-diagonal corners: high potential with low impact needs unblocking; high results with poor culture fit "by definition can't be in this top" box (19:16:34). Stack-rank the top box across departments to find the real top 5 to 10 percent. Host a founder meal for everyone rated exceeds or above; Williams' point is that at 100 people the founder may know six of them (19:17:39). Publish the grid shape for the whole company without names or scores: "it doesn't show your scores, but it allows you to know where you are and where your trajectory is" (19:18:32).
Output format
Fill assets/quarterly-calibration-worksheet.md. In brief it contains:
- The three dated milestones for this quarter with owners.
- The five-category scoring sheet with an evidence column, used identically by employee and manager.
- The calibration record per person: self, manager, committee final, band, delivered on.
- The manager duty grid.
- The annual rule, written as one sentence the whole company can read.
- The release safeguard checklist.
Cadence
| Activity | Cadence | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Structured one-to-one with each direct report | Weekly | Speaker-stated |
| Self, manager, calibration, delivery | Every quarter, done within three weeks of close | Speaker-stated |
| Manager duty questions | Start of each quarter | Speaker-stated questions, cadence ours |
| Nine-box placement, founder meal, publish grid shape | Every quarter after calibration | Speaker-described practice, cadence ours |
| Raise decisions from four quarterly scores | Annually | Speaker-stated |
| Goals set and cascaded top-down | Annually, before the first review | Speaker-stated principle |
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Rating the friendly report above the quiet deliverer. The whole system exists to catch this reversal.
- Letting the cycle sprawl for a month. It becomes a distraction and people stop answering honestly.
- Treating everyone identically inside the system. Williams: engineers "inherently don't like conflict, generally don't daylight ... if you don't manage them correctly, they will only run at one pace" (18:39:36). Keep the yardstick identical; vary the coaching.
- Handing out outstanding freely. Everybody believes they are at "125% of quota" (18:44:16); calibration brings them back.
- Deciding raises off one annual review. Recency and Christmas-season behaviour take over.
- Releasing scores before calibration. Months of trust damage from one done button.
When not to use this
Do not run a review cycle before goals have been set and delivered; do step 0 first. Do not use the bands to force a fixed distribution; the check on outstanding is a sanity test, not a quota. For teams under about ten people where the owner works alongside everyone daily, the weekly one-to-one and the five duty questions may be enough; add the full cycle as headcount passes the point where the owner stops knowing everyone's work firsthand.
Companion skills: bonus-waterfall-designer uses the annual band from this process to set bonus payout. quarterly-calibration, from Patrick Bet-David's own Day Two calibration session, covers the same five categories and bands with his numeric cut-offs and a manager-spread diagnosis; use it when the user wants fixed score-to-band thresholds rather than committee judgment. This skill is the calendar and process wrapper around either rubric.
See references/source-notes.md for verbatim quotes with timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/quarterly-calibration-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Eight ways to reach your potential
This skill produces a scored self-audit against Bet-David's eight ways, plus three working systems: a setback log that shrinks recovery time rung by rung, a written definition of hard work in counts for every role with a 30-day gap analysis, and a Friday review that converts last week's reactions into systems. He introduced the eight in a few minutes and spent the most time on the measurable ones, because his experience is that owners of small businesses "want motivation" and tune out when systems come up, while "those who master the boring stuff eventually create wealth". His studio cuts 432 clips a week on a system, not on inspiration. The point of this skill is to make the boring parts run.
The transcript's spoken numbering skips and repeats. The list below is the reconstructed order.
Inputs to gather
- What matters to the user right now, in one or two lines. Way one is the filter for everything else.
- The last three things that forced them to react this week or last: a fire drill, a complaint, a surprise.
- The most recent setback, when it happened, and when they were fully back to work on the next thing. If they cannot say, that is the answer.
- Their role and every role they lead, with the activity that actually moves each role (dials, appointments, proposals, visits, posts, pieces shipped).
- Access to the last 30 business days of real activity numbers, or a willingness to pull them [CRM, phone logs, calendar, task tracker].
- Three people they compare themselves to and assume are never scared.
Steps
1. Score the eight (5 minutes)
Score each way from 1 (this is a weakness) to 5 (this runs well). The scale is ours; the eight are his.
| # | Way | Bet-David's one-line version |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Things must matter to you | If it does not matter, none of the rest will hold |
| 2 | Initiate instead of react | "Reacting creates a lot of noise. Initiating eliminates that future reactions" |
| 3 | Find systems that help you think less | "First do this, then we do this, then this. Won't think about it" |
| 4 | Conserve your energy | Save it for what matters, "because you're gonna need it" |
| 5 | Move on faster | "There's too many times a guy is still dwelling on something that happened eight months ago" |
| 6 | Define hard work in numbers, for you and your peers | "Quantify what hard work is so people can't say, I've been in the office for twelve hours" |
| 7 | Compete up and don't be afraid | "Most people, despite the appearance of confidence, are just as scared as you are" |
| 8 | Make pain your fuel | "If you wanna reach your full potential, you have to be willing to go through these" |
Pick the two lowest scores. Ways 2, 5 and 6 have full systems below. For the others, write one action each and move on.
2. Turn reactions into systems (way 2 and way 3)
Bet-David's distinction: reacting creates noise and stress, initiating removes the need for the next reaction, and a system means the next step is already decided so you think less.
- List the three things that forced a reaction last week.
- For each, write the initiating action or system that would have prevented it. Use his format: first do this, then this, then this.
- Build one of the three this week. One a week is the pace. Our recommendation is to run this every Friday.
- Keep a count of fire drills per week. The system works when the count falls and the calendar has more scheduled moves than interruptions.
3. Build the move-on-faster ladder (way 5)
His ladder, exactly as spoken:
| If you currently dwell for... | Next target |
|---|---|
| A month | Two weeks |
| Two weeks | A week |
| A week | Two days |
| Two days | A day |
| A day | Two hours |
| Two hours | Ten minutes |
"The sooner you're able to move on and learn, the better for you."
- Write the user's current rung honestly, using the most recent setback as evidence.
- Set the next rung down as the target for the next setback.
- Start a setback log with four columns: what happened, date it happened, date fully back on offence, the one thing learned. Fill in the lesson before closing the entry.
- Advance to the next rung once the current target has been hit twice (our rule; the ladder is his).
- Review the log at month end. It is working when the gap shrinks month over month.
4. Define hard work in counts (way 6)
His story: a salesperson asked to be excused from making 250 calls a day so he could focus on bigger deals. Bet-David's reply was that in two years the man had never made 250 calls in a day, and that if you pulled the last 30 business days his worst day would be under 30. "You have a lot of work to do because you haven't even defined hard work for yourself yet."
- For the user's own role and each role they lead, write what a hard day is in counts. His list: calls, appointments, messages, emails, visits. Translate for other crafts: proposals sent, posts published, units shipped, code reviews closed.
- Pull the actual numbers for the last 30 business days. Record the worst day, the best day, and the average.
- Compare actual to the definition. Write the gap as a number, not a feeling.
- Publish the definition to the team so nobody can substitute hours in the office for output. Do this before anyone is given more responsibility, and use it when someone asks for it.
- Review the counts monthly (our recommendation).
5. Compete up, and retire the untouchable myth (way 7)
He read Norman Vincent Peale to the room: do not compare yourself to others, because most people, despite the appearance of confidence, are just as scared as you are. Then he gave the room ten seconds to name one person they had met who was truly untouchable. Nobody could.
- Give the user ten seconds to name someone untouchable they have actually met. Write down the silence.
- Take the three people they compare themselves to. Beside each, write one public setback. His examples: Mike Tyson knocked out by Buster Douglas; Michael Jordan having the ball stolen by Nick Anderson on his comeback.
- Write the one thing the user has been avoiding because of fear. Schedule the first step this week. His instruction: "compete up, do your best, and don't be afraid", and do not put that extra weight on top of yourself.
6. Conserve energy and make pain fuel (ways 4 and 8)
These two are postures rather than procedures. Ask two questions and write the answers on the worksheet:
- What am I spending energy on that does not serve what matters (way 1)? Cut one thing.
- What is the current pain, and what would it fuel if I pointed it at the work? He said reaching full potential means being willing to go through it, not around it.
Output format
Use assets/reach-your-potential-eight-ways-worksheet.md. The short form:
WHAT MATTERS: <one or two lines>
SCORES: 1 matter <n> | 2 initiate <n> | 3 systems <n> | 4 energy <n> | 5 move on <n> | 6 hard work <n> | 7 compete up <n> | 8 pain <n>
TWO LOWEST: <ways> ONE ACTION EACH FOR THE REST: <...>
REACTIONS TO SYSTEMS (this week)
| Reaction | Initiating system (first / then / then) | Build by |
Fire drills this week: <n> Last week: <n>
MOVE-ON-FASTER LADDER
Current rung: <...> Target rung: <...> Hits at target: <0/2>
| Setback | Happened | Back on offence | Days | One thing learned |
HARD WORK IN COUNTS
| Role | Hard day = | Worst day (30d) | Best day | Average | Gap | Published to team? |
UNTOUCHABLE LIST
Someone untouchable I have met: <none>
| Person I compare to | Their public setback |
Avoided because of fear: <...> First step: <...> By: <date>
ENERGY: cut <one thing> PAIN AS FUEL: <current pain> points at <work>Cadence
- Reactions-to-systems review every Friday; build one system a week (our recommendation).
- Setback log: one entry per setback, reviewed at month end; move down one rung after two hits (our recommendation on his ladder).
- Hard-work counts: define once this week, audit the last 30 business days, then review monthly (our recommendation). Bet-David's own audit window was 30 business days.
- Re-score the eight ways every quarter alongside the identity audit (our recommendation).
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Wanting motivation instead of systems. He said owners of small businesses tune out here, and that the exciting moments did not build a 29-million-follower audience; the boring day-to-day did.
- Being an "actor" who performs effort. Tom Ellsworth's word was posers. Counts are the cure.
- Telling your leader how hard you want to work when your worst day is under 30 dials. Define hard work for yourself before asking for more.
- Dwelling for months. "Move on faster" was said three times in a row.
- Comparing yourself to people you assume are never scared. Nobody is untouchable.
- Adding fear on top of fear. Compete up and do your best; do not carry the extra weight.
When not to use this
Do not use the hard-work counts to punish a team that was never given the definition. Publish the numbers first, give a full 30 business days, then audit. And do not use the move-on-faster ladder on grief or a genuine crisis at home; it was taught for business setbacks like a lost deal or a bad month.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/reach-your-potential-eight-ways-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Replacement game
This skill produces a transfer plan: every recurring task the leader does, the skill behind it, a named non-seasonal successor, and a dated hand-over with a review. Bet-David calls the mindset "the replacement game" and says he applies it to everything he does, including who will be on stage next year. The reason it matters is priced in his own story. A well-funded buyer interviewed his staff, heard he was in the office six days a week, and offered to buy only half the company at about $120 million because "if we buy the company, you're leaving because you're driving everything". He wanted $250 million. The full sale happened only after his chief strategy officer hired five C-suite executives in 90 days and he moved to another state so the team could show the company ran without him. "We don't think about replacement game enough."
Inputs to gather
- The leader's recurring tasks: everything they do weekly or monthly, work and decisions alike. Start with a brain dump; ten to thirty items is typical. Include the ones that feel too important to hand over.
- Team by role with tenure, and for each person one honest answer to: are they steady or seasonal?
- The reason for playing: sell in N years, step to executive chairman, take a real holiday, stop the 70-hour weeks, build a legacy with the kids. The reason sets the deadline.
- Existing documentation: which practices and procedures are written down anywhere.
- Optional: buyer or investor feedback already received about founder dependence.
Steps
1. List your tasks and the skills behind them (strategy one)
Bet-David: "List your tasks and skills and start a skill transfer protocol. What skills do you need to transfer to others? This needs to be intentional." For each task, write the underlying skill in one line (for example, task "approve every quote" rests on the skill "pricing judgement on non-standard work"). Then sort each task into one of three buckets:
- Needs me: requires the founder's instinct, relationships or authority for now.
- Needs a trained person: anyone who knows the practices and procedures can do it.
- Should not be done at all: delete it before you transfer it.
Push back when the user marks more than a third of the list "needs me". Ask what specifically would go wrong if a competent person did it with a written procedure. Bet-David's note that instinct and intuition cannot be taught is real, but it applies to a few executive calls, not to the whole list.
2. Identify who is seasonal and who is not (strategy two)
Bet-David refuses to give heavy roles to "butterflies": "I don't give big responsibilities to seasonal people." His example was a 20-year colleague, possibly the most capable person he has, who cannot be chief distribution officer because effort and attitude come and go. "One minute we're the greatest company in the world, next minute you have resentment." The test: an executive has to show up whether or not they are in the mood, the way a parent changes the diaper regardless. For each candidate successor, answer: over the last twelve months, was their effort and attitude steady in bad quarters as well as good ones? Only steady people receive tasks from the "needs a trained person" bucket. Seasonal people can still be brilliant in bounded roles.
3. Check the other four requirements (strategies three to six)
Before handing over a heavy role, confirm the successor:
- Knows the different languages spoken by sales, support and technical people. Bet-David ties this to leadership love languages: the person has to be able to talk to each group in its own terms.
- Can maintain the company culture. "Very important if you're transferring a very heavy duty job."
- Knows the company's practices and procedures. If they are not written, writing them is the first transfer task.
- Is a leader who spreads this mindset to others, so that the replacement game continues below them.
Mark each of the four as yes, partly, or no. A "no" on culture or procedures is a development plan, not a disqualifier.
4. Run the transfer protocol for each task (our sequence for the speaker's "skill transfer protocol")
For every task in the "needs a trained person" bucket, with a steady successor:
- Document: write the procedure in enough detail that a stranger could follow it. Include the decision rules you apply without thinking.
- Demonstrate: do it once with the successor watching and narrating your reasoning aloud.
- Hand over: let them do it while you watch, then without you. Set the date you stop touching it.
- Review: check the output on a fixed cadence (weekly for the first month is our recommendation), then step back. Bet-David's principle "micromanage until there is trust" applies here.
Order the tasks: start with the ones that are frequent and low-risk to build the successor's confidence and your trust. End with the ones a buyer would ask about.
5. Set the founder-dependence check
Once a month, re-read the list and count how many tasks still sit in "needs me". The number should fall every month. If it stalls, the blocker is usually one of: no written procedure, a seasonal person in the seat, or the founder pulling the task back after one mistake. Name which.
6. Apply it at home if legacy is the goal
Bet-David: "This is with kids as well. If you got kids and you want to build a legacy, you got to think about what skills you need to transfer to your kids." Run the same list for the family if the user asks: skill, which child, how you will demonstrate it, by when.
Output format
Fill in assets/replacement-game-worksheet.md. The short form:
Reason for playing and deadline: ...
Founder-dependence today: N of M tasks still need me
| Task | Skill behind it | Bucket (me / trained person / delete) | Successor (steady?) | Document by | Demonstrate by | Hand over by | Review cadence |
Heavy-role readiness for [successor role]:
Seasonal? no · Speaks sales/support/technical? partly · Culture keeper? yes · Knows procedures? no (write X first) · Spreads the mindset? yes
Monthly check date: ...Cadence
- Build the list once, now (speaker: "list your tasks and skills and start a skill transfer protocol").
- Re-check the "needs me" count monthly (our recommendation).
- Re-run the seasonal test for anyone being considered for a heavy role, before the promotion.
- Revisit the whole plan when a sale, raise or step-back is within 24 months, because buyers will interview your staff.
Pitfalls
- Being in the office six days a week and driving everything. The buyer halved the offer for exactly that.
- Giving heavy roles to seasonal people because they are brilliant when inspired. "I can't have butterflies with high level responsibility positions."
- Transferring tasks without written procedures, then blaming the successor for guessing.
- Transferring the task but not the culture; the work gets done and the company changes shape.
- Pulling the task back after the first mistake. That teaches the team the transfer was never real.
- Firing on impulse during the transition instead of finding out what is going on. A leader who took a struggling four-year employee to lunch found a family crisis, hired 90 days of cover, and avoided a chaotic exit.
- Do not use this skill to decide whether someone is a running mate or adviser; use the running-mate matrix for that. Use this one once you know who is steady enough to receive the work.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/replacement-game-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Running-mate matrix
This skill produces a scored table of the people a leader depends on most, split into three tiers: running mates (the one or two people who share the founder's pressure), the inner circle (people who can be told anything), and advisers or investors (people whose counsel is acted on). Patrick Bet-David teaches it because the gaps only show up once the numbers are on paper. Scoring one of his own running mates on stage, he gave 10, 10, 9, 10, 7 and then a 1 on Rolodex, and said the exercise "just added one question to your interview process". The point is not to grade people for sport. It is to turn a vague unease into a specific conversation, a supplementary hire, or a new interview question.
Inputs to gather
Ask for these before scoring. Offer the defaults in brackets if the user is unsure.
- Running mates by role, not name if they prefer (for example "my COO", "my co-founder"). A running mate "shares the same pressure, if not more than you do at times". Titles alone do not qualify. [Default: one person; if they have none, say so and skip to tier two.]
- Inner-circle members by role: everyone they would tell a company-changing secret to before it is public.
- Advisers and investors by role: everyone whose advice they currently act on, formal or informal.
- Company stage: rough revenue and headcount, plus the next milestone. Scores mean different things at $3 million and $25 million.
- The single decision on their mind, if any (promote, replace, bring into a deal, give equity). Score toward that decision.
Steps
Part A: score each running mate (speaker-stated, about 2 minutes per person)
Score each running mate 0-10 on the six factors, in this order. Ask the user for a number and one sentence of evidence per factor. Push back on any score with no evidence.
| Factor | What Bet-David means by it | Probe to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Character | "Nothing is above this." How they live after hours and handle themselves when nobody is watching. His bar: would you leave your kids with them? | Would you trust them alone with your family or your bank login? |
| Trust | Can you rely on what they tell you and what they do with what you tell them? | Has anything you told them in confidence ever come back to you? |
| Work ethic | Do they outwork the room, consistently, not seasonally? | Who works harder than them in your company? |
| Vision | Have they bought in? Bet-David's tell: do they say "we" and "us", or "they" and "you guys"? | Listen for the pronoun in their last three meetings. |
| Competency | Can they actually do the job at the next stage, not just this one? | What have they done that you have never done? |
| Rolodex | Contacts they can activate now, not claim. "Who can you text right now and talk to?" | Name three people they could get on a call this week who would matter to the business. |
Then:
- Circle the lowest score. Ask what that gap is costing the business today in plain terms (a deal not made, a decision you still have to make yourself, a hire not happening).
- Decide the response for each low score: coach it, supplement it with another hire or adviser, or accept it. Bet-David's example was to accept a 1 on Rolodex in a person with 10s on character and trust, and to hire for contacts elsewhere.
- Convert the gap into one interview question for the next senior hire. His was: "Tell me about your Rolodex. Who can you text right now?" Write the user's version down.
- Note whether character or trust scored below 8. Bet-David treats character as non-negotiable; a low score there is not a coaching item, it is a decision.
Part B: audit the inner circle
- Count the people the user would tell anything to. Bet-David's thresholds: one to five is normal. "If you're 10 plus, you have a problem. You just think everything is not a big deal, and you don't have 10 plus." Report the count and what it implies.
- For anyone borderline, suggest his confidentiality test: share one low-stakes confidence with that person only and see whether it comes back from someone else. People who fail can keep their jobs; they lose access to the top tier.
- Tick which of the 15 inner-circle qualities each person shows. Speaker's list, in his order:
- Confidentiality
- Zero tolerance for games (no manipulation, division or triangulation; "don't say they with me, give me a name")
- Accessibility (texts back)
- Opportunity magnet
- Gives insight
- Pays attention to details
- Strong Rolodex with trust and credibility
- Respectful approach
- Defends what is said about you behind your back
- Not cheap; takes care of people
- Accountability
- Exchange of value
- Fun and humble (confident is fine, arrogant is not)
- Presentable in appearance
- X factor: goes above what was asked
- Flag the automatic disqualifiers he named: loose lips, games or "they said" triangulation, arrogance that drains the room.
- Assign each person a tier: top secret, secret, or need-to-know only. Write one feedback point per person and the quality it addresses.
Part C: filter advisers and investors (Tom Ellsworth)
Ellsworth's rule: "you're interviewing an advisor the same way you interview an employee." Score each adviser 0-2 on each trait (0 absent, 1 partial, 2 clearly present), for a total out of 10. The 0-2 scale is our recommendation; the five traits are his.
- Processes issues and thinks many moves ahead.
- Shares your values but brings a different temperament. Someone from the largest incumbent in your space may not fit a disruptor.
- Calm under pressure without kicking the decision down the road.
- Not afraid to challenge you. Ellsworth calls this "the number one"; the challenge "melts the gold again, reforms it and it really purifies it".
- Loyal with no personal agenda. An investor who wants your CEO seat or a two-year flip "is no longer a trusted advisor".
Then rank them. Drop or downgrade anyone who is promotional, agenda-driven, or does not take the work seriously. Bet-David's added point: your advisers match your current level, the way his son's soccer coaches matched the boy's skill each season. Ask the user what level of adviser the next stage needs and what they must improve to attract that person.
Output format
Fill in assets/running-mate-matrix-worksheet.md. The short form:
Running mates (0-10)
| Role | Character | Trust | Work ethic | Vision | Competency | Rolodex | Lowest | Response |
Inner circle
Top-secret count: N (1-5 normal; 10+ means you are the leak)
| Role | Qualities present (of 15) | Disqualifiers | Tier | One feedback point |
Advisers (0-2 per trait, /10)
| Role | Moves ahead | Values/temperament | Calm | Challenges you | No agenda | Total | Keep / downgrade / drop |
New interview question: "..."
Conversations to schedule: ...
Adviser level needed at next stage: ...Cadence
- Running mates: re-score every quarter and after any major hire (speaker: "take 2 minutes" today; quarterly is our recommendation to pair with calibration).
- Inner circle: re-count when a company-changing event is coming (a sale, a big hire, a firing).
- Advisers: update the list once a year (speaker: "always update your advisors").
Pitfalls
- Confusing title with running mate. "You could have a lot of C-suite executives, but they're not running mates."
- Taking claimed contacts at face value. Some people "got contacts" and nothing happens, often because they have not bought into the vision.
- Letting tenure guilt block the conversation. Long-serving people say "I've been with you ten years"; the question is "Do I have the best version of you now, or is the best version of you behind me?"
- Keeping an adviser who wants your seat, a quick exit, or comes from a culture too corporate for your speed.
- Accepting "they said" from anyone in the circle. One chronic complainer gets inflated into a movement.
- Do not use this to grade rank-and-file employees. That is the job of the quarterly calibration skill.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/running-mate-matrix-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Seven Mountains: the reason behind the money
This skill produces one or two named mountains of influence, a five-year picture of each, a verb, a time split and a first step. Patrick Bet-David introduced it at the top of Vault 2026 with a warning: it is fine to make millions, "the 75-year version of you is relying on you to do so" (12:34:55), "but it's got to be more than money. If it's money, you'll slow down" (12:35:09). The Seven Mountains come from his pastor, Dudley Rutherford, who taught them in 2009 or 2010. Hearing that media was the toughest mountain to climb but the biggest impact, when he had no channel and was known only inside one insurance company, set the direction that became Valuetainment. The exercise exists to find the bigger reason before the money stops pulling.
Inputs to gather
- Where the user is now: business, revenue band, stage (building, scaling, sold, coasting). Offer to skip numbers if they would rather talk in stages.
- Their current honest answer to "why am I doing this?" in one sentence. If the answer is only money or lifestyle, say so plainly and continue; that is the case the exercise is built for.
- Family situation, if they want it included. Bet-David said the mountain "could have something to do with your kids" (12:40:51), and Tom Ellsworth's education mountain runs partly through his children.
- Anything people keep asking them for. Bet-David's second mountain arrived because his audience kept asking about parenting, marriage and young men (12:32:33). Unsolicited requests are evidence.
- Time available for influence work outside the core business [default: a few hours a week].
Steps
- Name the current reason. Write the user's one-sentence "why" at the top. If it is money alone, note Bet-David's line that money-only motivation slows you down. Do not argue with the user about it; the rest of the exercise does the work.
- Walk the seven mountains with one question each. Speaker-stated list, in his order (12:35:24 to 12:38:26). Ask each question and record a gut response before moving on. the top and share your success with others" (12:35:45). who had quietly thought about running and told of a client he introduced to a deputy prime minister. toughest one to climb is media, but it's also the biggest impact that you can make because you can go one to million" (12:38:26).
- Arts, sports and entertainment: what would you make or perform if reach were free?
- Business: at the top, whose success would you share and with whom? He framed business as "get to
- Education: who would you teach, and what do they struggle to learn today?
- Family: what would your family, and families like yours, look like if you led on this?
- Government: is there a policy, office or community decision you keep complaining about? He asked
- Religion: is there a role in your faith community you keep circling?
- Media: what message would you carry from one person to a million? Rutherford's framing: "the
- Score excitement, then pick one or two. Our recommendation: score each mountain 1 to 5 on gut excitement, not on ability or status. Take the top one or two. Speaker-stated: pick the one or two that excite you. Attendees in the room landed on the same rule: "they're all mountains, right? You can't climb them all" (12:51:06). If three score equally, ask which one the user would still climb if nobody ever found out.
- Write the five-year picture for each chosen mountain. Two or three sentences: what does the top look like, and what would being there let the user do for others? Keep it about others; Bet-David's framing of every mountain was influence and service, not title.
- Give each mountain a verb. Tom Ellsworth chose business and education and summarized them as "teach and enable. That's what I do" (12:43:04). Ask the user for one verb or a two-word phrase per mountain. A verb keeps the mountain from turning into a slogan.
- Set the split and protect the smaller mountain. Ellsworth put most of his teaching effort into business and a meaningful share into education (12:43:15). Our recommendation: assign a rough percentage of influence time to each mountain for the next year, then put one recurring calendar block on the smaller one so it does not starve.
- Write the first step this year. One concrete action per mountain that could happen in the next 90 days: a talk, a course outline, a meeting with a school, a first video, a conversation with a pastor or a council member. Note Bet-David's own first step in 2010 was only "maybe we're going to play with that one day" (12:39:33). A small step counts.
- Say it aloud to one person. The room did this as a ten-minute peer share (12:44:01). Have the user tell one person their mountains and ask them the question attendees asked each other: what would you do if nothing stood in the way? Record any change the conversation produces.
Output format
Fill this in, or use assets/seven-mountains-worksheet.md.
Current reason in one sentence: <...>
Money-only? <yes / no>
Mountain scores (1-5): arts/sports/entertainment <n> · business <n> · education <n> · family <n>
· government <n> · religion <n> · media <n>
Mountain 1: <name>
Five-year picture: <what the top lets me do for others>
Verb: <teach / build / fund / convene / ...>
Share of influence time: <n>%
First step (next 90 days): <...>
Mountain 2 (optional): <name>
Five-year picture / Verb / Share / First step
Calendar block protecting the smaller mountain: <day, time, recurrence>
Shared with: <role> What changed after saying it aloud: <...>
Accidental pull to watch: <what people keep asking me for>
Review date: <one year from today>Cadence
- Once, now, in ten to fifteen minutes (speaker gave the room a minute or two to write and ten minutes to share).
- Every year: revisit the choice and check whether a second mountain has arrived by accident (our recommendation, based on Bet-David's own story at 12:32:33).
- Quarterly: confirm the protecting calendar block still exists (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Picking the mountain that sounds most impressive rather than the one that excites you. The exercise is about what keeps you going after money stops working, so excitement is the right test.
- Choosing media first because it is the biggest. Rutherford called it the toughest to climb. Bet-David heard the idea in 2010 and only pursued it once his business gave him something to say. Sequence the base before the reach.
- Choosing more than two. Attendees who tried to hold all seven ended the exercise with nothing.
- A mountain with no verb and no calendar block. That is a slogan, not a plan.
- Ignoring what people keep asking you for. The accidental mountain may be the real one.
- Do not use this as a business strategy tool. It answers "why beyond money"; it does not pick markets or set targets.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/seven-mountains-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Stuck-partnership resolution
This skill produces a written picture of where each partner's equity and contribution have diverged, and a resolution plan that survives the other partner refusing to cooperate. Patrick Bet-David closed Day One's first case study at The Vault 2026 with it. The case was a fictional 50/50 pair at $32 million in revenue who needed $80 million in 36 months, where the operations partner still ran the company as if it were at $8 million and agreed to change every time he was confronted, without changing. The room's plans all assumed the partner would consent. Bet-David played the partner and said no to everything: "You can't just say, oh, we need to do this, this, this. Life doesn't work that way with 50-50 partnerships." His real-world resolutions came in two shapes: a dinner where a founder used a fair valuation and cheques to go from about 35 percent to 65 percent ownership, and two best friends at negative $300,000 EBITDA who were saved by a hard spending rule with a third party in the room.
Inputs to gather
- Each partner's equity percentage and decision rights (is it a true 50/50 on votes as well as shares?).
- What each partner actually does today, and what the partnership agreement or handshake originally said they would do.
- Evidence the contribution has slipped, by role: senior hires who complained, direct reports who quit, the biggest client's comments, missed events, days of vacation, whether they read the financials.
- What has been tried. How many conversations, what was agreed, what changed.
- The company's revenue, profit or EBITDA, and where it needs to be in 36 months.
- Who the user could bring as a neutral third party. A consultant, business coach, executive advisor, the company's outside accountant, or a therapist. Default: someone both partners already respect and neither employs.
- The user's own bias. One respondent said he would hire a recruiter to replace the partner because he likes people and can be charmed by the wrong personality. Ask what the user is likely to get wrong.
Steps
- Map equity against contribution. Two columns: the percentage each partner owns, and an honest estimate of the percentage of today's value each partner creates. Bet-David's dinner example: a 40 percent partner doing "the 20 percent part". Write the gap for each partner. The gap, not the personality, is what the resolution has to close.
- Write the critical-conversation opener. The respondent Bet-David graded as the day's eagle opened with: "This is who you are. This is who you've proven yourself to be, and this is who you're not." Draft the user's version in three sentences, anchored to the evidence gathered above, not to feelings. State that this is not another regular conversation.
- Stress-test every proposed move with "what if they say no?" For each move (restructure the org chart, hire over them, dilute, reduce their role, ask them to step aside), write what happens if the partner answers as Bet-David did: "I worked more than you for the first five years, I brought our biggest four accounts, I'm not changing, and next year I'm taking 90 days off." A 50/50 partner can refuse and still collect half the profit. Any move that dies on a no gets replaced or backed by one that does not.
- Decide whether this is a cheque problem or a rule problem.
- Cheque: the partner would rather have cash than the role. Bet-David: "Sometimes a person is going to be waiting for you to cut a check for a decision to be made." Ask directly whether they want to take money off the table. For a small holder who no longer contributes, his options were a serious conversation or a buyout offer.
- Rule: both partners want to stay, but one behaviour is sinking the company. The founders at negative $300,000 EBITDA agreed a floor of roughly 8 to 10 percent EBITDA; above it, the operating partner could veto spending. Bet-David's point: the fix was a rule both sides owned, not a divorce. That company reached $14.9 million EBITDA last year.
- Often it is both: a rule for the next twelve months and a pre-agreed buyout formula if the rule is broken.
- Plan the valuation. Bet-David's method for a fair number nobody can dispute: one valuer the user chooses, one the partner chooses, one both agree on, and settle on the middle. Use that number to price the equity points the partner is not earning. Get the valuation before the conversation, not after, so the conversation is about a number and not about feelings.
- Draft the offer. State it as: contribution today, equity today, the gap, the valuation, the cash or the rule that closes the gap, and the timetable. In the dinner story, one partner left happy with a $1.5 million cheque and another took a larger payout over a couple of years. Where the user is the one being overpaid relative to contribution, the same table applies in reverse; say so.
- Cover the stakeholders everyone forgets. Tom Ellsworth pointed out that every plan in the room focused on the partner and nobody planned for the senior hires who had complained or the biggest client who called operations the weakest link. Write one move for each: what the user will tell the senior hires, what the user will tell the biggest client. The eagle answer's version to external stakeholders was: "This is my mess up. I made a mistake. It won't happen again."
- Book the third party. Bet-David's closing instruction: "Generally, you need a third party to help you out." Put a named person in the room for the conversation, whether it goes toward a cheque or a rule. Without one, it is another regular-level conversation, and years of those are how the case got here.
- Set the expectation meeting. One respondent compared it to marriage: you do not skip the conversation about what each partner is committing to. Write the action sets each partner is committing to for the next quarter, who can veto what, and the date you re-check contribution against equity.
Output format
Partnership resolution plan
| Partner (role) | Equity % | Contribution % today | Gap | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
Conversations so far: [count] What changed: [nothing / ...]
Critical-conversation opener (3 sentences):
Moves and the "what if they say no?" test
| # | Move | If they say no... | Survives? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | | |
| 2 | | | |
| 3 | | | |
Cheque or rule: cheque / rule / both
Cheque: does the partner want cash off the table? [asked / yes / no]
Rule: EBITDA floor ___% · who can veto spending above it · review date
Valuation: valuer A (mine) · valuer B (theirs) · valuer C (agreed) · settle on middle · by [date]
The offer: [contribution, equity, gap, valuation, cash or rule, timetable]
Forgotten stakeholders
Senior hires who complained: [what I will tell them, by when]
Biggest client: [what I will tell them, by when]
Their direct reports: [...]
Third party in the room: [name, role] Conversation date:
Expectation meeting: action sets per partner · veto rights · re-check dateThe full worksheet is in assets/stuck-partnership-resolution-worksheet.md.
Cadence
- Once, within the next month: book the third party into the next conversation instead of having another regular-level talk (speaker-stated).
- Once, before the conversation: get the three-way valuation (speaker-stated).
- Once this quarter, then annually: agree the EBITDA floor and veto rights and write them into the operating agreement (our recommendation, from the founders' rescue).
- Annually: re-check each partner's contribution against equity (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- A plan that needs the other partner's consent. Bet-David: a 50/50 partner "doesn't have to do anything."
- Focusing the whole plan on the partner and forgetting the senior hires and the biggest client.
- Having "regular level conversations" for years when the partner is waiting for a cheque.
- Proposing a valuation number yourself. Use the three-valuer method so the number is nobody's opinion.
- Opening with the fix instead of the evidence. The critical conversation starts with who the partner has proven to be.
- Doing the replacement hire yourself if you know you are easily charmed. Use a recruiter.
- Treating divorce as the only outcome. The EBITDA-floor pair stayed together and built a much larger company.
Do not use this skill where the dispute is about fraud, legal breach or safety; that needs counsel first. Do not use it as a script to ambush a partner; the third party and the valuation exist so both sides can trust the process.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/stuck-partnership-resolution-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Ten decisions and seven signs review
This skill produces a one-page life decision dashboard and a scored compromise check, with two actions for the next 30 days. On the last morning of The Vault 2026 Bet-David argued that people do not fail at home or at work because of hours; they fail because they let the biggest decisions drift and let small compromises accumulate. He listed the ten decisions that shape a life and the seven signs that someone is quietly compromising the vision for theirs, and told the married leaders in the room not to skip the topic because "you have players in your company that are single that you need to be their leader and coach". The review is deliberately blunt: name what is decided, name what is drifting, and pick the two worst compromises to fix.
Inputs to gather
Ask the user for these. Keep it conversational; this is personal material.
- Current status on each of the ten decisions (see step 1). One sentence each is enough.
- Age and season: single, married, children, stage of business. Some decisions are settled by season; the review still asks how they coach others through them.
- The one distraction they already know about. Bet-David: "you know who you are". A person, place, app or habit.
- New things created in the last ten years. Products, ventures, markets, major projects.
- Their picture of the next level, in a sentence, if they have one. A blank here is itself a finding.
- Who they will share the page with. Spouse, mentor or accountability partner. [Default: nobody yet; suggest one.]
Steps
- Write the ten decisions on one page in Bet-David's order (speaker-stated):
- Who to marry.
- What career or business to choose and pursue.
- Where to live.
- When to have children.
- Who to surround yourself with.
- How to manage or multiply money.
- What to believe spiritually or morally.
- How to take care of your body and mind.
- How to respond to failure or crisis.
- What to do with freedom when you have time, power and money.
- Mark each Decided, Open or Drifting. Decided means chosen and being lived. Open means actively being worked on with a date. Drifting means it is happening to them by default. Push back gently on "Decided" answers that have no evidence in the calendar. (Status labels are our recommendation; the ten items are the speaker's.)
- For every Open or Drifting item, write the next concrete step and a date. Use the speaker's specifics where they exist:
- Marriage: date with intention. He told his future wife on the second date "I'm not looking for a girlfriend, I'm looking for a wife" and worked through a book of 101 pre-engagement questions with her for six hours.
- Where to live: choose the place for the life you want in twenty years, not for now. He moved to Dallas because it was three hours from everyone he needed, and warned family it was a stage, not a destination.
- Community: "the wrong community will destroy your life and steal a decade from you". List the five people and three gatherings that take most non-work time; mark each as pulling forward or back.
- Money: learn how money works before there is a lot of it.
- Crisis: "every year we have different types of crisis". Write the response plan before the year's crisis arrives.
- Freedom: watch how you handle attention before you get more of it. He said he watches how people on his team handle the spotlight before giving them more.
- Score the seven signs of compromising your vision, 1 (not true of me) to 5 (very true of me). The seven are speaker-stated; the scale is our recommendation.
- You do not eliminate distractions.
- You are not dating with intention.
- You quit pursuing your big dreams and passion.
- You are not creating new things.
- You have lost perspective and gratitude for life.
- You are lost or unclear about the next level.
- You have let the wrong person or party influence you.
- Check sign 4 against the moonshot benchmark. Bet-David cited a study of Fortune 500 companies: those that fell off stopped taking moonshot-sized risks every ten years; those that climbed took about two per decade; those at the top took four or more (speaker-stated). Count the user's genuinely new creations in the last ten years and compare.
- Check sign 6 with the cousins test. He asked who in the room was the most successful person among their cousins, then asked how many felt "I got work to do" because someone in the room had beaten their score. Being the biggest fish in a small pond is how the next level goes blurry. Ask: which room gives you positive peer pressure right now?
- Circle the two worst scores and write one 30-day action for each. For sign 1 the speaker's own prescriptions were: cut off the friend, cousin or recurring gathering you already know is the problem, and set a 30-minute daily limit on Instagram in the phone (speaker-stated). Tell one person who will hold you to it.
- Coach it downward. If the user leads people, ask which team member is facing one of the ten decisions right now and schedule a conversation. Bet-David's point: their choice of spouse or city will shape their performance for decades, and their leader is expected to help.
- Set the review date. Put the next quarterly check in the calendar before closing.
Output format
Fill in assets/ten-decisions-seven-signs-review-worksheet.md. Short form:
TEN DECISIONS — <name> — <date>
1 Marry <Decided/Open/Drifting> next step: <…> by <date>
2 Career …
3 Live …
4 Children …
5 Community …
6 Money …
7 Beliefs …
8 Body & mind …
9 Crisis …
10 Freedom …
SEVEN SIGNS (1–5)
distractions __ dating intention __ quit big dreams __ not creating __
lost gratitude __ unclear next level __ wrong influence __
Moonshots last 10 yrs: <n> (benchmark: ~2 to climb, 4+ at the top)
TWO ACTIONS (30 days): 1. <…> 2. <…> accountability: <person>
Next review: <date>Cadence
- Full review every quarter (our recommendation; the speaker gave the lists, not the frequency).
- Distraction cut and phone limit: once, this week (speaker-stated).
- Coaching conversation with one team member facing a big decision: once a quarter (our recommendation).
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Dismissing the marriage decision because you are married. Your single team members are deciding now and you are their coach.
- Dating to date. Incompatibilities found years later were available on the second date.
- Staying in a community you know pulls you backward because leaving feels disloyal.
- Managing the existing block of business and never taking a moonshot. That is how companies and people flatten.
- Believing your own hype once money, fame or the spotlight arrives.
- Blaming work for a failing marriage or family for a failing business. Both are excuses; the gap is a lack of systems.
When not to use this: in a crisis moment. This is a planning review, not triage. If the user is in acute distress about marriage, health or money, point them to appropriate professional help first and come back to the page later. For family rituals and daily practices, use the companion skill family-operating-system.
See references/source-notes.md for the speaker's exact words.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/ten-decisions-seven-signs-review-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Ten-video hook-iteration loop
This skill produces a brief for the next piece of content built on evidence from the user's best one, plus a monthly analytics sheet. Nick Shirley, asked on the Vault 2026 stage what he would say to creators about to quit after a video gets 100 views, gave the loop directly: "go and make 10 videos. Whatever video gets the most amount of views, make that exact same video again, just do it a little bit different, and then you continue to double down, double down, double down until it actually works" (13:09:10). His own numbers: a video every week from age 15 to 18 reached 20,000 subscribers; picking a niche took the channel to almost 2 million; at least 1,000 videos were made before the "overnight" breakout, including one every week for two years. The loop works because it removes taste from the decision: the audience has already voted, and the next video repeats the winning vote with one variable changed.
Inputs to gather
- Platform and format, and how many pieces the user has published in total and in this format.
- The last ten pieces in that format, with for each: title, hook (first line or thumbnail idea), length, views, click-through rate, average view duration or retention, and revenue per thousand if monetized. If the user cannot pull these, ask for views and length at minimum and note the gaps.
- Publishing frequency today [default: ask; Shirley's floor is one a week].
- The topic lanes the user has tried, and which drew the strongest response.
- Five large creators they already watch, ideally across different genres.
Steps
- Run the sample-size check. If fewer than ten pieces exist in the format, the only instruction is to publish ten, at least one a week (Shirley posted weekly for two years before the breakout, 13:04:48). Do not analyze a sample of three. If the user is discouraged, give them his numbers: 1,000 videos before overnight, 20,000 subscribers after three years of weekly posting. Their sample is not yet meaningful.
- Build the batch sheet. Ten rows, one per piece, with the columns from the inputs. Use the template in
assets/ten-video-batch-sheet.md.
- Rank twice: by views and by average view duration. Shirley's stated rule is most views (13:09:15). His stated principle is that the platform "doesn't care necessarily how long the video is, they care about how long someone stays" (13:12:31). Our recommendation to honor both: the winner is the piece that appears in the top three on both lists; if none does, take the highest retention among the top three by views.
- Write down what the winner did. Hook (the first line and what the thumbnail or title promised), subject, location or setting, length, structure (how it opened, what it showed, how it closed). This is the brief. Shirley: "once you find out what hook works, why would you go make one without that hook, because that one's already been proven to work" (13:09:56).
- Remake it with one deliberate change. Keep the hook. Change exactly one of subject, location or length. One variable per remake so the next ranking tells you something. Ship it inside the weekly cadence.
- Repeat the loop; deviate only after the pattern holds. Re-rank after each batch. Our recommendation: do not change the hook until it has won two cycles in a row. Then follow Shirley's sequence: "finding out what works and doing it again, and again, and again, and then slowly deviating and expanding your reach" (13:10:08). Progress signal, our recommendation: the median piece climbs each cycle, not just the best one.
- Fill the monthly analytics sheet. Shirley: "Before I blew up on YouTube, I knew exactly how everything worked on the analytics side. I could tell you what the click-through rate is, how much do you need to actually make money off the video" (13:12:06). Once a month, for every piece posted: length, click-through rate, average view duration, revenue per thousand. Sort by retention, not views. Write one sentence on what the top three share and one on what the bottom three share. Decide the next batch's target length from where retention holds. His framing of the length trade: roughly a $4 CPM on a 10-minute video versus $8 on a 20-minute one, but only if watch time holds (13:12:19). Length is a tool for retention, not a goal.
- Run the niche check after the reps. Our recommendation on timing: after 50 to 100 pieces. List the topics that drew the strongest response and pick one lane; commit to six months of weekly output in it before judging. Shirley's evidence is the 20,000-to-2-million jump after picking a niche (13:09:33). Volume taught the craft; the niche gave it a direction.
- Study the biggest creators across genres, monthly. Shirley watched MrBeast, Logan Paul, Casey Neistat, Graham Stephan and Meet Kevin "because I wanted to have like a very wide range to see what interests people" (13:11:45), then applied it to field reporting. Have the user pick five large creators in five genres, watch each one's three most-viewed pieces, note the first ten seconds, the thumbnail and where they almost clicked away, and write three patterns that appear across genres. Apply one to the next remake. Patrick Bet-David's wrap made the boundary clear: Shirley's videos are "very different style videos than Mr. Beast" (13:28:42). Study principles, not templates.
Output format
Channel / format: <...> Pieces published in format: <n> Cadence: <n per week>
Sample-size verdict: <under 10, publish first / ready to rank>
Batch ranking (last 10)
By views: 1 <title> 2 <title> 3 <title>
By avg view duration: 1 <title> 2 <title> 3 <title>
Winner: <title> Reason: <top 3 on both / highest retention in top 3 by views>
Winner brief
Hook / promise: <...> Subject: <...> Setting: <...> Length: <...>
Structure: <open / show / close>
Next piece
Keep: the hook. Change one: <subject | location | length> -> <new value>
Publish by: <date> Cycles the hook has won in a row: <n>/2 before deviating
Monthly analytics (sorted by retention)
Top 3 share: <one sentence> Bottom 3 share: <one sentence>
Target length next batch: <n min>, because retention holds to <n min>
Niche check: <not yet (n/50 pieces) | lane chosen: ... commit until: <date>>
Cross-genre patterns this month: 1 <...> 2 <...> 3 <...> Applied: <which>Cadence
- Publish at least weekly (speaker-stated, 13:04:48).
- Rank the batch and set the next remake after every ten pieces, or monthly (speaker gave "make 10"; the monthly rhythm is our recommendation).
- Analytics sheet monthly; cross-genre study monthly (our recommendation).
- Niche check once, after 50 to 100 pieces; re-check every six months (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Quitting on a sample of one. "They do a video, it gets 1,000 views, they get 100 views and like, ah, I don't want to do this anymore" was the host's description of the people Shirley was answering (13:08:50). One thousand videos came first.
- Abandoning a hook that works for novelty. Repeat the proven hook; novelty is for after the pattern is established.
- Changing three things at once in the remake. The next ranking then teaches nothing.
- Measuring by length or raw views. The platform pays for how long people stay.
- Posting for years with no niche. Weekly for three years produced 20,000 subscribers; the niche produced the rest.
- Copying the biggest creator's style. Shirley won with a style unlike MrBeast's; take the principles.
- Do not use this loop for one-off campaigns or paid ads with fixed creative; it needs a steady stream of comparable pieces.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/ten-video-batch-sheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Trust but verify: the monthly money review
This skill produces a control list of every person and system that can touch the user's money, a 30-minute monthly review the user does personally, a second-channel confirmation rule for large transfers and payment-destination changes, a one-line economics summary for every deal they are in, and an annual independent reconciliation.
Floyd Mayweather told the room that a father-figure adviser stole $350 million and a second associate, "sitting next to me, acting like he was a friend, helping me clean up business", stole $200 million. Neither was a grab. One was a network payment for promotions that was "sent to someone else's account", discovered only when "we start looking at the paperwork, years later". Asked for his knockout lesson for business, he said: "What I had to learn the hard way: to trust but verify." The audience named it as their loudest takeaway at the close. The same interview shows why the money map matters: while boxing he studied "who's getting that extra money for the merchandise, and who's getting all the money for the tickets", which is what let him ask a precise question ("what would it take for me to become my own boss?") and get a precise price ($750,000). All figures are Mayweather's own statements and were not independently verified.
Inputs to gather
- Every account that holds or moves the user's money: operating, savings, payroll, merchant, investment, crypto, trust. Names by role only.
- Every person and system with access: bookkeeper, accountant, manager, agent, spouse, business partner, payroll provider, payment processor, anyone with a card or a signature.
- Who currently receives statements, and when the user last personally read one for each account [default: honest answer is often "never" or "years ago"].
- The user's threshold for a "large" transfer [default: our recommendation is 1 percent of annual revenue or $5,000, whichever is lower; adjust to the business].
- Every deal the user is currently in where someone else collects or splits the money: distribution, licensing, sponsorship, referral, franchise, revenue share.
- Whether the user has ever had a reconciliation done by someone who does not report to their manager or adviser.
Steps
Set up (once, about two hours)
- Build the access register. One row per account: who can view it, who can move money out of it, who can change where incoming payments land, who can sign. Anyone appearing in the "move" or "change destination" columns is inside the verification perimeter.
- Note beside each row when the user last read that account's statement themselves. Not a summary from the bookkeeper. The actual statement.
- Set the second-channel rule and write it down: any transfer above the threshold, and any change to where a payment is sent, requires confirmation from a second person by a second channel. If the request came by email, confirm by phone with a number already on file, not the one in the email. Mayweather's $350 million left through a redirected payment destination; this rule exists for that case.
- Draw the money map for each deal. For every dollar a customer or counterparty pays, where does it go and who keeps each slice? Mark each slice: I own it, I rent it, I give it away. For the biggest slice given away, write Mayweather's question and get a real number: what would it take to own this? He asked his promoter to become partners first, was told no, then asked the price of freedom.
- Book an accountant who does not work for the user's manager, agent, or bookkeeper to reconcile the last twelve months against contracts. Mayweather said "you don't want to be the only smart person on your team", and the person who helped him get free was, by his account, the one who took the most. Smart people on the team are necessary; an independent check is still required.
- Put a recurring 30-minute slot in the calendar for the monthly review.
Monthly review (30 minutes, done personally)
- Read the statement for every account in the register. Look for: transfers to accounts you do not recognise, changed payee details, round-number payments, new recurring items, and anything paid to a vendor you did not approve.
- Compare what came in against what the contracts say should have come in. A payment for the right amount to the wrong account looks normal on the sender's side. It only shows up when receipts are compared to entitlements.
- Check that every transfer above the threshold this month has a logged second-channel confirmation. Any that does not is a finding, even if the transfer was legitimate.
- Refresh the deal economics. For each live deal, restate in one sentence: who pays, how much, who keeps what, and what I own. If the user cannot say it in one sentence, that deal is a gap.
- Check the reserve. Mayweather's rule "for everyone in this room is always to put half up, no matter what ... if it's $100, put $50 up." Whatever share the user has chosen, confirm the reserve account only went up this month. Half is the speaker's figure; the user sets the share they can hold.
- Log findings, questions asked, and answers received, with dates. Unanswered questions roll to next month and get escalated.
Annual (half a day)
- Independent reconciliation of all twelve months by the outside accountant from step 5, against contracts and the access register. Rotate this accountant every few years so nobody becomes a fixture.
- Re-issue the access register. Remove anyone who no longer needs to move money. Re-check signature authorities at the bank.
Output format
Fill in assets/money-review-worksheet.md. In short:
- Access register: account, viewers, movers, destination-changers, signers, last statement I read.
- Rules: large-transfer threshold, second-channel procedure, reserve share.
- Deal economics: one line per deal (who pays, how much, who keeps what, what I own, what owning the rest would cost).
- Monthly log: date, findings, questions, answers, open items.
- Annual: independent accountant, date, result.
Cadence
- Statements read personally: monthly, and before any large transfer (our recommendation; Mayweather's lesson is the principle, the interval is ours).
- Second-channel confirmation: every time the rule triggers (our recommendation, built on his redirected-payment account).
- Reserve deposit: every time money comes in (speaker-stated: "always put half up, no matter what").
- Money map refresh: quarterly (our recommendation).
- Independent reconciliation: once now, then annually (our recommendation).
Pitfalls
- Trusting the smartest person on the team so completely that nobody checks. Mayweather says the man who helped him get free was the one who stole the most.
- Reading summaries instead of statements. The fraud he describes was invisible in the summary and visible in the paperwork.
- Verifying only outgoing money. His losses were incoming payments sent elsewhere.
- Confirming a payment change by replying to the same email that requested it.
- Letting the person who handles the money choose the person who checks the money.
- Treating this as distrust of a spouse or partner. Frame it as what any lender or investor would require, and apply it to yourself too.
- This is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Suspected theft goes to a lawyer and, where appropriate, to law enforcement.
Read references/source-notes.md for the speaker's words and evidence timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/money-review-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md
Yes early, no later
This skill produces a decision on one opportunity, a running yes ledger, a three-year vision with its assumptions, and a written exit thesis. It comes from three moments in Logan Paul's session. Asked how to decide which opportunities fit, he said: "I do believe you should say yes to things and try things. And then you'll be able to kind of find a lot of the stuff that you don't like and the stuff you do like ... Try stuff and then eventually you'll realize that the power of no is truly a powerful thing" (14:39:43, 14:40:57). Asked about vision, he said he can "see about three years out pretty well" and prides himself on the ability to adapt and pivot (14:16:27). Asked whether Prime had an exit plan, he said "Nope. Massive mistake" and put the cost at "minimum $100 million" (14:52:55, 14:53:44).
The three parts fit together: yes-early builds the evidence that makes later no's honest, the three-year horizon keeps the yes's pointed somewhere, and the exit check makes sure the work eventually pays.
Inputs to gather
- The opportunity on the table, in one sentence. If there is none, run only steps 3 to 5.
- How many genuinely different arenas the user has tried in the last five years (formats, roles, industries, sports, stages). A rough count is fine.
- What they have already tried and quit, with the reason. Logan's example: five years trying to act before concluding "I can't act" (14:40:12).
- Their business or brand, who the partners are, and rough ownership split. Needed for step 5.
- Whether any inbound offer, buyer or investor conversation has happened.
- Their preferred planning style: long vision or short horizon. Logan and his brother run opposite models and both work.
Steps
1. Place the user on the yes-to-no curve
Logan's model is a curve, not a rule. Early, say yes: "Say yes more, do more stuff, discover what life is and what you like, and perhaps you'll find a hidden talent in there" (14:18:22). He found wrestling at 27 by answering "Sure. That sounds fun" to WrestleMania and only recognised it as the thing he was "born to do" after watching the first match back (14:19:33). Later, say no from evidence: "you'll get better at discerning the two, the older you get and the more you do" (14:39:43).
Ask: how many arenas has the user actually tried? If the answer is fewer than a handful, bias every borderline decision toward yes for the next year. If they have a long, honest No column already, they have earned a bias toward no. Say which side they are on and why.
2. Score the opportunity on the three filters and a trust check
Logan's filters, in his words: "do things that make sense to you, do things that fulfill you, and if you can, try to make some money along the way" (14:40:57). The 1 to 5 scale is our addition.
| Filter | Speaker-stated | Score 1-5 | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does it make sense to me? (fits strengths, taste, the story I am telling) | Yes | ||
| Does it fulfill me? | Yes | ||
| Can I make money along the way? | Yes | ||
| Does it protect trust with my audience or customers? | Patrick Bet-David pressed this and Logan agreed: "Was all attention good attention? No." (14:41:37) | Pass / fail |
Decision rule (ours): total the three scores. Twelve or more with a trust pass is a yes. Nine to eleven is a yes only if the user is still in the early, yes-biased part of the curve. Eight or below, or any trust fail, is a no. Write the reason in one sentence so it can go in the ledger.
3. Keep the yes ledger
Two columns: Yes (tried) and No (declined, with reason). This is our tool for making Logan's curve concrete.
- Each quarter, say yes to one opportunity outside the user's usual lane.
- Afterwards, score it on the three filters out of five.
- Anything low on all three moves to the No column with the reason. The reason is the asset; it turns future declines into evidence rather than fear.
- Review the ledger every quarter. The No column should grow as discernment does. Logan's acting attempt is the model entry: five years, honest verdict, closed.
4. Write the three-year vision and its assumptions
Logan on horizon: "I can see about three years out pretty well. After that the world's changing so fast, man, especially now ... you need like a short term three-year vision and then after that, I don't know what's going to happen. Something's going to happen" (14:16:27 to 14:17:11). He contrasted it with his brother's very long, intentional vision and did not say one is better.
- Write where the user wants to be in three years across work, craft, money and health. Do not force a ten-year plan on someone who cannot see it.
- List the assumptions about the world the plan depends on (platform, market, health, a partner staying).
- Each quarter, check which assumptions changed and adjust the plan rather than defend it.
- Log one pivot made this quarter and what triggered it. Logan treats adapting as a skill he is proud of, so track it like one.
If the user is a long-horizon planner, write the ten-year vision too and treat the three-year plan as its first leg.
5. Run the exit-strategy check
For anyone with a business, especially with partners. Logan's account: Prime went from zero to about 1.3 billion dollars in two years with no exit plan. "We had opportunities to exit or get partners who would buy into the company and potentially could have had a huge cash out. Our partners didn't want it ... we were like, yeah, we trust you guys and we paid the price for it" (14:53:03). His instruction: "having an exit strategy in mind, having a goal of what you want to do and having a way to make sure that your hard work is eventually going to pay off is really important. And man, don't be afraid to take chips off the table" (14:53:30).
- Write what a successful payoff looks like: a sale, a partial sale, a buyer type, dividends, or something else.
- Before any offer exists, write the valuation or offer level at which the user would take some money off the table. Deciding this cold is the whole point.
- Have the conversation with every partner now. Record where they agree and disagree. Logan's loss came from a disagreement that surfaced only when an offer was on the table.
- List what a buyer would need to see and start producing it. Logan named two: "make sure to stabilize and prove that your numbers are legit" (14:54:46), and he noted a strategic buyer may be blocked by antitrust while private equity is not.
- Revisit once a year or the moment an inbound offer appears.
Output format
Fill assets/yes-early-no-later-worksheet.md. In brief it contains:
- Curve position: early yes-biased or evidence-based no, with the count of arenas tried.
- Opportunity scorecard: three filters, trust check, total, decision, one-line reason.
- Yes ledger: Yes and No columns with dates and reasons.
- Three-year vision: four areas, assumptions list, quarterly check date, pivot log.
- Exit thesis: payoff definition, chips-off threshold, partner positions, buyer-readiness list, next review date.
Cadence
| Activity | Cadence | Source |
|---|---|---|
| One out-of-lane yes, then score it | Quarterly | Our recommendation, from Logan's yes-more principle |
| Review the yes ledger | Quarterly | Our recommendation |
| Check three-year assumptions, log a pivot | Quarterly | Our recommendation, from Logan's three-year horizon |
| Refresh the three-year vision | Annually | Our recommendation |
| Revisit exit thesis and chips-off threshold | Annually, and on any inbound offer | Speaker-stated principle, cadence ours |
Pitfalls the speaker warned about
- Saying no to things you have never tried. Logan needed 27 years and one yes to find wrestling, which "in hindsight was obvious" (14:21:07).
- Saying yes to everything forever. Five years of acting classes and auditions ended in "I can't act." The point of trying is to earn the no.
- Chasing attention that erodes trust. Patrick Bet-David's framing, accepted by Logan: if the business turns eyeballs into customers, attention that damages trust is a cost.
- Forcing a grand vision you cannot see. A three-year horizon plus real adaptability is a valid model; so is a decades-long one. Pick the one that fits and be excellent at it.
- Building with no exit in mind and trusting partners to want the same thing. Have the conversation before the offer, and be willing to take chips off the table.
When not to use this
This is not a valuation tool or legal advice; the exit step produces a thesis and a conversation, not a term sheet. Do not run the yes-ledger step on someone in a health, legal or financial crisis, where the right move is stability, not experimentation. And do not use the scoring to override a clear gut no on a trust question. Logan's own rule is that authenticity beats everything else (14:45:24).
See references/source-notes.md for verbatim quotes with timestamps.
Bundled files: SKILL.md, assets/yes-early-no-later-worksheet.md, references/source-notes.md