Dan Martell - 5 Reasons You Should Join a CEO Group To Help Grow Your SaaS Business

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Dan Martell here,

00:00:01.260 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.880 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you five reasons

00:00:07.620 you should be joining a CEO group

00:00:10.060 to help you grow and scale your business.

00:00:12.120 Now, this is a part deux of another episode.

00:00:16.080 If you missed that one, check out last week

00:00:18.160 where I broke down the eight things I learned

00:00:20.820 rally car racing here on location at Dirtfish,

00:00:24.600 just outside of Seattle,

00:00:26.020 that will help you grow your business.

00:00:27.280 But in this video, I want to share the five reasons why you need to join a CEO group to help you grow and scale your business.

00:00:47.840 So here's a quick story. A decade plus ago, I was at an event with my brother.

00:00:52.900 It was one of those weekend seminars with some guru on stage preaching about, you know, business life transformation.

00:01:00.320 And at the end of the weekend, he talked about his opportunity to join him for his version of a mastermind.

00:01:06.960 And I was 27, 28 at the time.

00:01:10.020 My brother was a couple years younger than me.

00:01:11.980 And he just felt compelled.

00:01:13.620 And I was excited.

00:01:14.580 And I was like, you know, I'd have been investing in myself.

00:01:16.580 I hired a coach.

00:01:17.800 I'd read, you know, at that point, maybe 100 business books.

00:01:20.540 And I was really excited for him.

00:01:22.900 And he's like, I'm gonna do it.

00:01:24.000 Now, you gotta understand, at this moment,

00:01:25.620 he had just started his home building company.

00:01:28.360 He had no money.

00:01:30.100 He literally had a $50,000 credit card the bank gave him.

00:01:33.300 And the opportunity on stage was $35,000.

00:01:37.700 And he jumped out of his chair

00:01:39.020 and he ran to the back of the room and he enrolled.

00:01:41.180 And it was a three-year program.

00:01:43.320 And really one of the big reasons that he joined

00:01:45.820 was because he was allowed, the bonus,

00:01:48.160 the bonus was that he could invite

00:01:49.940 another family member to join him.

00:01:52.080 So guess who the lucky soul was?

00:01:54.760 So for three years, my brother and I traveled around the U.S. and Canada,

00:02:00.400 really working on ourselves and being around other incredible entrepreneurs

00:02:04.040 and learning strategies and techniques and tactics that really helped us kind of move our business and our lives,

00:02:09.840 honestly, more importantly, our personal and our relationships to the next level.

00:02:14.320 And that opportunity set him up, set up the foundation for him to build one of the largest

00:02:19.740 and fastest growing home building companies in the world

00:02:22.260 gave me the tools and the techniques and the confidence

00:02:25.220 to move to San Francisco, Silicon Valley

00:02:27.340 and build multiple venture-backed startups

00:02:29.600 that I eventually exit and invest in dozens of companies

00:02:34.200 like Intercom, Hootsuite, et cetera.

00:02:36.320 And all of that was a result of investing in CEO groups,

00:02:40.820 of taking the time to get out of our office,

00:02:42.960 go to the place like Dirtfish right here

00:02:45.660 where I'm at right now.

00:02:46.520 Rally Car Racing is technically business.

00:02:48.940 So what I want to share with you is the five reasons you must, must, must join a CEO group to help you scale to the next level of your business.

00:02:57.600 Number one, compress decades into days.

00:03:00.400 Now, I first heard Tony Robbins share that sentence with me, but it holds true.

00:03:05.200 You know, we're here at Dirtfish with my buddy Jason Gaynard, the creator of MMT, a group of incredible entrepreneurs.

00:03:12.980 Every year, it's a big event.

00:03:14.400 It's not this event.

00:03:15.140 This is kind of like a satellite type event

00:03:18.000 off the main event that he runs once a year.

00:03:20.180 150 entrepreneurs go to a new location

00:03:22.200 and we connect and we learn stuff.

00:03:24.600 And just even being here with the eight other entrepreneurs,

00:03:28.060 you know, where a lot of people think like,

00:03:29.480 oh, most be fun, between our sessions,

00:03:33.060 between, you know, racing out there

00:03:34.660 on the dirt and the tarmac,

00:03:36.280 we're actually talking about our lives and our business.

00:03:38.300 And just yesterday, one of the guys here, John,

00:03:40.820 I was talking to him about tax planning

00:03:42.440 and financial investment.

00:03:43.760 This guy is one of the top experts in the world, literally.

00:03:47.760 He's the coach to all the financial advisors.

00:03:50.680 He's got like 250 people in his program.

00:03:53.020 He's written like 14 books on the topic.

00:03:56.260 And to have that opportunity to talk to somebody that literally,

00:03:59.980 I think John's like 64 now, decades of experience,

00:04:04.580 decades compressed into days, not even days,

00:04:08.540 into minutes of a conversation where he could go,

00:04:11.160 where are you at? Boom, you can get rid of all that noise.

00:04:13.600 focus on this. I'll send you the book. You'll get the strategy you need. Incredible value.

00:04:17.980 That's what you find when you go to these CEO groups. You find people that for what,

00:04:22.600 you know, their background's completely different than yours, and they can shed some light that'll

00:04:26.700 really help you get to that next level faster. Just think about yourself and your business. You

00:04:31.100 know, you've been going for X amount of years. If you had to start back to the beginning, day one,

00:04:36.000 from scratch, how much faster could you get to this point knowing what you know, right? A lot

00:04:41.120 of people say half the time. Other people say, I could do it in a third of the time. It is what

00:04:46.140 it is for you, but I know that if you get around incredibly smart people, you will compress decades

00:04:51.340 into days for your learnings. Number two, positive peer pressure. Now, here's one of the best parts.

00:04:59.140 Maybe you've heard this quote that if you're the smartest person in the room, you want to find

00:05:03.540 another room. Well, here's what I've learned is if you go to a CEO group, a program where they

00:05:09.180 collect and you know there's an application process and you got to get vetted and you show up there's

00:05:13.900 a good chance you're going to feel a little imposter syndrome it happens to me all the time

00:05:19.060 I mean the caliber of entrepreneurs you know the the the magnitude of some of these businesses that

00:05:24.380 people created are just mind-blowing you know a couple years ago I had the privilege of being

00:05:28.220 invited to spend a week with Richard Branson as a house in Switzerland and you know we landed at

00:05:32.720 the airport and we met some of the other people that had been invited and all of a sudden I meet

00:05:36.320 this guy named Brian and I, you know,

00:05:38.420 we didn't really talk about what do you do at first

00:05:40.160 and we're driving in the van up to the chalet

00:05:42.180 up this winding road in Switzerland.

00:05:44.240 And eventually I was just like,

00:05:45.160 hey Brian, you know, what do you do?

00:05:46.620 And he's like, oh, well I built a company called Braintree.

00:05:49.880 And I remember seeing about six months prior

00:05:52.580 that Braintree was acquired by PayPal

00:05:54.620 for like $800 million and reading

00:05:58.660 that Brian was the sole founder.

00:06:00.800 And I mean, talk about like, okay, that's a next level.

00:06:04.760 That's a bigger game.

00:06:06.080 I definitely don't feel like the smartest person.

00:06:07.920 And then I looked around, there's guys like Tim Ferriss,

00:06:10.200 the co-founder of Square,

00:06:11.320 and all these other incredible entrepreneurs.

00:06:13.720 But the truth is, is when you get in that environment,

00:06:16.380 it's gonna force you to think bigger, to act bigger,

00:06:19.300 to have bigger dreams for yourself.

00:06:21.640 And to me, that is one of the most powerful things

00:06:24.300 that you're gonna get

00:06:25.140 from being part of an incredible group.

00:06:26.840 Number three, time away to focus on a higher level.

00:06:31.640 Too often, we're in our business, in our office,

00:06:34.580 heads down, grinding, tap, tapping, tapping on our keyboards, and we don't take a second to lift

00:06:39.980 our heads and breathe and really look at like, what are we building here? Where are we going with

00:06:44.660 this thing? Thinking strategically and having vision for our lives and our business. And what

00:06:49.740 I find is one of the most important benefits of being around other entrepreneurs is just that

00:06:54.720 space away from your team, away from the office, away from the amount of chatter and noise from

00:06:59.900 team or from customers interrupting you to just think strategically about the business. Where

00:07:05.640 you're at, where do you want to go, getting some guidance from the other members of the group and

00:07:10.320 the strategic and tactical ways you can get there faster, incredible, and really just giving yourself

00:07:16.480 that cadence to think and focus on strategic level stuff. Just do yourself the favor and create that

00:07:24.420 space for you to plan, to create a bigger vision, to really focus on the next level of your company.

00:07:30.820 That, to me, is invaluable. Number four, pull you up when you're feeling down. You know, maybe you

00:07:36.380 don't have the fortune of having an incredible co-founder in your business or a few co-founders,

00:07:40.840 but what I've discovered, you know, having built sole founder a few companies and having, you know,

00:07:46.340 a co-founder like Ethan at my previous company, Flowtown, just an incredible and human being,

00:07:51.580 is having somebody that when you're feeling down

00:07:54.000 to pull you up, right?

00:07:55.400 Where you're feeling like the world is against you

00:07:57.200 to kind of have this glass half full mentality

00:08:00.080 and to kind of walk you through your thinking

00:08:01.580 and make you feel a lot better of the opportunity.

00:08:04.140 And being in a CEO group of being around people

00:08:06.900 where they're potentially crushing it

00:08:08.800 and having these great outcomes.

00:08:10.200 And you might be dealing with some personal issues at home

00:08:13.360 with your loved one or some health issues

00:08:16.040 or whatever it is to pull you up, to support you,

00:08:19.720 to lift you to the next level of your thinking,

00:08:22.120 your mindset, to get you out of a rut.

00:08:24.840 I mean, what's that worth?

00:08:25.960 Because here's what I know, the downside,

00:08:27.960 if you can't get that upward spiral going

00:08:30.500 and you're in a downward spiral,

00:08:32.380 is potentially sacrificing your business,

00:08:34.340 sacrificing your health, sacrificing your mental health.

00:08:38.000 And I've, you know, unfortunately had just too many people

00:08:40.600 that, you know, have made the wrong decision

00:08:44.420 when it came to dealing with pressure and noise

00:08:46.820 in their business as an entrepreneur.

00:08:49.120 and unfortunately have taken their lives.

00:08:51.600 And I think that it's easy when we're in our office,

00:08:55.500 behind a keyboard, by ourselves, working late,

00:08:58.180 Sunday mornings, going to the office,

00:09:00.120 and not having those people that are gonna ask you

00:09:02.580 how you're doing and really dive in

00:09:04.180 and not just let your standard answer of,

00:09:07.020 yeah, oh, crushing it, doing so well, thanks for asking.

00:09:09.540 No, they're gonna say, no, man, really.

00:09:12.140 Like Chris, who's one of the guys here at this event,

00:09:15.600 he goes deep.

00:09:16.480 He's not gonna let you just get away with like,

00:09:18.160 oh yeah, everything's awesome.

00:09:19.600 No, man, what are you struggling with?

00:09:21.880 Let's be honest, we're here for a reason.

00:09:23.800 And I just think that that access and care and empathy

00:09:29.020 that comes from a group like a really great curated CEO

00:09:31.960 group is worth everything to just be

00:09:35.440 able to have those people support you.

00:09:37.080 Number five, do cool stuff.

00:09:39.080 Now, I'm here just outside of Seattle

00:09:41.560 at an incredible place called Dirt Fish, Rally Car Racing,

00:09:45.260 just taking incredible high-speed turns in the woods,

00:09:48.820 through the trees, next to rivers and cement blocks,

00:09:53.040 and trying to essentially keep the rubber side down,

00:09:57.200 pushing ourselves into corners

00:09:58.800 and praying that we don't hit the wall.

00:10:00.960 And with all that being said,

00:10:03.160 which is an incredible thing to do,

00:10:05.520 it's actually business.

00:10:07.000 It's considered business.

00:10:08.400 Why?

00:10:09.240 Because we're here as an entrepreneurial group.

00:10:11.560 We're not only learning new skills,

00:10:13.840 but if you watch last week's episode,

00:10:15.700 I break down the actual business strategies.

00:10:18.560 Crazy, I know, people don't get it.

00:10:20.540 The things that I learned that I can apply to my business

00:10:23.480 by listening to our instructors teach us

00:10:25.380 about taking corners, about going fast,

00:10:27.840 about getting momentum and escape velocity

00:10:31.020 in our driving that we can apply to our business.

00:10:33.800 So I don't know, if you're into doing cool stuff,

00:10:37.140 having fun, going on excursions,

00:10:39.180 you know, from, I've done everything from,

00:10:40.960 I run a group every year for backcountry snowboarding

00:10:43.700 skiing you know called maple summit i've gone indoor skydiving racing cars on asphalt around

00:10:49.300 you know race tracks to rally car racing literally everything you know we're planning a hunting trip

00:10:54.820 kiteboarding whatever you want to do if you're part of a group the best part is they take care

00:11:00.100 of all the planning so you can enjoy yourself have an incredible time get strategies to grow

00:11:05.300 your business and start knocking off some of those items on your bucket list so this is what i have

00:11:11.780 for you this week i just want to do a quick recap number one compress decades into days number two

00:11:17.940 positive peer pressure have people force you to play a bigger game number three time away

00:11:22.820 to focus on a higher level number four pull you up when you're feeling down and number five do

00:11:29.780 cool stuff so with that i just want to encourage you to find a group of peers that share the same

00:11:36.900 zest and vision for their life and get around them,

00:11:39.940 spend time with them, do cool things like we're doing here

00:11:43.600 in Seattle at Dirtfish and just take your thoughts,

00:11:47.360 your ideas, your business to the next level

00:11:49.380 and really focus on the personal and the relationship side

00:11:51.860 because I'm telling you, life is short.

00:11:54.420 We're gonna get the most juice from the people

00:11:57.000 and the relationships of the people we have around us

00:11:59.280 and being part of a CEO group will just give you

00:12:01.860 a whole new perspective about the positivity

00:12:05.600 around being around really incredible peers.

00:12:09.360 So I hope this video finds you incredibly well.

00:12:11.180 If you feel like it might serve somebody else,

00:12:13.440 feel free to share it with them directly.

00:12:15.100 Hit the subscribe button, smash the like button,

00:12:17.800 leave a comment, and I'll see you next Monday.

00:12:35.600 We'll be right back.

00:13:05.600 Whoo! That was awesome!

Dan Martell - May 27, 2019

5 Reasons You Should Join a CEO Group To Help Grow Your SaaS Business

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