Dan Martell - 30 Brutal Business Truths I Wish I Knew in My 20s

00:00:00.000 At the time of this recording, I've been in business for 27 years, but if I had to go back

00:00:05.160 and give my 20-year-old self some advice on how to build a business a lot faster,

00:00:09.600 here's what I would say. Number one, spend money to save time, not time to save money.

00:00:15.100 See, most people are always trying to save money, but they don't realize that you have to invest

00:00:19.680 money to save time. In today's world where you can spend dollars to buy back hours with the apps

00:00:25.800 and the delivery and having things come to you

00:00:28.700 and be able to have people all over the world

00:00:30.600 support you in your dreams for a few dollars an hour,

00:00:33.500 do that.

00:00:34.320 Number two, solve problems for rich people, not broke people.

00:00:37.720 If you want your life to be easier,

00:00:39.420 you wanna have a business that thrives,

00:00:41.260 you wanna have a great job,

00:00:42.520 go solve problems for people that have money.

00:00:45.000 Broke people, there'll be a pain in your butt,

00:00:47.000 you'll deal with them not paying you,

00:00:48.380 you deal with the drama

00:00:49.300 that they're gonna come along with it

00:00:50.600 because they expect everything for very little.

00:00:52.800 Rich people, way easier to work with.

00:00:54.720 number three sell before you build anything my default as soon as i have an idea is to run to

00:01:00.320 find a customer i sell before i've ever built anything all my software companies all my coaching

00:01:05.920 programs all my media stuff always sell first then figure out how to build it number four you don't

00:01:11.040 manage time you manage energy if i could go back and talk to myself about the way i structured my

00:01:16.880 life instead of just responding to whoever needed my time instead put those projects tasks together

00:01:22.560 throughout the day based on the energy I would have in the morning versus the afternoon,

00:01:27.020 I would have got so much more done. Number five, simple scales, complex fails. The best way to

00:01:33.200 build a life that's awesome is keep it simple. Don't have a lot of options. Don't have a lot

00:01:38.220 of things to manage. Don't allow people to keep adding things to make it better. Fight for

00:01:42.760 simplicity because complexity is the ceiling of growth. Number six, cashflow is critical. Don't

00:01:48.360 finance your customers. If people want to buy from you and you have fixed costs, have them pay

00:01:53.220 you enough to cover those costs. If you got to go and finance that through a line of credit or

00:01:57.560 through investors, that means that you're essentially supporting their growth in their

00:02:01.560 business through your bank account. I want them to pay me upfront. I want to finance my growth

00:02:06.560 through my customers financing. Number seven, model and modify. So many times I've had people

00:02:12.040 that coach with me try to modify my instructions. And I know when I worked with a coach, I learned

00:02:17.380 this the hard way where I would take what they said and say well mine's a little different I'll

00:02:20.600 do it this way and it turns out it didn't work why because I modified too much when you learn

00:02:24.980 something new do it exactly as they say and then once you get traction and results then you can

00:02:30.300 modify now before we dive in we've added 200,000 new subscribers over the last two months and

00:02:36.260 we're looking to hit a million so if you haven't already hit subscribe number eight 50 to fix it

00:02:41.640 the number one way you move faster to allow people to make decisions on your behalf when you're not

00:02:46.260 around. I give everybody in my life the power to solve a problem if it's less than $50 without

00:02:51.500 asking. They're just going to tell me they did it afterwards because they got to expense it. But 50

00:02:55.060 to fix it, huge leverage in your business. Number nine, be patient with results, but impatient with

00:03:00.600 action. See, some people stress themselves out and they get overwhelmed because they have this big

00:03:04.160 vision for their life and they don't see that materialize yet. When you have an idea, do it and

00:03:08.700 be consistent over long periods of time. Don't do a lot and then slow down. It's not a sprint. It's

00:03:14.160 a sprint within a marathon. Number 10, if you think you have the answers to your problems already,

00:03:19.780 you're in trouble. It's impossible for you to actually know how you're about to do the thing

00:03:23.460 you need to do without going and studying it, without going to learn it from somebody else.

00:03:27.120 I tell this to my team all the time. If you think that we're going to win by the knowledge and the

00:03:31.160 experience we have in this room, we're all in trouble. We all have to go outside this room to

00:03:35.620 go learn so we can bring those best practices back here so we can execute faster. Number 11,

00:03:40.920 don't waste time on hypothetical problems. So often when I'm coaching people, they ask me about

00:03:46.000 a scenario that hasn't happened. Hypotheticals are hypocritical. Don't ask. You make up situations

00:03:52.480 that haven't happened so you solve problems that aren't problems yet instead of the ones you

00:03:56.120 actually have. Focus on the things that are real, not made up. Number 12, measure everything and

00:04:01.920 make it visible. My philosophy is that sunlight sanitizes all problems, meaning that first off,

00:04:07.240 I got to measure if I'm doing it right. Step two is make it public to everybody. So in my studio,

00:04:12.600 I have two dashboards for the different engines of my business that every person can see with

00:04:17.720 names next to every metric that we monitor so that there's accountability. If you measure it,

00:04:22.740 you can manage it. Number 13, focus stands for follow one course until successful. I can't tell

00:04:29.340 you how much wealth has been destroyed by being distracted. Instead of saying, I'm going to do

00:04:34.760 one thing and follow one customer in one market in one area and make one million dollars people

00:04:40.240 think i'm gonna do this and this and this and i have 17 side businesses that's not focused that's

00:04:44.640 a distraction and you're not that good yet number 14 be the smallest person in the biggest room when

00:04:49.720 i look around my peer group i want to feel like i'm trying to keep up to everybody else like

00:04:54.760 they're so far ahead of me if i'm the big dog in my little city i gotta go find a new city if you're

00:05:00.140 smartest person on your street you gotta move if you're the top person in the room you're in

00:05:05.260 go find a bigger room where you got to fight to get into and these are not things you can easily

00:05:10.220 get access to many of them at the highest level it's invite only which means you got to figure

00:05:15.340 out who's got the room who created it and how do you create enough value to even be considered to

00:05:19.340 be invited but that transformed my life number 15 play to win don't play not to lose too often

00:05:25.660 people are trying to think about risk mitigation, trying to save every penny because they can't

00:05:31.020 predict how could they keep doing it over and over. So they're playing defense, not offense.

00:05:35.800 You want to wake up every day and go, how do I win? You don't even want to talk about considering

00:05:39.740 the option of losing because that energy will get you focused on it and what you focus on expands

00:05:44.640 and you don't want that. Number 16, it's not who you know, it's who knows you. See, I believe that

00:05:50.760 your network is your net worth. And back in the day, I worked really hard to know the right people

00:05:55.600 that could solve the problems for me.

00:05:57.140 Now, I make sure that I have a personal brand

00:06:00.060 and a reputation that precedes me

00:06:02.040 so that when I need to solve a problem,

00:06:04.300 those people are willing and wanting and available

00:06:06.840 because they know who I am,

00:06:08.400 not necessarily that I know who they are.

00:06:10.240 Number 17, broke people get good at doing tasks,

00:06:13.600 rich people get good at avoiding them.

00:06:15.780 Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

00:06:18.220 And honestly, the thing that you're best at

00:06:20.500 becomes your Achilles heel as you grow

00:06:22.900 because it's the thing you'll be most critical

00:06:24.960 of somebody else doing for you that you give away last which means that if you want to be rich be

00:06:30.720 lazy don't give people the answers to the test if you buy back your time make sure it stays sold by

00:06:35.440 not doing their work number 18 working hard actually means doing what scares you too often

00:06:40.640 people talk about like i'm hustling i'm working hard no you're not show me the anxiety you have

00:06:45.520 around that task tell me where you're outside your comfort zone because what i see is somebody

00:06:50.640 it's working long hours, yes. Hard by your definition, maybe. For me, it's what scares you

00:06:56.940 that you don't want to do that you know if you do will expand you. That's what working hard means.

00:07:02.040 Number 19, doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. See, most people doubt themselves to

00:07:07.880 even start. They imagine this future of what could go wrong. So they have all this fear around even

00:07:13.860 taking action. What I've learned is fear gives bad advice. Do things in spite of fear. Courage is not

00:07:19.620 absence of doubt, courage is taking action in spite of doubt. Number 20, build the people

00:07:27.240 and the people build the business. This is one of the most powerful lessons over the years. I wish

00:07:32.040 I would have learned when I was 18, 19, 20, because I would have invested in being a better

00:07:37.200 leader for my people. I would have understood how to create a scenario where the people that I

00:07:42.380 wanted to hire would want to work for me because the best people, they're very employed. And what

00:07:48.000 I've discovered is the ability to develop a person and understand their dreams and their

00:07:52.660 aspirations and align their personal development to their achievement of their dreams. That is

00:07:58.340 the skill of leadership. Number 21, your team should work harder on themselves than they do

00:08:03.240 on their job. Every Monday I do leadership training and I start with this quote where I

00:08:06.940 encourage them, please, please, please work harder on yourselves than you do in your role. Because

00:08:11.600 in doing that, you'll be better for your job. You'll be better for your team. And that's a

00:08:15.900 weird one for a lot of CEOs or entrepreneurs to understand, but that's what they should be asking.

00:08:20.800 And if you do it for yourself, you'll be more for the people that need you most. Number 22,

00:08:26.040 train, don't tell. The thing I see bad bosses do all the time is they run around telling people

00:08:31.560 what to do. They correct, they fix, they tell, tell, tell. The problem is, is that if you keep

00:08:35.680 doing that, you'll always be the bottleneck because if they don't get told how to fix the

00:08:39.880 problem, they won't do anything. Instead, train them, talk about the philosophies, the principles,

00:08:44.600 the process to help somebody do the work right. If you train them, they'll scale. If you tell them,

00:08:50.920 you'll fail. Number 23, lead like you're a five-year-old. You know, the other day we were

00:08:55.020 remodeling my studio office and my GM comes in. He asked me, hey, you know, what are you doing

00:09:00.380 with those shelves? Are you going to design them up? I just stared at him and I was like,

00:09:03.680 I don't know. I looked at him and he goes, oh, got it. That's my responsibility. I was like,

00:09:09.100 yes. He goes, okay, heard. And he left. And he started working on hiring a designer to design

00:09:14.180 the shelves because he runs the studio, not me. It's his responsibility. If you run around and

00:09:19.080 keep telling everybody what to do, then you'll never grow your business because they'll keep

00:09:22.180 coming to you for the answers. Number 24, results over effort every time. I have some incredible

00:09:26.960 leaders that work for me and sometimes they tell me they're working really hard and they're putting

00:09:30.720 in super crazy hours and they're trying to get the results, but they don't show up. The only

00:09:35.240 difference is the person. Either the person can figure it out and get the result or they complain

00:09:40.120 about the effort. And having been doing this for 27 years, I will tell you, I don't care how hard

00:09:44.600 somebody works on my team. I care about the results. Number 25, all business problems are

00:09:49.180 just personal problems that manifest in your business. If you're stressed out at work, it's

00:09:53.320 because you're probably stressed out yourself. And that's something that happens at home and your

00:09:57.700 work is just an amplifier of who you are. So if you learn how to be a better leader at work, trust

00:10:02.740 me, you'll be better for your family. Number 26, people problem versus process problems. Anytime

00:10:07.900 there's an issue in my business i default to a process problem not a people problem see most

00:10:13.260 ceos when there's something that happens they go oh that person did this nope you hired them there's

00:10:18.300 a process is their process show it to me oh there's not if you're the leader guess whose fault that is

00:10:22.940 yours fix the process train the person if it happens again now you know you have a people

00:10:27.580 problem number 27 know what your time's worth rich people value their time poor people don't

00:10:34.060 it's that simple the reason why they're small businesses is because small business entrepreneurs

00:10:38.460 don't value their time they don't even know what it's worth they can't make a decision to say no

00:10:42.860 because they think everything is a yes because they want to be busy that's not how you grow

00:10:46.940 your business number 28 i have to work with you before i work with you i never hire somebody

00:10:52.220 until i have the opportunity to collaborate with them i don't want to have the first time that we

00:10:56.060 ever work together being after i hire you after you quit your job join my team and now i see

00:11:02.060 how we collaborate that's crazy to me so we always do test projects i pay them for it and it happens

00:11:07.340 before we ever give them the job offer number 29 use the 1080 10 rule to delegate without losing

00:11:12.860 control a lot of creatives are scared of giving up projects that feel like art to them like they

00:11:18.860 need to have their special touch and that's why the 1080 10 is 10 ideation up front to set the

00:11:23.820 picture of what needs to get done 80 execution by the other person and that last 10 is integration

00:11:29.820 where you get to sit down and add your fingerprint

00:11:32.360 to the magic that makes it you

00:11:34.260 so that it can have the feel of completion.

00:11:37.080 It's the art form.

00:11:38.200 It's the thing that actually makes it work,

00:11:40.300 not the busy stuff.

00:11:41.580 Number 30, have dreams big enough

00:11:43.240 for your team's dreams to fit inside of.

00:11:45.100 If you want to hire great people and keep great people,

00:11:48.000 you need to have a vision big enough

00:11:50.200 for your team's dreams and goal to fit inside of.

00:11:52.500 If you don't do this, they will find somebody else that does.

00:11:55.380 And that's why I see great people leave companies

00:11:57.340 all the time to go start their own company,

00:11:59.100 to go build this massive success

00:12:00.820 that they could have built inside the company

00:12:03.000 they're at beforehand,

00:12:04.060 but the leader didn't have this philosophy.

00:12:05.720 If you wanna learn how to build a business

00:12:07.280 that runs itself, click the link

00:12:08.740 and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - December 15, 2024

30 Brutal Business Truths I Wish I Knew in My 20s

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